that special something

Very aware that I am leaving Moscow next week and going back to London for most of the summer. Of course really excited to be seeing my daughter, relatives and friends, and to be spending a decent amount of time at home; but also find myself trying to pin down the things I will miss. Sometimes it feels as if Soviet times haven't really gone away, like when a tram goes by full of sleepy army recruits, or amid those stand-up picnics in the park, or walking through my 'typical' high-rise neighbourhood. Then there is the way the lifts tend to be sturdy but not smooth or quiet and all repairs haphazard rather than effective.

But there are also what seem to be truly contemporary moments; such as the glam young women in the highest heels, tightest shortest dresses, brightest colours and the most labelled accessories; or the extraordinary array of buildings under construction which cannot even be contained by the term 'eclectic' and have led me to think hard about what I mean when I say something is ugly. There is the energy of new cultural possibilities, of new things starting all the time, usually without warning, publicity or long lead-in times.

So, even though I don't want to reduce this place to simple stereotypes, I do seem to be trying to select a special something, that sums up my first (almost) year in this country and city. For which, all suggestions welcome....

more on food

Think I have finally gone native in my eating habits. Well, actually that is wrong on two counts. First, I am not sure that anyone else in Moscow is sitting down to a plate that looks anything like this for dinner. And, second, I really wanted more of a frankfurter type sausage, but have too frequently accidently purchased the ones that are basically made out of condoms and have to be boiled, rather than the ones that can be fried - and on trying to fry them, have been left only with a plastic-coated disaster.

And since I was buying the sausages at my local outdoor market (which is brilliant) I could only ask for ones that I could pronounce, because my Russian is still terrible. So in fact what I have finally gone is lazy.

boys toys

Next door to the park is some kind of military museum; through the fence is what seems to be a car park, into which is jammed an assortment of minor looking tanks, armoured vehicles, rockets and (small) fighter jets. This boy stared through the fence for a long time, then calmly got out of his car, and squeezed through (not an easy task), whilst his father watched without speaking. And then the boy stood on the other side of the fence for a long time, staring (happily).

want one

Also in the park, were these ballon floats for children to paddle around in. Aren't they great? I want one now!

handy hints for travellers 12: the little things

Found out something very useful today (which makes me realise just what a newbie I still am to Russia). I have noticed that men shake hands a lot; but when I am in a group, often as the only female, I am never included. It is those very ordinary everyday habits that confuse - I couldn't work out what the etiquette is. Do women not shake hands? When do I do the hug thing, or the cheek kissing business (if ever)? With whom is what the norm?

Well, it turns out, according to one of my older Russian colleagues, that a man will never shake hands with 'a lady', unless she puts her hand out first, in which case he will be very glad to shake it. So now I can join in with all the everyday male handshaking. But I forgot to ask him what the deal is when I meet another female stranger/acquaintance/friend. I haven't noticed women shaking hands very much.... so I need more advice here. What kind of greeting(s) should I do in this case?

Oh, and I should mention that the photograph was taken this weekend at my local park which fills up with older people on a Sunday afternoon who, I understand, then dance the tango.

Typically for me, I witnessed the beginning - which seems to involve many stand-up group picnics and some serious drinking - but, as usual, missed the main event, i.e. the dancing.

Spring snow (extra)

Very informative comments in response my last post (thanks all round), and so now I know what this fluffy stuff is. Still trying (unsuccessfully) to get a decent photograph of it in action - and to sweep it out of my 7th floor flat interior corridor.

spring snow?

The whole city is suddenly alive with pollen, white fluffy seeds like a thousand dandelions all blown about at once. It is thick enough to rest on your eyelashes, catch in your hair and get up your nose. It is everywhere - even down the metro. It was piled up in soft batches all over the floor of a building under construction I have just been visiting. I don't know what tree it comes from - can someone help here?

