About twelve hours ago, I returned to my apartment after a 3-day whirlwind visit in Russia's sprawling metropolis of a capital city. It was 72 hours of walking, walking, eating, more walking, and sleeping, sometimes on a train. And it was great. I'm going to split the chronicle of my Moscow adventure over several posts, because we managed to cram so much into 3 days that otherwise this will reach novel length in record time. Note: All linked photos are just pulled off of Google Images, I didn't take them.
Before I begin relating my adventures, it bears mentioning that I almost didn't go at all; I asked Brenda to print my train tickets a couple weeks ago, and then proceeded to stay home working on this term paper and not go to class at all during that timeframe. It was by sheer luck that she grabbed the tickets she printed for me when she left her homestay; she was already down on the platform when I called her, around 10:30 Thursday night, so she had to run to the entrance while I ran to the station and we met up there. Luckily I didn't need to show my tickets to the security guy at the exit to the platform, but still, better safe than detained and unable to communicate with law enforcement. Presently we boarded the train, which went mercifully smoothly.
I had never been on a train like this before. Sure, we took the commuter train in Riga to the seaside, but that's not really the same thing. We were in a 4-person cabin, and apparently this was the most deluxe train Brenda had ever been on because they provided complimentary water and apples (all of which we took when getting off the next morning in Moscow, because the two gentlemen sharing our compartment didn't seem to want them). Shortly after we left the station, we went to bed, as it was after midnight already; I got the top bunk because I'm just lucky that way I suppose. It was kind of an adventure climbing up the tiny ladder - 3 steps no more than six inches wide, the bottom step is about 14 inches above the floor. I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to clamber up there 30 pounds ago, so that was kind of a self-esteem boost, that I was able to get up there at all. The bunk itself was about 18 inches wide - not much room for someone who has a tendency to splay out in her sleep. I managed to get a little sleep, though, and somehow made it through the day.
We arrived at about 8:30, and then I got to play the "figure out where you are by the landmarks around you" game with our SRAS contact, an intern named Eugenia. She's from Singapore but she studies at a US university that I don't recall the name of at this time. She took us to the metro, which was an adventure in itself, and then to our hostel--about 30 minutes all told. After the ordeal of checking in (which I'll get to in a minute), we had to almost literally fly back to the metro and then navigate the complex interchanges to meet with Josh, the SRAS director, by ourselves. We had run into a bit of a delay and Eugenia had an exam she needed to get to, so she just told us which metro station to go to and left us to find it on our own.
The Moscow metropolitan subway system is a sight to behold. Here is a map. It looks like a mutant octopus or some other Lovecraftian horror of one kind or another. Some of the stations are pretty, particularly on the circle line, but looking at the map is kind of overwhelming, because there are something like 300 stations and counting. It's actually easier to navigate than the Petersburg metro, though, to a certain degree. See, in Petersburg, the metro platforms are coded according to the station at the end of the line. For instance, the green line that I usually take has a station at one end called Primorskaya, and the station at the other end is called Rybatskaya, so the train heading in one direction is marked with a sign that says "Primorskaya" and the other train is marked "Rybatskaya," regardless of which station you are actually at. In Moscow, each platform has a sign telling you all of the stations the train is going to from that station and in what order. It makes a lot more sense. There is also a sign on the wall opposite the platform, across the tracks, telling you the direction the train is traveling and listing the names of the stations on the other lines under the names of stations with transfers. Unfortunately, the Moscow subway operators apparently have a damn schedule to keep, because the ride is much bumpier and less forgiving than in Petersburg, so I hated having to stand. I still hate standing on the Petersburg metro, but that's less of an ordeal than the involuntary game of Falling On Strangers that standing on the Moscow metro is for those who aren't used to it.
