2019 Russia #12

Moscow Day One July 4-5, 2019

Morning dawns for the last time on our Trans-Siberian trip.  We’re not done with trains, but Moscow is the official ‘end of the line’ for the Trans-Siberian.  And we’re in Europe now, and it’s not raining!  That might be a coincidence, but also maybe not…  The wild country is gone now. It’s farms and smaller patches of bush and villages and towns and cities.  

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This is done by the Russian Geographic Society. Each car is a little history lesson!

A happy little train car!

A Revolutionary Train from the Red Army.

This was the way out. I was so disappointed. I was sure that I had called ahead to say we were coming. From Vladivostok to Moscow by train, and this was it? aaww

Eventually, we arrive at the train station, and Deb is quite looking forward to taking a photo of Mile Zero as she has a pic of the other end, and they are like bookends, apparently. You have to have them both, or they don’t work…  So, of course, we get caught up in a rush and forget about it and once we’re in the train station they won’t let us back out onto the platform so you’ll have to visualize it.  No photo.  But she does get photos of the train station, as Moscow has at least three major train stations, and we’re not coming back to this one.

Moscow train station.  The end of the line for the Trans Siberian Railway.

Say…, isn’t THAT a train station? This one goes north, I think.

No, wait!  This one goes to Kazan.

Our taxi takes us right through the middle of town, past the Kremlin and Red Square and canals and monuments and everything.  It’s like a free tour!  Our apartment is located on Leninsky Prospekt just a block from Gorky Park, but you have to walk about a kilometre to get in because it has a wall around it.  The apartment is hard to find, it’s in a building that’s about a kilometre long facing Leninsky Prospekt, and it has an address along Leninsky Prospekt, but you can’t get in on that side.  The taxi driver eventually figured out how to sneak up on it from about 3 blocks behind, and then he confidently waved us and our bags through a kid’s park and into a courtyard where our very  nice hostess was waiting for us.  The apartment is tiny but very clean and comfortable and everything works. 

That ain’t a dishwasher. But I guess…

The main bedroom, which is also a bit of a sitting room, and there is a door off to the loggia.

This is the worlds smallest bathroom.

It was explained to us that this was the typical toilet in the Soviet Union apartments. Apparently, ‘they’ used a ‘typical average’ sized person and measured how wide they were at the shoulders when seated on the toilet, and that’s how wide the room is. I never thought of Steve and me as ‘big’ people, but we would have to stand outside the door, drop our pants, take one step back, and sit. There was no room to spread your elbows out. Not your most comfortable bathroom! Even the ones on the train were bigger.

Driving through downtown Moscow.

A substantial pile of rocks.

Great mural!

So, what is Moscow like?  I always thought of Moscow as grey and dreary, full of glum Russians putting up with crappy weather.  Too many movies, I guess.  In fact it’s a beautiful city – at least the parts that we saw – full of old and new buildings and busy and clean and friendly and everything worked.  The bad news: we have two stinking days to try to fit as much in as possible.  Our feet may never forgive us.

By the time we got settled in, it was pretty much time to find a place to eat dinner and maybe pick up a few breakfast items.  Our hostess recommended a couple of places close to a jumped-up corner grocery about a kilometre away, and the small restaurant turned out to be our go-to favourite.  Great food, lovely ambience, they even had a large patio for al fresco in the afternoon (but not the evening).  Restaurant food in Russia was cheap wherever we went, and we were surprised to find that Moscow is no different. If you aren’t in the touristy section, maybe half the cost of a Canadian meal ($6-7 with a beer), it’s good food, and the beer is terrific.

Trolley people. Moscow has trolleys, buses, trains, and the subway.

I wonder what HE does for a living?

Male and female washrooms.

Debbi saw this, and immediately declared that it was her spirit animal.

The restaurant had sheeps for the kids.

Our apartment is roughly 2 kilometres from the Kremlin and Red Square, and 3 kilometres from the Arbat, where we are going to meet our guide this morning for a 3-hour walking tour of the downtown.  We meet our guide Elena at Pushkin’s Monument (the father of Russian Literature) on Tverskoy Boulevard, which is a beautiful broad promenade with treed areas on both sides, with streets on the outside edges.  It’s common for public art to be displayed on the boulevard, and right now that is 300-400 meters of Russian landscapes and historical paintings.  It is noteworthy that, in a civilized country, you can leave things like this out in public without worrying about them being defaced or stolen.  I’m looking at you, Canada.

Amazing use of digital technology to create art.

Hard to believe it’s not real. This exhibit stretched for 200 meters along the boulevard.  No vandalism.

Just another priceless art display in a park right beside a street.

Our guide Elena (right) and we intrepid touristas.

 And then- the original Russian McDonald’s!  It’s fairly small and sort of a museum but it’s still open for business.  Elena told us stories about what a big deal it was, a visible manifestation of perestroika (restructuring).  The lineups were enormous.  We have little idea today of the impact that a burger and fries, or a pair of 501 Blues, had on Russian society.