But even whilst it swirls like a fine soft snow, somehow it is hard to photograph. So, this is not actually meant to be a picture of a man in a funny hat on a scooter....

new fronts

There was a lot of interest at the Arch Moscow show in how to brighten up the ubiquitous high-rise housing 'types' that can be found right across the country. Whilst most of these were built during Soviet times and are in relatively poor states of repair, it seems that developers are still building the same types now as these are cheap and easy to make, so more profitable.

The picture shows some suggestions by young architects; the face is someone I work with, who enjoyed the joke of a 'non-personality cult' to remind/replace all those images of Soviet (and post-Soviet) leaders.

yawn....

Sooo tired! Did a flying trip to London - where I was told it had been cold and so took warm coat; then wonderfully warm weekend. Left coat there, flew back expecting similar/warmer warmth here, to find rainstorms and chilliness. And came back right into the middle of several events in need of attending as the city holds both Arch Moscow ( a mix between the Ideal Home exhibition and a designers show) and an Architectural Biennale. As usual, hard to find out what is going on, and then lots of clashes with famous people all turning up at once. Oh, the trials of the cultural intellectual!

celebrity

Although Moscow is clearly a world-class capital city, there is a surprising reverence towards foreigners. Whilst the trend for employing non-Russians - particularly in business and design fields - as an (expensive) status symbol is waning, being English definitely still gives one a bit of kudos. Since I have been here, I have been a judge for a design competition, been interviewed on Russia Today, been part of another TV video, had my photo in design magazines, and have now been asked to give a talk at Garage Contemporary Art Centre. I do know that this is mainly because I am not only a foreigner but also available (that is, I don't have to be flown in at great expense), but nonetheless the degree of attention feels a bit overwhelming - and just a bit flattering.

10-of-the-best 7: Gorky's House

Got taken to what is usually called the Gorky House Museum in tourist guides. And it is fab. A brilliantly gorgeous example of Russian art nouveau architecture (Russian modern) by Fyodor Shekhtel, who should be just as well known as Charles Reenie Mackintosh, Antonio Gaudi, Hector Guimard and all the rest.

The building is also known as the Ryabushinsky Mansion - the original clients - who were themselves a very interesting turn-of-the century family. Then that 'restless man' Maxim Gorky lived there from 1931 to 1936, a reward from Stalin for returning to the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile Fyodor Shekhtel fell out of favour after the Revolution - Art Nouveau was despised by Soviet critics of the period. Many of his Moscow mansions were leased to foreign embassies, so were (and are) inaccessible to visitors. But there is still a lot of Art Nouveau in Moscow, and this small house one of the most beautiful examples.

Handy hints for travellers 10: just don't!

Okay, probably a mistake but in my ongoing intention to eat new things, I bought caviar-flavoured crisps. And I wish I hadn't. You should only do this if you really really like prawn cocktail crisps and would like at least twice the intensity of taste.

photo icons

Icons 1960 - 80 is a photographic show currently running at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, a new place which opened last month at Red October, with a bookshop, a gallery, and - I think - a lecture hall, library and café, (but which weren't open when we went). These are all black and white portraits and reportage-style images of celebrities from the days of the Soviet Union. And as usual, in my experience of Moscow exhibitions, hundreds of pictures are crammed in (nobody must be left out) with no room to breathe or to separate out the really fine work from the more mediocre.

But overall, very interesting. The work suggests an awareness of the most famous western celebrity photographers such as Avedon, Snowdon and Bailey, but filtered through very different conditions. As Google Translate cutely re-writes the Lumiere Brothers Photography Centre description: “Many of the photographers not only removed the elite, but they themselves belonged to her. How, for example, Vladimir Musaelyan, Brezhnev's personal photographer for thirteen years, or Yuri Krivonosov, thanks to which viewers will see rare shot Arkady Raikin in the studio ... High-class pros, they were outstanding personality, who put their relationship with the stars.” The famous, then, tended to have their own photographers (who were also celebrities), and while there is nothing too outrageous in these photographs, they are often both intimate and lively.

