Murray Audrey. Open Mic Night in Moscow: And Other Stories from My Search for Black Markets, Soviet Architecture, and Emotionally Unavailable

William Morrow, 2018. — 293 p. — ISBN10: 0062823299, 13 978-0062823298.The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan.
Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Siberia are not the typical tourist destinations of a twenty-something, nor the places one usually goes to eat, pray, and/or love. But the mix of imperial Russian opulence and Soviet decay, and the allure of emotionally unavailable Russian men proved strangely irresistible to comedian Audrey Murray.
At age twenty-eight, while her friends were settling into corporate jobs and serious relationships, Audrey was on a one-way flight to Kazakhstan, the first leg of a nine-month solo voyage through the former USSR. A blend of memoir and offbeat travel guide, this thoughtful, hilarious catalog of a young comedian's adventures is also a diary of her emotional discoveries about home, love, patriotism, loneliness, and independence.
Sometimes surprising, often disconcerting, and always entertaining, Open Mic Night in Moscow will inspire you to take the leap and embark on your own journey into the unknown. And, if you want to visit Chernobyl by way of an insane-asylum-themed bar in Kiev, Audrey can assure you that there's no other guidebook out there. (She's looked.)
Inside...
Opening for a Meditative Drum Circle in Almaty (Kazakhstan)
Crossing a Land Border from Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan
Riding a Horse in the Mountains of Kyrgyzstan
The Most Terrifying Flight on Earth (Tajikistan)
A Ten-Day Road Trip Through Tajikistan
Touring the Black Markets of Uzbekistan
Trains, Tombs, and Ovaries (Uzbekistan)
An Invitation to a Stranger’s Wedding (Uzbekistan)
A Visit to a Secret Museum (Uzbekistan)
Camping Beside the Door to Hell (Turkmenistan)
Taken in Turkmenistan
How to Get out of Turkmenistan When You’re out of Cash
Clubbing with Strangers from a Convenience Store in Kazakhstan Eastern Europe
An Afternoon in Chernobyl (Ukraine)
Halloween in Your Lover’s Homeland (Belarus)
Couchsurf the Baltics (Lithuania)
All Trains Lead to Russia
The Trans-Siberian Railway
Trans-Siberian Prelude: A Brief Stopover in China
A Month on the Trans-Siberian
Open Mic Night in Moscow.