The first McDonald’s!

The tourists are happy now that they have found McDonald’s.

Opening day.  The lineup literally goes all the way around the park!

Right outside the door of McDonald’s.  “Soviet Proud!”

Elena drilling the recruits on advanced guiding skills.

Our guide Elena. A lovely girl.

Then it was time for a walk back along Tverskaya Street, with many lovely examples of both Soviet and pre-Revolutionary architecture.  

A pre-revolutionary apartment building.

The interior courtyard.

There were lots of little sidewalk cafes like this.

Now THAT is a grocery store.

Looking above the main entrance to the right of the photo.

A jewellery store.

I believe this was the original headquarters for ‘Pravda’, or ‘The Truth’. A dubious choice of names for a government foghorn…

More early Soviet architecture. Note the mural at the top of the building.

 We then stopped for coffee and snacks at an older home that’s been converted into a coffee shop.  It was on three floors, the biggest room was probably 12×12, and it was a maze of stairwells, corridors, and tiny rooms.  And it all worked; the walls were lined with funky art, and everyone served themselves. No one was in a hurry.  Just a very small sign in cyrillic out front, we would never have known it existed if it weren’t for our guide!

One of the many pretty little rooms in the coffee shop.

Coffee!  Moscow!  Sunshine!

After a kilometre or so, our walk took us to the entrance to Red Square.  There are actually a few other streets that lead there, but for tourists, the only way in is via Resurrection Gate, which is mostly a large arch that goes through a building complex, including a couple of museums, a cathedral, and the old mint.  Once through the arch, you find yourself standing in Red Square, which is actually Red Rectangle, with the Kremlin Wall to the right, Saint Basil’s Cathedral straight ahead, and the GUM Department Store to the left.  All of these are noteworthy, but today we’re going to do a a walkabout as we’ll be visiting the Kremlin and Saint Basil’s tomorrow.

Kazan Cathedral on left, GUM on right

Weird hangy things. We have no idea, but they’re nice.

GUM Department Store. Not to be missed.

The inside is a maze of arcades, with lots of statues and fountains, all covered by a glass roof.

The arcades are joined by walkways every fifty metres or so.

Gum Department Store was the visible manifestation of the superiority of the Soviet Union in providing quality goods to the masses.  Of course, the masses were busy squabbling over wilted cabbages in the real grocery stores if anything showed up at all, and only tourists, diplomats, Party officials, and the nomenclatura could shop in Gum. But still. E for effort!

When the USSR went down, so did Gum because of course it did. It was a showroom rather than a real commercial enterprise; there wasn’t even a pretense of it being financially sustainable.  But it got reinvented, which is a very good thing, as it is truly an amazing edifice.  It is composed of four parallel arcades, each one three stories high and 350-400 meters long, and the arcades have glass arches between them.  My best estimate was four to five kilometres of shops, all in a bright, airy, open building.  It feels like you’re outside, but you’re always warm, dry and cozy.  It’s very modern and interesting, and if you wanted to seriously explore it you could spend a full day and not see everything.  Not to be missed.

A fountain in the park outside the Kremlin walls.

So that’s it for the walking tour, and our feet are very grateful.  Time to catch the bus back to Gorky Park as this is pretty much our only chance to see it.  But.  On the way downtown, Debbi spotted this humongous statue of a guy and a ship on the Moscow River, and it appears to be only a short walk away from Gorky Park, so we decided to take that in first.  It’s the same bus stop and the same street to walk, we just turn right at the Moscow River instead of turning left into Gorky Park.  And once we get down to the river, we can see the statue.  Way, way down there.  But hey, it’s a walk through another park, and there’s a beautiful broad walkway along the river, and there’s public art, and people are selling ice cream, and there are nervous little birds to take pictures of.  What’s not to like? 

Who doesn’t need a happy little bulldozer?

Another public art display, along the river walk.

This was labelled “Our Forefathers” even though there are seven of them.

Eventually, we get to the statue, and it’s REALLY big.  322 feet big.  It’s a sailing ship, and it commemorates the 300th anniversary of Peter the Great’s creation of the Russian Navy.  But the statue has garnered a number of honours in its own right; it has been identified as one of the world’s ugliest statues by numerous organizations. Apparently, the City of Moscow has tried to gift it to other cities, but no one will take it.  We like it, what can I tell you?

That’s a big-ass statue.

 So, finally finally it’s time to wend our way back to Gorky Park and then home.  Gorky Park is a combination of natural areas, places for young people to hang out in privacy, and a lake with a fountain and ducks, and places to eat and drink, and it’s just generally a nice place to hang out.  Surprisingly, there is a network of parks along the Moscow River that’s at least five to ten kilometres long!  But we won’t get to see them, as our feet are demanding to be carried home.  Big day tomorrow.

 The main entrance to Gorky Park. It’s a huge park, and what we got to see was beautiful – but alas our throbbing feet said, ‘enough already..go home’. 

Lucky tourists. Bet their feet weren’t sore.