But the strange thing; whilst a 20 year period is covered nothing really changes. Everything has a kind of tentative 1960s look; you keep finding yourself checking the dates on the picture captions and being surprised/confused. Russia always tends to be shorthanded through the figures of Lenin and Stalin; people from other bits of Europe tend to forget the stagnation of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years. Not only has artistic development here being thwarted by the threats 'cultural intellectuals' have faced, but also by the fact that very little 'happened' creatively in Russia across that 20 years; this whilst much of the rest of Europe and the US was being hit by flower power, feminism, anti-racism, punk, post-modernism etc., etc., etc. For me, this is what I notice most about these photographs, what gives them - as a totality - a strange, almost melancholic, feel.

I went to this show with Phil who is a photographer. See his work here.

fireworks time (at a distance)

After a sunny day - and I still can't deal with the idea that Moscow is very hot in the summer so I now have sunburn - we are in the middle of a cracking thunderstorm with black clouds and torrential rain.

But, because I wanted to share, I got a very wet arm by sticking my little camera out of the balcony window, to bring you this snap of the Victory Day fireworks. Pretty difficult to see I know, so you will just have to believe me (and imagine for yourself the splashes of reds and greens as well as whites, and the loud bangs and the drunken singing going on all around.)

veterans

What was inspiring - and also sobering - was the presence of many elderly uniformed and be-medalled veterans in the crowd. Victory Day (День Победы Den Pobedy) commemorates those who died in Great Patriotic War/WWII and celebrates survivors and veterans. People carry flowers - mainly carnations - to give to any veterans they see. Sobering both because it is a reminder that in what became the Soviet Union (USSR) an unbelievable number of people - 26.6 million - lost their lives in that war. And because here are individuals who witnessed the regimes of both Hitler and Stalin, as well as the more recent upheavals of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin. Hard to imagine what lives like these have been like.

The photographer, James Hill, has been taking portraits of veterans on Victory Day over the last 4 years. He currently has an exhibition of this work at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) until May 23 2010, as part of the current Moscow Photobiennale. For some examples click here.

crowd scenes

What I did see was lots of crowd anticipation at the beginning- and also people leaving, packing up flags and instruments and things at the end. The atmosphere was terrific, everyone relaxed in the sun and having a good time. And every type of Moscovite, from elderly gentlemen dressed up in ancient dark suits and homburg hats, through to young skateboarding dudes, women tottering along on their high heels in hot-pants with children in tow, plenty of families and - most surprising to me (which shows just how it easy it is to imagine the stereotypical russian as a shapka wearing, black coated, slightly depressive winter type of person ) - lots of people in sleeveless tees, shorts, flip-flops and even hawaiian shirts.

missed it!

Well, a beautiful sunny day today with a clear sky and a light breeze, so perfect weather for Victory Day. Embarrassed to admit to it, but I missed the parade itself. First there were control checkpoints for getting close all along the Tverskaya route; and then having blagged my way into Red Square I managed somehow to find myself beyond the cordon again (due to a being distracted by nipping into Zara in GUM probably!) And then, by the time I made my way back to Pushkin Square, everything had already gone by.

So I have to watch the Russia Today video on YouTube like you ( whilst taking note of an - accurate - comment posted beneath that "RT really did a horrible job on this one. Instead of a bunch of un-informed amateur commentators they should have just TRANSLATED what was said in the loud speakers for everyone to hear at the parade".)

smoking (extra)

You see, a city of smokers, but kind of neat and tidy with it, in an ad-hoc make-do-and-mend kind of way......

smoking

Smoking is still pretty common here; and cheap - 20 cigarettes are about 35 - 40 roubles (under £1) even for imported brands. But although it is still allowed in public places people tend to smoke outside, or at least (as in our building) by an open window in the stairwell. So, while there may be a bit of a fug in a restaurant or bar, its nothing compared to what it used to be like everywhere.