Now, the hostel! We stayed at the A La Russe hotel and hostel, smack-dab in the middle of Moscow and just a couple blocks from the Kremlin. If this was the best hostel the SRAS has used, I shudder to think what the worse ones are like; however, Moscow also has a severe dearth of accommodation for tourists, so there's no real incentive to provide an excellent customer experience. The place wasn't terribly clean, the computer was older than I am, they only had 8 lockers available to rent near the front door (as opposed to the locking cubbies in the rooms that all of the Baltic hostels we stayed in had), and apparently they only had one key to each room. That said, they still had toilets, hot water, and provided linens, so I can't complain too much. (Who am I kidding? Yes I can.) The guy who checked us in was the surliest man Eugenia had ever seen in Moscow, and he didn't seem to understand that the woman who had made the reservation was not actually present. He did warm up to us later, though. Brenda and I also never thought to inquire about a curfew, and we realized this around 10:30 the first night. Turns out there isn't one, thankfully, but that was one of only a handful of redeeming qualities about the place.
Anyway. Friday morning, Brenda and I met Josh, the SRAS director, for a walking tour of Moscow and an informative lesson about recent Russian history and politics. We met at a McDonald's and Josh allowed us to buy some food before we started walking; I devoured my Макчикен (McChicken) in short order, and Brenda did the same with her Роял Бургер (Quarter-Pounder, apparently known as a Royale everywhere outside of America), and soon enough we were trekking all over the city. We saw the bench of reconciliation, which sits at one end of a bridge with six trees covered in locks on it. Bridges hold a special place in Russian mythology; according to custom, if you lose contact with the earth, then evil spirits can get you. Crossing a bridge, then, is a dangerous undertaking, especially when the practice coincides with the arrival of another "crossing" - crossing into a new day (i.e., at midnight), or into a new stage of life (e.g., on one's wedding day). So, by Russian tradition, among the worst possible circumstances for a young woman to be in is to be a bride, standing on a bridge, at midnight - that was basically certain doom. If the route to the chapel required crossing a bridge, it was customary for the groom to pick up and carry his bride across the bridge as quickly as possible, keeping her close to him so he could protect her from the evil spirits waiting to ravage her. Now that those beliefs have passed into the realm of fairy tales rather than governing principles for everyday life, people actively seek bridges on the path to the chapel on their wedding day, and carrying the bride across a bridge is basically analogous to the Western custom of carrying the bride over the threshold (into the honeymoon suite, into the newlyweds' home, whatever). Most young grooms opt for a short, pedestrian bridge like the one in the photo, but occasionally you'll see a man decide to carry his bride over one of the larger bridges also meant for cars, to prove to everyone how strong and manly he is.
The custom of affixing a lock to a bridge and tossing the key into the water below as an expression of eternal love has existed in one form or another probably since all of those things have existed, but the ritual exploded in popularity following the Russian publication of the novel I Want You by Federico Moccia. Now, so many couples attach a lock to one of those trees each year, that the city has to remove the branches and attach new ones every six months or so. The trees were built in the first place because the weight of the thousands of locks affixed to the bridge's railings was threatening to break the structure. Unfortunately, it seems the photo I linked is too old to show an apparently-recent addition to one of the lock trees; one couple, deciding that a chintzy heart-shaped lock just didn't symbolize the strength and endurance of their commitment to one another, opted instead to attach a massive padlock the size of a small briefcase to one of the trees. When I saw it I pointed it out and said "Tanya and Pavel must be really serious," and many laughs were had.
