Moscow's a Building Site, Art in the Garage, Famous Stiffs

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The mosquitoes were out in force by carriage No. 1 at 21.00 on platform 2, Novgorod Station. Each coach had a hostess in uniform, arms and legs exposed to the giant sized, voracious vampire insects ........ ours checked the passports and assigned cabin No 1 to us..... I'd like to think this was because we looked very important but in reality it'd be because we were the first to book our tickets to Moscow way back in April, on the Internet........

The cabin had a shower/toilet, upper bunk and lower, wider bed, table laden with food and drinks, 2 x comfort packs with slippers and toilet bag, TV, & towels ...... Hoorah! As we made the booking way back then we debated whether we should spend a bit more for a two berth cabin on the overnight train, not normally our style. But we added up the cost, subtracted the cost of a hotel room (which we saved by travelling at night) and ended up with a travelling cost of £20 each.... much less than we would pay in UK for a 550 km journey.

After a hot dish, all inclusive, we settled to bed, not expecting to sleep much, and knowing we'd be woken at 4.45am ready for the 5.15am disembarkation.

The wheels on the track were pretty noisy for the first hour, but things seemed to improve and in the morning, with the knock on the door, I reckon I must have had four or five hours sleep.

The Leningrad Station in Moscow was full of travellers and we had to wait a minute or two until the metro station opened at 5.30 am. Armed with two metro cards bought from a smiling ticket lady we descended to line 5, the circular, then to Park Kultury and our Hotel Kebur Palace a few blocks up the road.

We had breakfast at 7am in the dining room, leaving our luggage at reception, and were instructed to come back for mid day to book in, when the room would be ready.



So off we went on foot past the Art Nouveau Syrian Embassy that is our hotel's next door neighbour, up Ulitsa Ostozhenka, with many more Art Nouveau buildings, to the Cathedral of Christ our Saviour. We turned right and headed down to the Moskva River (past an Arts and Crafts inspired red brick building ) then followed the water north until we were directly beneath the Kremlin walls. All the time there was the need to circumnavigate building sites, re-paving, drainage work.... it reminded me of when we visited East Berlin in the early nineties, construction sites every damn place.

We headed back up hill to the quiet of the Kremlin Gardens to the west of the Kremlin walls and sauntered past dozens of gardeners at work ....... What a contrast to Newcastle's parks where it is volunteers who do all the graft.

It's a beautiful spot.... not what I expected of Moscow at all...... marble banisters frame fountain ponds and sculptures all in the lee of high brick Kremlin walls...... like in Tallin and in Novgorod, that we've just seen.

Past the Spasskaya Tower and into Red Square. It was full of marquees and temporary seating for the military tattoo which starts on the 27th August. We caught sight of horse men practising their moves and heard lots of P.A. tests all leading up to ceremony to come. As it was getting near to 10am, the opening time of St Basil's Cathedral, we chilled out in the sunshine overlooking the river.

At ten we got inside the Cathedral which is, in fact, a number of small chapels rehousing iconostases from many other churches. What an optical illusion, outside it looks bigger than St Petersburg's multi-towered Cathedral on the Spilt Blood, but inside it's only wee....... tiny compared with its St P twin.

We moseyed through Gum, Moscow's posh arcade past parfumeries and gelaterias to the Biblioteka Metro station. Back again and booked in at 12.30, to shower and snooze the afternoon away.

We tackled the Pushkin 19C -20C European Art Gallery at around 6pm ..... a further fine dose of Impressionists, Post Impressionists and Expressionists in beautiful surroundings. Our plan to eat in a recommended restaurant near by failed to muster... we couldn't find the bugger... so settled on a shiny bright café restaurant opposite our Kebur Palace Hotel.



I felt that the scale of St Petersburg waterfront palaces and streets were overwhelming, but Moscow is so much bigger ......... and the whole place is being renovated. The silhouette of cranes litter the skyline and numerous buildings are shrouded in scaffolding and canvas coverings....

When we were in Delhi the Commonwealth Games were just coming up and it was the same there, in Beijing the Olympics had just been and the place was pristine...... so I guess this is all work focused upon the World Cup 2018...... a programme of investment that hopefully makes the lives of the locals better?



Day 2 in Moscow followed a blissful sleep ..... only woke up once all night long.

I haven't had olives for breakfast often in my life, but did today..... however, it was too much to tackle a creamy chicken carbonara with spaghetti that was also on offer.

