Moscow - day 2

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You can know a man from his blog, and if you like a man's blog before you know anything of him, you may confidently say he is a good man.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky –

This may be a misquote (Ed.)

Now I know why it doesn't get dark until after 6pm despite being in the middle of winter. At 9 o'clock in the morning the sun was only starting to peep over the horizon.

We had booked a walking tour this morning. These are normally good value for money…as they are usually free and you can't get better value for money than that!! The guides live off the tips that people give them. They make this very clear at the beginning of the tour.

We left the hotel at 9:30 and in 10 minutes we were entering Paveletskaya metro station. This is our first encounter with the Moscow Metro so our first challenge was to buy a block of 20 tickets. This cost 500 roubles (£10). So at 50p per journey, metro travel was the way to go. We needed to head for a station called Kitay Gorod. This involved changing lines. All directions are in the Cyrillic font but as Roisin is quickly learning the pronunciation, my job is easy. I just followed her!!

Kitay Gorod means China Town. However, there are no Chinese restaurants within miles of this neighbourhood. There are 2 schools of thought as to how the area got its name. Firstly in the 16^th century, the outer fortress ran through this part of the city and the walls of this section were made of wood. The Old Russian name for wood happens to be Kitay, the same word for China!! The second theory is that the walls of the outer city were built by Italian engineers. The Italian name for city is Citta. This was then 'shoe-horned in to the Russian language and from this, morphed in to the word ‘Kitay'!!

After an expensive breakfast in a rather innocuous looking café, we met up with our guide, Elena at 10:45. We were joined on the tour by a couple from Venezuela, a Slovenian, in Moscow on business and his American girl friend and a Canadian. We were later joined by 2 girls from Sydney, Australia both here on a 3-day working visit.

The tour started under the statue of Cyril and Methodius, 2 Greek brothers who brought education to Russia in the 9^th century. The Russian alphabet, Cyrillic, was in fact named after Cyril who was its original creator. Nice one!!!

The tour lasted almost 3 hours. We have never been so happy to visit so many of Moscow's 600 churches. The outside temperature was pushing –18 degrees C so any respite, no matter how brief was always going to be welcome. Russia was atheist up until the death of its most notorious dictator, Josef Stalin who died in 1953. Elena's related to us that her parents have been raised as atheists. It has only been in the past 20 years that religion has seen a huge revival. Churches have always been around since the Middle Ages but they were used for something else. The first church we visited, The Church in the Trinity in Nikniki used to be where the KGB played ‘beat ‘em ups'. And I don't mean on their Nintendo or X-box. They saw themselves more as a ‘blue print' for such computer games!!

The walk took us past the Old English Court that used to be home to the first British Embassy. Following under an underpass, we found ourselves on the East perimeter of one of the most famous Squares in the World, Red Square. This was named neither because of the bloodshed that has occurred in these parts over the years nor because of the redbrick Kremlin wall that imposingly shadows the Square. It certainly has no ties or links with Communism. This square was named when Communism was just another difficult word to spell in Russian!! The Word Red (Russian: Krasnaya) also means pretty or beautiful.

At one end of Red Square lies St. Basil's Cathedral. This is another iconic building that would be recognised in any classroom in any part of the world. (with the possible exception of Burkino Faso!!)

St Basil's Cathedral, or to give it its less anglicised name, ‘the Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat' was build in the 16^th century by Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the fall and capture of Kazan. I understand that Ivan the Terrible wasn't a very nice man but to be fair, 3 Russian monarch's that spring to mind are Catharine the Great, Peter the Great. There was even an Ivan the Great yet they name this guy Ivan the Terrible. Perhaps he got this nickname due to the terrible taste he had in design!! Take St. Basil's cathedral for example, it doesn't exactly blend in with the rest of the décor! It doesn't even blend in with itself!! Since when did the a green and red chequered onion dome match a blue and white striped onion dome? Since Ivan the Terrible decreed it, that's when!!! OK perhaps his nickname had something to do with the millions he had executed during his reign, not that I'm condoning what he did but they probably would have died of the plague anyway!!

