10-of-the-best 6: boat trip

Also got taken on my first summer boat trip - absolutely loved the winter icebreaker boat version - which must be one of the best ways to see any city. There are various cruises, but we went on the shuttle boat (with several stops) from Novospasskiy bridge to Kievskiy Vokzal (Kievskaya station). 

at the pub

Rounded off that evening in a slightly surreal way by going to watch the European Cup final (Spain 4 Italy 0) in what turned out to be an absolutely authentic English pub, run by a friend of mine and her husband, just near Red Square.  Watched football and drunk English beer. Lovely.

sunday walking

Finally did the walk along the Moskva River embankment, something I have wanted to do all my time in Moscow. Started from the Kotelnicheska Embankment building - one of Stalins 'seven sisters' skyscraper buildings (thanks to staying there with the endlessly generous N + I) - on a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon. Then strolled past the Kremlin to Ostozhenka ( a district nicknamed the Golden Mile and home to both wealthy mansions and some good contemporary architecture).

The only problem, besides the incessant drone of traffic, is actually finding a way to get onto the riverside path itself. There seems to be only one underpass on the whole stretch. And the only alternative is a weird zebra crossing arrangement where you go half-way across one crossing, and then have to wait in the middle, in order to go via another crossing set at right angles to this one, whilst the cars zoom past curving either to your left or your right. Me and a young Russian guy both hovered at this mid-way point, unsure whether we wanted to risk our lives. And - as at other times when I have tried to cross a Moscow road - he followed the safety-in-numbers attitude, by grabbing my arm and hauling me out into the traffic...before the lights had changed. I tried to hang back, gesticulating wildly at the lights, but he took an even firmer grip, yelling 'Together, or I will die', and across we went with cars careering around us and hooting madly. 

And then, when we got to the river itself, he wanted, of course, to walk with me and practice his english.

'High-Quality standarts'

The Izmailovo hotel is a massive, ugly, high-rise, Soviet-style complex with its own internal shops and restaurants; divided into 4 blocks (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta of course) each with some version of a  large atrium/fountain/dramatic sculpture/grand staircase, all covered in thin, shiny glass, marble, metallic surfaces and patterns; so a place which I readily recommend if you like that kind of thing. And their website is also a joy. 

'at least one surreal thing a day..'

Made it back to Moscow at last, for a week. Still so much in love with this place. If anything, even better going back as a tourist - knowing where I am but not being exhausted by the normal difficulties, just enjoying the many weirdnesses relative to bland old London. Which included a 4 hour traffic jam from the airport to the hotel, thus arriving at midnight, only to then remember that the hotel named on the visa voucher was just there to make it easy to get a tourist visa*, not because I was ever intended to stay. So no booking. Had to borrow the cash off of V to get a room for the night (no credit cards taken).

But good room, and inexpensive for Moscow. Plus, right next to Izmailovo Park, which I never got to before, partly out of a lack of enthusiasm for its over-hyped and (mainly) tacky souvenir market. So never quite sussed that it is a small-scale Russian-style over-the-top Disney-World. Ridculous and brilliant.**


* For those not in the know, if you travel to Moscow planning to stay at a friend's place, then you have to go through a nightmare arrangement involving personal invitations and separate registration processes. So, instead, everyone uses travel agents that just randomly name a hotel, just for the paperwork.
** Go here to see (slightly dated but nice) photographs of the Izmailovo market stalls. 

ballet again

Y very sweetly took me to the ballet the night before last. Swan Lake at the Stanislavsky theatre. Fab - pretty camp, with glorious over-blown sets and some real pantomime moments (especially, as it should be, the evil sorcerer).  

10-of-the-best: no.4 Gorky Park

Gorky Park is in a constant process of re-invention right now, which is partly about an (almost first) attempt to make Moscow a more liveable city and partly about some weird deals between the Kremlin, the mayor and an oligarch or two (so what is new?)

The initial stage, commissioned through the Strelka Institute (set up by oligarch Alexander Mamut), was to add in some new urban designish elements - benches, more up-market cafes, an outdoor cinema and a summer 'beach', whilst clearing the last of the mini Coney Island type fairground rides from the river frontage. Then this next stage, which is AMAZING! There is now the biggest and best skating area I have ever seen, a mixture of different rinks linked by ice ways, all framed by some quite neat wooden and colourful pavilions and bridges.*  I note that their website has a fab, that is to say quite hammy, animated CAD walkthrough (skatethrough?) crooned over by Louis Armstrong.

