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Published: September 16th 2016
Try getting that song out of your head...
Ok so you haven't heard from us for a while. Germany and Austria kept us busy but we are trying to catch up.
This will be interesting in internet starved Cuba... Stay tuned.
After a long wait the Moscow blog is yours to enjoy.
Moscow greeted us with a massive rainfall which literally flooded the streets. At one stage we were concerned that our taxi would get stuck in the floods. The unfortunate side effect of this was that the toilet in our hotel overflowed. Nice welcome Moscow!
Moscow made up for it though. What a city!
We spent most of our time in Moscow on foot exploring the city. According to my phone we did 14 km on the first day and we have come close to a marathon during our 4 day stay. Lucky for Dillon (and us) we have a stroller for him so the "I'm tired calls" were mostly avoided.
We started the first day with a 2 1/2 hour walking tour which gave us a good intro into the history of the city. And do they have history. Starting with the dudes who make
it hard to read anything. Yes Saints Cyril and Methodius who came to Russia to bring Christianity. They were successful (to say the least) and to help spread it also created the Cyrillic alphabet. It somewhat looks like ours but it also has a lot of funky letters. Finding anything is mostly done by pattern matching and guessing as most of the street and metro signs are not translated.
Modern technology came to the rescue, in the second mobile app tip for travellers. 'Maps.Me' is an app which allows you to download maps of cities of whole countries. These can be used without internet connection. The maps are very detailed and have many of the tourist spots, hotels and helps to navigate around cities. Highly recommended.
The tour continued with a walk around the inner city of Moscow. The obvious highlight being the red square with Saint Basils cathedral, the wall and the GUM department store. As a child of the 70s growing up in Germany I remember these sights well. Back then they were usually shown when the Soviets has a parade at red square showing of the latest in military hardware and rockets that were meant for Germany. Lucky these days are over.
The square certainly lives up to it reputation as it is visually stunning with a couple of hundred years of Russian history in one place. Saint Basil's cathedral is a standout with its many onion domes and great colours. The Tsar who ordered the creation promised to build a church for
GUM department store at red square
Was to be demolished to make space for some ministry. The wifes of the goverment officials intervened.... and won so it stayed as department storeeach victory he would win during one of his wars. He had 7 so technically 7 churches were needed to be build. Well they created Saint Basil's which consist of 7 connected but different small churches. Personally i think they were cheating.
The next day we did another walking tour (second of five) exploring the Kremlin which is not only the seat of government (kind of at least) but also the old fortress around which Moscow grew. The government buildings are (for obvious reasons) closed to the public but there is a seemingly endless amount of churches to be seen. Unfortunately by that stage we had reached church overload so I can't really tell you much about them. More impressive are the Tsar cannon which is so large that it basically cannot be fired and the Tsar bell which is large .... and broken. The "small" piece that broke off weights 11 tons...
We had a look at the wealth the Tsars amassed in the Armoury which is also within the Kremlin walls. It hosts some of the possessions of the various Russian Tsars. Always nice to see what you can buy when you are the absolute ruler and
Stalin was given two suggestions for the facade...
He chose both (by mistake one assumes). No one wanted to point out the error so they build both. Notice the difference in the left and right facade can extract money at will. They needed quite a bit to purchase all the gold, silver and precious stones that were used to create everything from dinner ware, religious stuff to art. Especially impressive were the Faberge eggs, the rich man's kinder surprise eggs. They were stunning from the outside but what is inside is amazing. Anything from a model train to a music box and were made to an astonishing standard and detail in minutia. Also impressive were the display of royal carriages which were made from ornately carved timber, covered in gold, ruby and other precious stones. The collection included a child's carriage used for kids birthday parties. It was pulled by Shetland ponies and driven by dwarfs so that the little prince or princess looked bigger. Clearly way too much money.
We were lucky to be in Moscow during the annual Jam festival (yes this is not one of my many spelling mistakes there really is a Jam festival!). The festival celebrates anything to do with Jam and Honey and is spread (get it?) all over the city. Nearly all of the many pedestrian malls were decorated with bunting, lanterns, huge floral garlands, filled with pastel coloured
stalls selling Jam, Honey and food. There were also a lot of stages on which a never ending stream of musicians played. This created a vibrant summer city atmosphere which i haven't found in any other city. The other days were spend doing yet more walking tours.
One of the things I wanted and did see was the Moscow metro. Some of the stations are ornate to a fault. They look more like cathedrals than your average concrete clad metro stations we have at home. Each station is different and they have anything from statues of Soviet people, murals and beautiful mosaics. In many of them the places can be seen where Stalin statues or pictures were. He was removed later as he wasn't that popular anymore given that he killed millions of his own people during the purges.
Another former leader is still there and given that he is nearly 100 years dead he looks pretty good. I visited Mr Lenin in his mausoleum. With his trademark beard he looks exactly like you know him from the pictures. If you haven't been to a mausoleum then don't change it. You walk in a dark cold room past a
corpse, which by now is more wax and chemicals than human. In the end it was over in a minute but hey I saw Lenin and that was worth it. His buddy Stalin initially rested next to him but was then relegated to a small grave outside amongst other Soviet 'greats'.
Communist Russia is architecture heaven in certain places. There are Stalin's 7 towers which are huge skyscrapers used as hotels, living quarters for the important and government offices. They are all done in the Soviet style which I find quite pretty to be honest. Initially there were supposed to be more but somehow they decided not to build the one with the 100m Lenin statue on top. Quite a shame actually. Another great example of Soviet architecture is VDNKh which was/is a permanent exhibition of the various states in the Soviet empire. It was supposed to rival the world exhibition the western world had. I needed to see it and wasn't disappointed (I had two rather less impressed co-travellers...). The Soviets knew how to do monumental and over the top decorated monuments. The park is huge and even has a life size space rocket in it. All the
If thy make a statue they make it big
We never foudn out what it was for... but it was huge former Soviet states had a sizable building which was used to show the traditions, culture and produce. As usual in Russia no park would be complete without an amusement park as well. This time to Dillons excitement complete with an area where he could drive a mini fire quad bike and extinguish a fire with a mini fire hose.
On top of all this Moscow had many more great buildings, lively outdoor dining and drinking scene plus shopping till you drop. The amount of shops would make any shopaholic happy. There is a 6 storey shopping complex only for kids stuff and a never ending string of luxury stores with every single high end brand that is known to mankind. Communism is certainly dead and capitalism has arrived with a vengeance. There are more Mercs than you can count and pretty people anywhere dressed in the latest Gucci and Prada.
Ok that's it from Moscow. Let's see when we get Saint Petersburg to you....
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