After another pit stop in GUM, Moscow's premier Department store (still standing after all those years, eh Dave!), we headed around the side of the Kremlin to watch the changing of the guard at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This event occurs every hour and the guards have to remain perfectly still during their hour on duty. I heard that these soldiers goosestep to and from their post. This is an understatement. For one brief moment I thought that I was witnessing the Kremlin Guard's Monty Python Appreciation Society giving their rendition of the Ministry of Silly Walks (see photo. The camera never lies!)

From the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier can be seen overlooking the Kremlin walls, the Four Seasons hotel. The striking nuance about this hotel is that it is not a symmetrical building. The East Wing in completely different from the West wing. The story goes that the architects provided Joe Stalin 2 designs to choose from and from this, 1 required approval. As both designs were part of the same document, Stalin signed in the middle of the page, thus making it very difficult to decipher which set of plans he had sanctioned. Not to incur his wrath, the builders set to work in constructing a hybrid building made up from both designs!! No one knows what happened to the original designers; suffice to say there are no records of them having designed any building AFTER this date!

Our final stop on this tour was a monument build in Alexander gardens beneath the wall of the Kremlin a grotto designed to commemorate the Russian victories over Napoleon. Its rocks are rubble was taken from buildings destroyed during the French occupation of Moscow. It is said that if you manage to throw a coin on to the ledge of the grotto and it stays there, you will return. Roisin tried and succeeded. As it was a coin from my pocket does that mean I get a free pass and will return by default??!

With our tour over it was time to grab a quick bite to eat before our next appointment; A rendition of the Nutcracker at the State Kremlin Palace. It started at 14:30. The time was 13:00 so we had plenty of time. Wrong! I happened to check the tickets during our lunch and noticed the start of the performance was stated as 14:00. The time was 13:50!! We rushed to the entrance to the Kremlin only to be greeted by a queue consisting of at least 500 other people. We couldn't get an answer as to if this was just the queue for the Kremlin or also for the theatre. I noticed that some others had theatre tickets in their hands so we just kept an eye on them and followed their lead. It turns out everyone had tickets and the queue was just to pass through security. We arrived at our seats at 14:20 but the curtain had not risen yet as there were still people coming in behind us.

The Kremlin State Palace is not so much a Palace but more of a concrete and glass box. It was built in 1961 commissioned by the then Soviet Premier Khrushchev as a congress hall for Party Conferences. As there was only 1 political party in the Soviet Union at the time, there was no problem with booking the palace in advance. Since the dissolution of Communism, the Palace now enjoys theatre performances of classical music, opera and what we witnessed today ballet. The interval was a bit bizarre. Where, during an interval in the UK, you go and get a drink or an ice cream, the concourse in the State Kremlin Palace is wide and laden with stalls selling everything from clothes to jewellery. So basically the itinerary was: Act 1 – Go shopping – Act 2!!! The performance of the dancers and the orchestra lived up to expectations and although this wasn't the Bolshoi experience, Roisin and I both enjoyed our afternoon where we could sit down in the warm and be entertained for £8 each.

To enter the Kremlin a fee is attached. As we had Theatre tickets, we were admitted free of charge. As we left the Theatre, the Palace, whatever you want to call it, it would be a shame not to have a wander around the Kremlin Grounds.

The current president, Mr Putin has apartments and offices inside the Kremlin but unlike the British Royal family, the Russian Standard flies 24/7 whether the President is in residence or not. This is not, however, the official residence of the President. As Elena, our tour guide explained earlier, the official residence of the President is a secret!! No one knows where he lives. I find that hard to believe. His neighbours must have a sneaking suspicion or when the president leaves for work each morning, perhaps he dons one of those Groucho Marx glasses, fake nose and moustache, gets on a push bike and cycles around the corner where he then changes vehicle to a Chinook helicopter or something similar!!! Being Russia it maybe less Groucho Marx and more Karl Marx!!!