In fact I have just been watching the classic Cracker British TV series on DVD - written mainly by Jimmy McGovern and made in the early 90s - with the magnificent big-in-every-way Robbie Coltrane as the hard drinking, chain-smoking criminal psychologist. And you can hardly see the actors for the smoke. This, of course, in a gritty Manchester sort of way, not your Mad Men ironic, post-modern kind of smoking action. Made me quite nostalgic.

on new architecture

Contemporary Moscow has taken both post-modernist architecture and what has been called capitalist realism to its ample, chaotic, sometimes ugly, and often corrupt, bosom. I have been resisting showing examples of this work, which takes its references from surface style rather than substance, and is as happy to plastic coat re-versioned Stalinist skyscrapers and giant baroque Faberge eggs as it is to stick a new Tatlin's tower atop a roofline or throw extra classical columns at any large piece of glass facade.

However, my collection of architectural photographs seems to keep expanding, so I have decided it is time to start sharing.

(I note that capitalism realism is also the title of a new book by Mark Fisher, who uses it to describe contemporary Britain. On the day the UK elections produced a hung parliament, it seems an appropriate read.)

wishing I could hear more everyday stories

Today we went to visit the flat next to my old flat, which I have watched builders going in and out of for several months. So, on the off-chance and as I was leaving, I enquired as to whether it might be for rent.

Well, we met the owner, an elderly engineer. The one-roomed flat, which had been his mother's, still has Soviet period fixtures and fittings. Visiting it was like being in a time-warp compared to the IKEA corporate flat I have just left (or the shiny 'capitalist realist' style interior I now occupy). I loved it of course - it would make a great 'matching set' with my 50s modernist flat in London - but there was a complicated story about how he and his wife would like to rent it to me, so I could help the grandchildren with their English (and because they have had good times in London on a cultural exchange), but that his daughter was keen to use it as extra space for these children and their artistic activities, so no decision could yet be made. Photographs of his grandchildren and my daughter were duly studied and cooed over, and other stories were swopped particularly about a shared interest in architecture - of which more below.

This led , after we had left, to talk about both the housing market in Moscow and the stories it offers about people's lives here. In many ways Moscow is like London; housing is now very expensive, such that those who 'came into' property before the boom have the potential to live off the additional income from renting it, whilst those who missed out can no longer 'get in' and must pay around 50% of their income for somewhere to live.

Only in Moscow what people now own - mainly following the privatisation of the 90s - depends on how their parents were employed during the Soviet period. So, if your dad or grandfather was in the KGB or some other high-ranking official, then you may now well have the keys to a huge flat in a Stalinist skyscraper. I don't know about the engineer's family, but his wife is the daughter of Vladimir Shukhov, who designed some of the earliest hyperboloid structures, including the famous Tower named after him (just this fact alone is very exciting to me, for which I apologise), so they have another, inherited flat.

And then this led on to stories about other people I work with, including one whose father was Stalin's helicopter pilot. Because, in Soviet times, you only got permission to move to Moscow legally if you were a key worker or part of the power structure. Which means, I guess, that there is a greater 'density' of such personal histories here.

tales of the unexpected 3

I know. An elephant and a teddy bear with poles up their bottoms. What is that for exactly?

more food preferences

One of the things I love about Russia is how seriously they take their mushrooms. You can buy many varieties fresh, dried, in glass jars and frozen. There is also a pretty good 'standard' mushroom and potato salad. But now I have discovered a great ready-made chips-and-mushrooms mix which may not look that exciting but smells and tastes gorgeous. Recommended.

wearing the ribbon

Tried to take a surreptitious photograph of these young women on the metro - obviously unsuccessfully - because I wanted to show the black and yellow ribbon tied around the handbag of the girl in the middle. This is a georgievskaya lenta, or St George's Ribbon, worn - like the poppy in England - to commemorate bravery during the War, and a lot of people are wearing it, usually in a single, crossed loop.

preparations

Victory Day, next Sunday 9th May, is a big and important affair, especially with this being the 65th anniversary of the capitulation of the Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union in the Second World War (known here as the Great Patriotic War).

The preparations are serious too. Moscow News has a story about the replica of Red Square which has been built in the village of Alabino, south-west of Moscow, for training soldiers over the last two months. And Ria Novosti, the state owned news agency, has a must-see video (if only for the glories of the voice-over) entitled Repainting military equipment for Victory Day parade.