The stage to follow in the Spring is the shift of Garage from, well the garage (Melnikov-designed constructivist) it was in, to here. This is publicised as beginning with a pavilion by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, then a  temporary home designed by Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) together with Olga Trevias/Form Bureau, which will convert the Park's concrete 1960s Vremena Goda (Four Seasons) restaurant, long abandoned. After that,  Garage will come to "occupy a nearby 8,500 square meter hexagonal pavilion. The historic 1920s pavilion of six sections with a courtyard (was) first constructed to house the first All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.."

So, of course, this leads to interesting questions. Well of course the usual one as to whether it will happen. And then there is the cash.  It was already known that Roman Abramovich has had a hand (and money) in the re-development of Gorky Park and now his girlfriend Dasha Zhukova, the owner of Garage, is moving in there too. As Andrew Osbourn put it in the Telegraph earlier this year: "using part of his estimated £8.4 billion fortune to turn (Gorky Park) into a showcase for the Russian capital is an undertaking likely to further endear Mr Abramovich to the Kremlin which regularly urges oligarchs to plough some of their fabulous wealth back into society". But then - maybe - they are also getting some real estate in return.

* I took the photo just after the ice had been cleaned, hence the emptiness. In fact, each winter since Soviet times, the paths of Gorky Park have been watered and left to ice all winter. I have only not skated there in the last couple of years because it always seemed as full as rush-hour in the Metro. Having a refrigerated bed has meant that this mild winter has not caused a problem; and the rink is just as full as it was in past times. 


Go here for more about the Gorky Park facilities and a list of the best other ice rinks in Moscow. 

wash out

Spent much of sunday getting very wet in Gorky Park, at Design Act - billed as a design festival and exhibition, but washed out almost completely. Making the market stalls and furniture out of cardboard was probably a bad idea (and presenting a lecture where power cables + damp meant my laptop gave off electric shocks whenever you touched it was interesting to say the least) .

memorials and weddings

I feel like I am letting V down, because of course I spent most of my time photographing not the serious monuments and churches he was showing me, but the people all around. The memorial park was just stuffed with wedding parties parking huge white limousines next to battered tanks, tottering around in high heels and shiny suits with bottles of champagne and lining up on turn to have their pictures taken.

This of course, relates to a strong and important tradition of remembering - and honouring - past sacrifices. But to me, now, it just looked like a simple excuse for a party in a weird location.

memorial

On the way we stopped at one of the war memorial parks that mark the line where the German army was stopped in their march on Moscow during the Second World War.  Which makes you aware just how close they got to the city, before the Russians - with a huge cost of life - fought them back.  

a little history

As part of his very generous, ongoing project to educate me, I have made another day trip with V, this time to New Jerusalem, a monastery near Istra on the Moscow outskirts. destroyed by the German army on their retreat from Moscow in the Second World War,  it is still in the process of restoration.

Yet even under scaffolding it is an extraordinary place. Modelled in plan pretty accurately on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in (old) Jerusalem  - by Patriach Nikon from the 1650s - in three dimensions it starts to do all sorts of weird things, like putting a multitude of huge sash windows in the major dome, oh, and also having two major domes rather than just the standard one. There are some baroque additions that add to this wayward flavour, but the original design was part of Nikon's deliberate intention to make Russia the third Rome and the centre of global Christian belief, leading to religious reforms and the ensuing schism from what we now call the Old Believers.  

Kolomenskoye

Got taken for a lovely afternoon walk in beautiful summer sunshine by V, as part of his on-going campaign to improve my education in Russian history and architecture. We went to Kolomenskoye park (conveniently accessible by metro on the green line) and visited the exquisite little group of buildings around the 16th century Church of the Ascension, a UNESO World Heritage site. And got into a discussion about how it looks like a rocket ship, so the space race must have started earlier than we thought... 

cheesy celebrations time

Left everyone at work watching the Royal Wedding and have come home to pack, as I am going to the US tomorrow. Which means I will miss both May Day and Victory Day. I really enjoyed the latter last year - endless novelty - but now realise that all the posters and street decorations are basically wheeled out the same each year (something that may be obvious to everyone else since it is what we all do at Christmas, Easter etc.)

Anyway, if you want to know more about Victory Day before 9th May, you can see all 1 hour and 30 minutes of lat year's parade, filmed by Russia Today. And check out Little Bone's post about getting caught up in the rehearsals for this year's extravaganza.

a fancy food shop

Every time I go to the famous wonderfully over-the-top neo-baroque-style food shop called Eliseevskiy on Tverskaya I attempt to take a decent photograph of its lurid and artificial glamour - along with the other tourists snapping away  - but the results are always unimpressive. (This is, by the way, where I found the pink and green easter display, shown below.)

