Kiwi's going home tomorrow. As a last hurrah, about 8 of us went to Darbar, an Indian restaurant on the top floor of Hotel Sputnik near Leninsky Prospekt. It's a decent walk from the metro, past a giant statue that looks a bit like an Oscar, except 30 feet tall, more planar and futuristic, and on a 50-foot pedestal. The statue's a monument to Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space (before he took off, he said "поехали," "let's go," the Soviet analogue of "One small step..."). Inexplicably, the statue has a six-foot-tall metal soccer ball underneath.

The restaurant, 16 floors up, is one of my favorite places in Moscow. Out one window, you look down on a bend of the Moskva River, and across it to a stadium with the city stretching behind. Downstream a bit, you can see one of the Seven Sisters, outsized cathedral-like buildings commissioned by Stalin that taper in spires to a final red star at the top. They have an architectural term all their own, Stalin Gothic, and are incredible lit up at night.

Unfortunately we were seated by the opposite window, which looks down on a nuclear power plant. Everyone else in the restaurant was part of a corporate party, and was drunkenly dancing up a storm. We were right next to the speakers, which pretty much ruled out cross-table conversation. The music was a medley of Arabic trance and 90s dance-pop--songs like La Bouche's "Be My Lover," which I haven't heard since the 7th grade (except for all those times I Youtubed it out of nostalgia.) (R, they also played "It's the time to disco," which of course made me think of you). The food was good though, as always, and I'm glad I got a chance to see Kiwi off. Blueberry's leaving tomorrow also, leaving the language school nearly depleted of friends.