Moscow

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Day 15

This morning’s tour was of the Armoury Chamber and the Kremlin. We went to an alternative entrance because the line was too long at the first entrance, but we still had to wait 30 minutes to get in. Since our guide hadn’t planned on this we speed toured the Armoury. The Museum contains artifacts from the Tsars going back to Peter the Great. Peter was 6’7” which made him a giant for his time, but according to our guide who was about my size, his feet were only 2 sizes larger than her feet. They had carriages from Elisabeth who nearly bankrupted the government with her profligate spending. We still appreciate the buildings in St Petersburg she funded, but have a hard time understanding why one person needed 300 carriages and 15,000 dresses.

It was interesting to see the change from traditional Russian style garments to “European” style under Peter the Great. The Russian dress was better suited to a climate that reaches 40 below in the winter that the low-cut gowns and flimsy shoes of Europe. You can see how vast amounts of money went to the nobility and the church when you see robes that were covered with semi-precious stones and took 2 years to complete. We also saw Bibles with huge emeralds on the covers. We finished with icons. The icons are beautiful, but there is just so many saints and images of Mary and Jesus that I can look at without getting bored. I asked one of our guides how many saints there are in the Russian Orthodox Church and she replied, “Too many”. She said there are so many saints that they have stopped naming new saints.

Walking around the Kremlin, you see many very large buildings from the 19^th and 20^th centuries. There is what was once a concert hall into a venue for public events like ceremonies that can seat 6,000 people. In the middle of the Kremlin there is a white line that separates the public area from the area used by the government. Since the line is not identified, tourist often walk towards the line. When a tourist gets too close, one of the guards blows a whistle loud enough to get everyone’s attention and motions them back. Today everything seems so calm, that is it hard to imagine what it was like during Stalin. I’ve been listening to Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexevich and the arbitrary brutality is shocking, so shocking that I don’t think I’ll be able to finish the book.

Our tour got back to the hotel at 1:30. I mistakenly thought that our guide was coming at 2 so we stopped into the restaurant in the hotel for lunch. Hotel food in moderate hotels like a Marriott Courtyard is usually middling, but since this was Moscow it was bad.

Our guide, Lucy, showed up a few minutes after 2:30 as she was supposed to. She couldn’t have been more than 25 and had the warmest smile. She is not Jewish, but after randomly ending up in the Jewish Studies track as an undergraduate she has stuck with the field and even knows Hebrew. Lucy was full of enthusiasm and knowledge. She was very respectful of being in a synagogue and would talk to us about the synagogue before we entered so as not to disrupt and anything going on in the synagogue. The first synagogue is currently run by Chabad. The whole façade was restored a glass super structure built to protect it. For a period served as the main synagogue when the Choral Synagogue was closed after the revolution. The Choral Synagogue is in the style of the grand synagogues of Europe and can seat nearly 2,000 people. It was originally built with a dome. When Tsar Alexander II drove by it, he didn’t see the Star of David on the top and crossed himself thinking he was passing by a church. When he found out it was a synagogue, he ordered the dome removed and it wasn’t replaced until 1990. There are only 20,000 Jews in Moscow as young people see better opportunities in Israel and other countries and when they can leave they do. Lucy’s closest friend has moved to Israel and is serving the in IDF. We had hoped to see the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, but time got away from us. We arranged to meet Lucy in the lobby. I looked for her and didn’t see her so by the time our paths crossed we were running late for the Bolshoi. She was terribly upset about the mistake and it took a lot of reassurance that it was OK. She put us in an Uber with instructions that the Uber should wait at the hotel while we changed and take us to the Bolshoi. We made it with only a couple of minutes to spare. The ballet was the Stone Flower by Prokokiev. I’ve seen a fair amount of ballet in my day, but never anything like this. Al the movement was controlled and fluid at the same time. The male dancers did jumps that seemed higher than what I’s seen in the US. In Russia, ballet is a big deal and is considered entertainment for all, not just for the elites, so every show sells out.

Our travel problems continued after the ballet. We got into a cab that said it was using a meter and showed us a rate schedule that they probably created on their computer. For a distance that can be walked in 15 minutes, the bill came to $35. We protested, he threatened the police, we gave him 1,000 rubles ($15) what was still too much and fled. Jack has had it with Russian food, so we went for a sushi snack since we hadn’t had dinner. It was perfect and I’m going to rethink my reservations in St Petersburg to have several meals of anything but Russian.

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