Moscow, Part II (made much better!)

I apologize for the appearance of that last post; I was interrupted in the middle of it when the keyboard stopped working. This is the corrected (and lengthened) version.

After the Kremlin we took the bus over to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the main church in Russia that was rebuilt in the 90’s after its earlier destruction by the Soviets. On one side of the church is a foot bridge that offers a fantastic view down the Moscow River towards the Kremlin on one side and towards the rest of Moscow on the other. One of the most ‘interesting’ sights that can be easily viewed from the bridge is a statue of Christopher Columbus masquerading as Peter the Great. It features a ship (Spanish galleon?) resting on ornamental waves, with a man dressed in late 15th/early 16th Spanish garments at its helm, gazing out sternly into the distance (and vastly disproportionate to the ship). It was built by the sculptor Z Tsereteli as a monument to Columbus, and hawked to various American cities in states. Unfortunately for him none of them wanted it, probably due to rather tasteless and ridiculous appearance, not to mention incredibly massive size. Tsereteli was not entirely unresourceful, and managed to sell it to Russia as a statue of Peter the Great- with just a different head. As our guide explained, although Saint Petersburg is probably where the statue could have gone, it was too ugly for the city; so it stands in Moscow as monument to Peter the Great’s founding of the Russian Navy. An interesting statue, especially when you consider that Peter the Great hated Moscow; the statue was intended to celebrate a man who discovered the land that would later become Russia’s enemy; and that historically, the statue’s appearance (hair, clothes etc.) is about two centuries off.
On a side note, Peter the Great’s founding of the Navy is a pretty amazing story; apparently he went to Norway (or Sweden?) and, posing as a common carpenter, was taught how to build ships. He returned to Russia with the knowledge, and viola! An impressively un-orthodox way to go about it.

The Cathedral of Christ the Savior has its own interesting story. Before it was rebuilt with a church, the area that the church stands on was intended to be the ‘Palace of the Soviets’, a skyscraper topped by a gigantic Lenin. I am not kidding. This giant Lenin was intended to contain a movie theater in his out-stretched arm, searchlights in his eyes and a library in his brain. Before construction stopped – I believe due to WWII – they even had a ‘Committee of Citizens for the Design of Lenin’s Arm’ or some other title specifically to design the aforementioned arm. Underneath the church there are archives of both religious and Soviet materials, including the plans for this skyscraper. It looked pretty… arresting on paper.
Then came the nunnery and cemetery.

The Novodevichy Convent is an old convent on what used to be the outskirts of the city. It contains many interesting buildings from various time periods, including one I found particularly interesting because it was built in the 'Moscow Baroque' style; trust Moscow to have its own version of Baroque, and a very pretty one too. The Convent also happens to be were the sister of Peter the Great spent her days after (I believe) a falied coup. To punish her he had the rotting carcass of one of the conspirators hung outside her window, where the stench and the sight haunted her for months. Pleasant. Next to the convent is an old cemetery divided into two parts. The older part contains many old famous artists\musicians\intellectuals graves, including that of Chekhov(!). The second part was the official Soviet cemetery, and contains many important Soviets. The great thing about the Soviet side was that the monuments on each grave were actually very interesting and often beautiful; instead of being standard gravestones they were designed to show the specialty of the graves occupant. For example, one featured a mathematical equation; another, airplanes. They were really surprisingly innovative, although the stern (Soviet on the portraits was a theme throughout.

Finally, we visited the Moscow Viewing Platform, situated on the largest hill in the city and from which you can see just about everything (if you have binoculars or eagle eyes). This includes the Olympic stadium built back in 1960 (?) for the Olympics that were held in Moscow, and in which the USA among other countries did not participate for political reasons. You can also see six of the ‘Seven Sisters’, maybe all depending on the weather. The one you can see the most clearly is part of Moscow University, and it stands right behind viewing platform. From what I could see of it, the campus must be beautiful. What was perhaps the most surprising part of the viewing platform was simply the vast amount of trees that was visible throughout the city, in parks but also just between buildings. Moscow is a delightfully forested city, it seems, particularly as fall was not quite finished.
On our way back to the hotel, we got caught in a ridiculous amount of traffic. A drive that was meant to take only about 40 minutes took something like two hours, and so we missed out on the planned excursion to the Tretyakov Gallery, which contains Russian Art from the 11th to 20th centuries. At the time I did not realize how unfortunate this was; the gallery is meant to be quite a trip, and in Saint-Petersburg its difficult to find art more modern than the 18th century. C’est la vie! Besides, it proved that traffic does in fact exist in Russia, and the reason we missed out was not so much the driving as it was that once at the hotel check-in took minutes, and registration took two hours. In Russia, if you aren’t a Russian and plan to stay three days or more you must register with the authorities; most hotels will take care of this for you, but it takes time and you can’t safely go out without doing so, or rather without the resulting paperwork. After two hours at the hotel it was getting dark, so options were limited. Two friends and I decided to take advantage of the proximity of the hotel to the metro, so after grabbing dinner at the local Teremok (Russian fast food, mainly blinis but they do a mean salmon soup) we headed downtown.

Into real, live Moscow on a Saturday night. Moscow feels different from Saint Petersburg, mainly younger, shinier, richer. More alive in some respects, and buzzing in a very NYC-sort of way. The thing with Moscow is that as the most expensive city in the world, the only people who can really afford to go out are pretty wealthy. If you’re part of the masses, most of your income gets eaten up by rent, food and transportation because you probably live quite far outside the center. Thus, on our walk we found ourselves in the most beautiful and possibly most expensive grocery store that I have ever been to in my life, right on tverskaya ylitsa, one of Moscow’s main streets. As we were walking by we didn’t even suspect that it was a grocery store, the insides were so lush. Upon a second viewing and entry, it was in fact full of food, but also full of lavish Baroque decoration, well-dressed clientele trying to decide what brand of caviar to buy, and chandeliers. Impressive indeed. While looking around Ashley believed that she heard a conversation between two Mafia men, who were casually examining fruit while talking in English about how one of them should ‘not worry, we have a place for you’. When they looked at her curiously she quickly quit the area. So we bought chocolate from their vast selection, and left. We didn’t have to pay for bags, either; when you’re rich, they come free.

[Side Note: On the chocolate front I can report that ‘rysskii shokolad’ does some sort of weird air-bubble thing with most of their chocolate and it is not tasty, although I suspect that their 87% would be excellent for baking. ‘babaevskii’ chocolate, on the other hand, does a very nice 75%, and ‘red october’ is truly a tasty brand despite a lack of dark chocolate offerings. I will continue to explore.]

We didn’t wander around for too long in the downtown; Moscow is, as I’d heard, colder than SP and it was a decently bitter night. In fact, the day after we left (the 14th of October) is a holiday in Moscow called the Day of Our Lady of Assumption – I believe - and traditionally the first snow fall is expected before or on that day. Last winter it was much later, and this winter it’s late as well. ‘That’s global warming’, as our guide said. In Russia no one seems to refute that it’s happening, while simultaneously not doing anything about it. In America we seem to have to still fight to convince people, but some people are at least trying to do something, at least recycle.
Anyway, the downtown was bright and stylish and expensive, all the things you would expect it to be. The ride back to the hotel was fast, and before we knew it we were safely back, hitting the hay early to be ready for another full day of the Russian capitol.

[on a complete and utter sidenote that I completely forgot to write about at the time, a few weekends ago the first GBLT film festival in Russia was scheduled to be held in St. Petersbrg. The venues, however, were shut down by the police, although no-one was arrested, and the festival went on in secret. This does not point towards a high level of tolerance, but at least there was no violence. Oh, Russia.]