I go a lot because ... and this will only be relevant to a tiny proportion of the population ... it is the only place in Moscow I have found that does gluten-free foods; well actually just g-f plain biscuits, but better than nothing.

Cathedral Square

I have to thank V and K for - finally - making me go to the Kremlin, and in particular for showing me Cathedral Square and the six various churches that surround it. This is definitely a must-see for tourists. Although Italian renaissance  architects were imported to do some of the work (and you can see traces of their impact), the overall effect is of a long continuity and tradition with Byzantium and medieval artistry. The interiors are covered in their entirety with scenes from the bible; and in each case a larger-than-life God stares down (and seems to look you directly in the eye) from the central dome. Terrific. 

10-of-the-best: no. 2 State Kremlin Palace

In the late 1950s and early 60s Khrushchev built a massive, modernist, glass and concrete 'palace' for communist party meetings, right within the historic Kremlin. The scale is monumental, with seating for 6,000 people, and not surprisingly the building is not well-liked, given that a considerable part of an older Russian heritage was destroyed to enable its construction.

But I love it. This is not so much because of the building design itself (although there are some fabulously classic Soviet murals) but more about the sheer scale of the whole 'mass' experience. I first visited in the 1970s to see the Bolshi Ballet perform, and was literally swept away; first by the huge crowds pouring down symmetrical sets of stairs to divest themselves of coats; and then by the same crowds moving upwards to the main concert hall itself.

This experience is repeated at the interval; this time everyone surges upwards to the largest room I have ever seen, where buffet-style, these 6,000 people simultaneously snack on Russian champagne and slices of bread and cheese/caviar/meat (at least that's what it feels like). Have visited much more recently, and enjoyed it in much the same way.

I should note that none of my Russian friends and colleagues seem to share this same enthusiasm, nor many of my English workmates; that seeing an event here is not cheap; and that it tends to the extremely popularist - right now they are running Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance. But, well, to me, attending an event here is still a great way to capture something of the country's Soviet past.  The proper post-Soviet name is the State Kremlin Palace (GKD/гкд in Russian), although most people still know it as the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. Moscow-in-your-pocket is an easy place to start to see what's on and this is usually a good site for buying tickets.

and a cafe

The other good thing about leaving by the north metro exit at Mayakovskaya is that if you turn right and walk a couple of blocks you will find the Respublika bookshop and cafe. It is a place that many  Muscovites like because of its contemporary feel. It sells art and design books, music vinyl and CDs and some designerly gifts. It also stocks a rather eccentric small collection of English fiction and - which sadly makes me very excited - is one of the few places in Moscow you can pick up magazines in English (and some other European languages).

The cafe on the first floor has been recently renovated and there are misc. art and design books in Russian and English to browse. And it has a mirrored ceiling.

10-of-the-best: No. 1 Mayakovskaya Metro Station

I have been putting together a list of the 10 best things to do in Moscow, that aren't in the standard tourist guides.

And I find myself starting with one thing that is ALL the tourist guides, the Metro. The best station must be Mayakovskaya - which has the most breath-taking light/flight/air themed mosaics on the ceiling. It is also the most 'lightweight' in design and looked after well; it has no adverts for example. The glorious part though, which is easy to miss, is the entrance hall to the north exit directly onto Tverskaya.

To find it when you get off the train, take the direction where the escalator goes down. And then rise up into a masterpiece of art and architecture.

on observing

So, then I found myself out of the metro and in Red Square in the sun, just watching the people go by. And on the corner between GUM and St Basils I saw a steady flow of a particular type of man. Out they jumped one after another from their chauffeur-driven shiny black Audi or BMW or Mercedes - some watched over by a bodyguard - so as to take a brisk walk across the square and into the Kremlin. And rather like the English City gent, they were all dressed identically. Black-leather  flat caps, three-quarter length black leather jackets (with the fur on the inside and around the neck), suits of a shiny dark material. And black pointed shoes.

In fact, I don't know why I have never noticed the hordes of expensive black cars parked, waiting, on this corner. And it is not suspicious at all, just some guys going to work.

springing

The 1st of March is considered to mark the first day of Spring here, and everyone I talk to seems suddenly optimistic. A surprising amount of smiling going on. Might be also because we are again having beautiful weather, bright, clear, cold and very sunny. So what else to do but go and see that extraordinary, ridiculous building that is St. Basil's cathedral, glinting in the sunlight.