Page 9 of 10
Moscow, Russia
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death
If I didn't spend enough time in Saint Petersburg (and I didn't), then I sure as hell didn't spend enough time in Moscow. Of all the many things there is to do in Moscow, there were three things I had really wanted to see most of all (Saint Basil's, Lenin and the Kremlin) and in two days I was just barely able to see all three. Things just seem to take longer in Russia then they probably should. After you come to accept losing all of those extra hours waiting on slow moving lines or waiting for your passport to get registered yet again, you come to appreciate whatever precious time may be left.
I had first safely arrived at Leningrad Station at 8AM (right on schedule) and was easily able to ride the world famous Moscow subway (including a transfer) from Komsomolskaya to Tretyakovskaya to a station just a few blocks from my severely overpriced but well located hotel. From that hotel (which suspiciously has the same view as the live shots from the BBC World Moscow correspondents), it was a quick five minute walk across the Moskva River and the Bol Moskvortesky Bridge to Red Square. This picture is (chronologically) my first real view of the square, with the Kremlin on the left, Saint Basil's front and center and the Gum Department Store filling the space between.
Another view of the Kremlin from the Bol Moskvortesky Bridge, but one that also includes something a little more special. Off on the left and in the distance in the first picture is one the Stalin Skyscrapers. There are seven of them scattered around the city, all identical, and they were on my list (quick disclaimer- I didn't write an actual physical list) of the things I had wanted to visit more but ran out of time. Of the seven I had gotten quick glimpses of three, just tempting enough to make them on the top of the list (quick disclaimer- I'll probably not write an actual physical list) for any future visits to Moscow, visits I'm sure will take place but ones I would not expect for years and years.
Also on that visit would be another activity I ran out of time for, which was a full scale Metro tour. Sure I rode the Metro, was able to buy tokens (just hand the angry looking woman some rubles and scream "ah-deen!" which means one), and certainly enjoyed the stations I had seen. They were nice (less like subway stations and more like nice government buildings), but they were not the super palatial stations that you always hear so much about. I had planned and hoped to visit those as part of a multi stop tour, another plan and hope that fell victim to a complete lack of available time.
As for the subway itself, it was super efficient, fast (I never had to wait more than three minutes), had doors which could kill you (they closed really fast) and escalators which could do the same (they were also really fast, although admittedly not as lightning fast as the ones in Saint Petersburg).
Over time I have received a partially well earned reputation as someone who moves relatively fast through things. My interests are not necessarily anyone else's, I have found myself speeding through some celebrated points of interest while stopping dead in my tracks in others. Knowing this about myself I have become fairly good at knowing how long I should spend somewhere when traveling- it almost never is enough time to see absolutely everything but almost always enough time to match my interests. In Moscow (where I wasn't spending enough time to begin with) all reasonable estimation was out the window. A good example of such folly could be found at my visit to the Kremlin.
I knew I wanted to see the Kremlin, so I did the logical thing and waited on line. After about 90 minutes I finally reached the little tiny ticket booth with only one woman in front of me. I watched in awe as she started screaming (in Russian of course) at the other woman at the ticket window as without warning she closed up shop and went home. I decided to wait it out for as long as the heat allowed but eventually gave up a half hour later, blew some rubles on a tasty ice cold drink in a nearby park and debated with myself whether or not getting back in line was worth such irrational trouble. After some quick soul searching I realized that it was true that I wanted to see the Kremlin, so I did the logical thing and waited on line again, although this time out of spite I tried the line on the other side. My luck finally started to get better and after only an hour more on line I found myself armed with a nice shiny ticket that gave me the privilege of waiting another half hour (or so) to get through security and finally walk inside those Kremlin walls, always a special moment but one made even more special after those three or four hours of slow anticipation.
A centerpiece of the churches of the Kremlin and its tallest landmark inside the walls, the Ivan the Great Bell Tower is, well, a bell tower honoring a long dead tsar named Ivan who was (apparently) regarded as "great" Which I guess makes him nothing at all like that much better known "terrible" one.
The Kremlin is more than just a collection of churches, but admittedly they're the coolest parts. Most of them are open and available to tour with your hard earned Kremlin ticket, although photography is strictly prohibited once you get inside. Each of them have their own character, nice interior spaces with intricately painted designs on every available surface, all the icons you could ever want to see and enough golden onion domes to satisfy your wildest golden onion dome related dreams.
After you clear security and breach that wall, you'll (probably) find the Kremlin to be an ordered but quite pleasant place, more than just the walls, towers, churches and gardens you came to see. Of those places, the public has access to certain areas but not all- despite all the political changes of the last decade or two, the Kremlin still remains center of the government of the Russian Federation and the place where Vladimir Putin still calls home. Stopping you from breaching the series well marked, tourist accessible paths are a series of whistle happy Russian police, constantly warning straying tourists as they walk between all those walls, towers, churches and gardens they patiently came to see.
Directly across the park from the Kremlin (the entrance is off to the right and the well guarded tomb of the unknown soldier is off to the left), the Manezh underground and capitalist friendly shopping mall is relatively new but sadly uninspiring, with the sole exception being its more-fun-than-it-should-be, under-the-fountain entrance.
This picture is all about a guy who has been dead since 1924 and I guy I really wanted to see. The man who started the Soviet Union, the world's first communist (though not Marxist) state may still be dead but he's also still a free tourist attraction, one that has outlived the state he created and one that is probably the creepiest, coolest single thing you can do in Red Square. Lenin's Mausoleum is open to the public for three short hours (10AM to 1PM) on just about every other day all year long. During that time the police close off huge sections of Red Square and force everyone who wants to see Lenin to slowly go through a metal detector- primarily to flush out all cameras, they're really serious about no pictures inside the tomb. After a quick two hour (or so) wait, I had cleared all obstacles and found myself at Lenin's front door. Inside things are as eerie as you can imagine. There is air conditioning and lots of it (I guess a good thing) and extremely well appointed, cold war era Soviet looking guards who are lit as to appear that they might be wax figures (they're not, I actually saw some move). After entering, there is a quick, extremely poorly lit staircase that leads to a lower chamber where Lenin appears to be resting comfortably (for a dead guy) in a great big glass coffin. After trying to decide whether or not he looks real (and making sure he hasn't turned into zombie Lenin yet), visitors pay their respects, ascend the stair and find themselves back in Red Square again.
Equally interesting and marginally less macabre are the monuments of great Communists at square level, where the dead bodies of former premiers, party members and cosmonauts are marked with monuments that morph into their giant heads. Seeing them makes you think that the guy who carved Stalin's head actually knew him- even in death, even abstractly in death he looks like he's just going to wake up and kill you.
In one of the great ironies of history and language, Red Square was not named for a red building (although there are certainly lots of them) or any communists (there was a bushy browed guy dressed up like Leonid Brezhnev posing for pictures)- it turns out that in Russian "red" means "beautiful." Part of the reason that the Russian language may be so frustrating, although the real, root reason is those damn Cyrillic letters. After a few days I was able to recognize a few words (other than the prerequisite exit, enter and my name as shown on my visa), but it remains a real hurdle for the rest of the non Cyrillic traveling world.