Around the corner from the State Kremlin Palace is the Tsar Canon. This was forged and cast in the 16^th century and although hasn't been used in warfare, there is evidence that it has been fired once. The canon weighs almost 40 tons and has a length of 17.5 feet. The canon balls weigh a ton each although these were produced in the 19^th century as decoration. The original cannonballs would have weighed approximately 800kg and been a mass of small metal balls or slugs packed tightly into a canvas bag known as grapeshot.

A few yards away from the Tsar cannon is the Tsar Bell. This is another super sized piece of casting. I feel like I have walked in to the Land of the Giants!! The bell is 20 feet tall with a 22 feet diameter. I first saw this bell in 1985 and I could have sworn this bell had a crack down one side. It looks as if the crack got worse as there now stands a ruddy big hole with a piece missing. The missing piece of bell is propped up against the side; well, as much as a 12-ton piece of iron can be ‘propped' up. Similar to the Tsar cannon, the bell was also forged in the 16^th century and I also understand that the bell broke shortly after casting was completed. Not knowing what to do with a ding that doesn't dong, the bell became a temporary chapel in the 18^th century with the hole serving as a door.

Heading out of the Kremlin we crossed Red Square in to the relative warmth of GUM. We were recommended to eat at Canteen 57, an eatery that serves food and drink at very reasonably prices. We headed toward the ‘Fountain', a popular meeting point and well known to locals as well as being documented in most good guidebooks. We witnessed not our first wedding of the day. When I say witnessed, I don't mean literally as signing the register. The earlier wedding we saw included the bride, in here traditional white bridal outfit and 6 inch heels being helped over the cobbles of Red Square in sub zero temperature. Not what you want to see on your wedding photos!!

The winter Olympics this year are in Sochi, a city in the South of Russia. To commemorate this, there are lots of souvenir shops selling the usual array of souvenirs but at £10 for a fridge magnet and £22 for a bobble hat, I won't be contributing to the funding of these games!!

As we left GUM, it was now fully dark. This gave a completely different perspective of Red Square. GUM was illuminated by thousands of small lights; St Basil's cathedral was lit up by numerous arc lamps facing the building, tilted at strategic positions for maximum impact. The Russian Standard atop of the Senetskaya tower was flapping in the wind despite it being a calm evening. Spooky!!

We headed back South over the Moscow River where after a short 15-minute walk entered the Tretyakovskaya metro station. We identified which direction we need to head then passed the barrier. On approaching the top of the escalator down, Roisin stopped. Her face had turned ashen. The Moscow Metro is home to the world's longest escalator, over 740 steps in Park Pobedy. This is also the deepest metro station at 84 metres underground. We had not encountered the longest escalator but it must run a close second. It was so long, it was difficult to see the bottom. Having no option, Roisin reluctantly followed me on to the moving stairs. From this time on, she vowed never again! Never say never!!!

On entering our hotel room, we were greeted by a gift and a note wishing Roisin a happy birthday and to accept a Russian bottle of Champagne with the Hotel's compliments. I don't want to sound sceptical but I will be checking our bill on ‘checking out!! For now this was a perfect end to a perfect, if not long and cold day. Today has been around the minus 20 mark. As the average deep freeze is only set to minus 15, this gives an idea as to how cold it has been. . I hear from now on, the weather is going to get warmer. Tomorrow is only scheduled to be minus 18 degrees C!!! Practically tropical…by Russian standards!!!

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Comments

[Jane Hume Poyner]

Blimey, that temperature has put roses in your cheeks! Fab write-up Chris, really enjoying this tour round Moscow with you both :) J xxx

[Dave]

Do Russians still play Street Chess, drink Vodka all day and eat loads of potatoes?

[Ragnhild]

Happy birthday Roisin!!