We also walked through a couple of parks, and one of them contained an interesting art installation by artist Mikhail Chemyakin. It was unveiled in 2001 and is called "Children are the Victims of Adult Vices." That is a link to some pictures. It depicts two children, a girl and a boy, wearing blindfolds, oblivious to the thirteen figures around them. The figures stand for the aforementioned "adult vices," implicitly vices brought on by capitalism, and they stand in a semi-circle. From left to right, the figures depict drug addiction (a man holding a needle and vial, with skulls and crossbones decorating his suit), prostitution (a frog-headed woman with hundreds of baby frogs all over her--historically, toads were a symbol of venereal disease and linked with the sex trade), greed (a man with a pig's head holding a bag of money), alcoholism (a fat bearded man sitting on a barrel and holding a flask and chalice, perhaps an image of the Roman god Bacchus), ignorance (a man with a donkey's head), irresponsible science (a figure in a robe with the hood drawn over their eyes, holding a marionette of a bizarre two-headed weasel thing in one hand and a scroll of alchemical symbols in the other, next to an archaic chemistry setup), indifference (a man standing with his back to the children, with a mask on the back of his head, his fingers in his ears, and a second pair of arms that are crossed), arms dealing (a man with a large nose and an assortment of guns), sadism (a man with a rhinoceros horn, posed to look like he might attack the children), "for those without memory" - i.e., "those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it" (a medieval stockade with snakes crawling up the sides), child labor (a man with a bird's head gesturing for the children to enter his factory, which has child-size handprints on the side that appear to be pressing outward from inside), poverty (an emaciated woman with a hand extended in begging), and war (a mechanico-skeletal figure wearing a gas mask and holding a bomb with Mickey Mouse's head on it). The artist says that the images are meant as a warning and a reminder to protect future generations from these vices.
Later, we stopped in front of the Bolshoi Theater, which was being restored and only reopened this year, I believe. It's a miracle the building didn't crack in half or burn down before the restoration - not only had the foundation basically dissolved (having been constructed of bricks - Moscow is just as swampy as Petersburg in that regard, and the bricks had deteriorated a lot in the wet soil), but all the plumbing and electrical wiring had been retrofitted over the course of the 20th century. They had to gut the inside, redo the whole thing, and then lift the building up, tear out the old foundation, pour a new concrete one and then put the building back down on top of it. It looks really nice now; I wish we could've gone inside to see that, but sadly we did not.
Our tour ended on a small avenue lined with cafes, all of which had their summer patio dining areas set up. Josh bid us adieu and Brenda and I got some lunch at this cafeteria-style stolovaya whose name roughly translated to Trough. I got some tasty vinigret, a sour pickle, and a cup of delicious chicken soup; I couldn't help but think that the same price in Petersburg would have gotten me an entree, side, and possibly a cookie, in addition to the soup and salad I got. Yeah, Moscow was [swear word] expensive. I spent over 1500 rubles on the second day alone. That's about US$50 - objectively not much, but on a student budget, it's pretty significant.
Walking is free, so Brenda and I decided to do just that after lunch. We navigated our way to the old Arbat, which was a long avenue lined with souvenir shops, people selling artwork, and cafes, not unlike the Champs-Elysees in Paris (according to Brenda, as I obviously have never been). After that we decided to go to the nearest metro station and try to find Gorky Park, a recently-refurbished Soviet-era amusement park. We were successful; there were a couple of rides in the part we saw, as well as people riding bicycles and these neat four-wheel pedal devices, including a two-seater model. Apparently they make recumbent tandem bikes. There were also at least 3 different Subway kiosks - Subway is bizarrely popular in Russia for some reason. Brenda and I observed the cyclists cavorting around the fountain over a shared stick of cotton candy, which was more like fiberglass candy. It was much denser than any cotton candy we'd ever had and it got sharper as we got closer to the stick in the center.
Later on, we had a seminar about living and working in Russia at a Georgian restaurant. We met Eugenia and a few other students at a metro station and walked for about half a mile in the wrong direction before realizing our mistake and backtracking. We eventually met up with Josh and found the restaurant; when we got there, Brenda and I felt even more out of place - we were dressed in jeans and T-shirts and in need of showers. But the seminar was good and informative, and I'm glad I went. I don't think I'd ever want to actually live in Russia full-time, but it's good to know what resources exist if I should ever decide otherwise. Plus, hey, free Georgian food. It was really good, because Georgian cuisine is actually pleasantly spicy and flavorful. Russians seem to fear spice and flavor, so it was a welcome change of pace.
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