Directly perpendicular to the KP hotel is a road to the river, downhill all the way. Thence we headed and then south and over the Krymskiy Bridge to Gorky Park to John Cobb's recommendation: the State Tretyakov Museum of Modern Art new wing ...... On arrival the queue was past the two hour wait marker and we hadn't pre-bought tickets, so we sloped off south to the main Gorky Park arch, built in 1955, my birth year! The fountains were part way into their half hour programme with 'The Skater's Waltz' accompanying their watery dance. Young women on skate boards were in the majority over men here in the park, Rosa Stourrac, also roller skating and one guy on land skis.

The Garage is a contemporary art venue recently re-sited in Gorky Park, originally started by a group of art radicals in a bus garage in Moscow. After a site specific exhibition in the park the chance of the current building and its renovation became possible in 2015.

It has a generous, warm feel, but is grand in scale. The group has managed to make its own history central to its exhibits: a time line of milestones lead you through their story. The latest exhibition is all about accessibility ..... it's called 'Co Thinkers' .... I.e. accessibility to a variety of world famous contemporary artists and their work. Each exhibit is in its original form but supported with a signed and auditory commentary, a translation into English, and a 3D relief of visual work to be felt.

My favourites were Turrell's LED lit rectangle of light that appears to be a screen on the wall but is in fact a rectangular hole 25cms in front of a back lit screen. The effect is of an infinity focused plane that has its own autonomy ....... It changes very slowly, just as a sunrise or an organic change in nature.

Also I recognised some Cindy Sherman photos of her in different roles, an Anthony Gormley.... predictably a cast of himself hanging at an angle from the wall, and loads of other artists: Cecily Brown, Maurizio Cattelan, Antony Barbara Kruger, John Miller, Melvin Moti, Rob Pruitt, Neo Rauch, Robert Rauschenberg, Jason Rhoades, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Saville, Elaine Sturtevant and Rosemarie Trockel.

We had a coffee in a retro dining area (always unsettling to those who remember the furniture in their own modest childhood houses)..... the coffee was excellent, the complimentary biscuit and chocolate quill superb!

Onward and downward (if south is down) through the park, past pedalos, wedding photographers, and a red squirrel......... to the Andreyevsky bridge. This is an enclosed hot house in the summer, but must be great crossing, on foot, inside its slabs of glass in the midst of winter.

On the other side we made for the Novodevichy Cemetery, home to many famous Russian stiffs. Passing through a farmers market, a dog and pony exercise park, and over many, menacing, major boulevards we took time out in Bar Luch. The four course lunch menu salad, soup, main, bread and pud was 360 rubles... About £4. I had an American craft beer as well, and they even sell Pineau des Charentes! Classy joint with a tent out back full of sofas and TV screens. I normally hate finding myself drawn to screens with mTV videos which are different to the audio that's being jacked through Bose speakers at volume...... but today became involved in the film being shown.

Kin-dza-dza! is a 1986 Soviet dystopian black comedy cult film released by the Mosfilm studio and directed by Georgiy Daneliya, with a story by Georgiy Daneliya and Revaz Gabriadaze. It depicts a dog eat dog existence on a desert - based planet where characters with their own bizarre set of mores try and stop the displaced heroes from getting home. The dangerous ones are the Ecilop men, who have lethal weapons (police spelt backwards like Trebor mints were made by Robert, and Elddis caravans by Siddle a Durham Lordy firm). I've checked that it's available and will buy it for a full airing when I get home ...... It seemed like 'Black Cat White Cat meets Star Wars.......

When we got there the cemetery was a hoot, 'cos although there was a list of dead celebs displayed with a specific number and quadrant to search in, the graves themselves weren't numbered and so the whole search could only be instinctive, with little system. The Cyrilic type didn't help, but Marion's a whiz at that and kept me right. We found Prokofiev, whose grave was shiny black and stylishly plain, Yeltsin's which was like a huge granite wavy bed in three colours..... perceivable as a Russian flag if you squinted. Chekov took a lot of finding but it was worth the effort 'cos he had a delicious Arts and Crafts gravestone with a Renee Mac style copper canopy to keep the snow off. We stumbled upon top Russian 'cellist Mstislav Leopoldovich "Slava" Rostropovich, who Marion had seen alive and bowing in the Edinburgh Festival when she was a girl. And beyond that is our boast of a hundred or more interactions with gravestone whose owners we didn't recognise.

We succeeded in finding Sportiva Metro station amidst loads of repaving and construction work and were whisked homeward to our cosy room

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