Walking around Moscow Day 2

At 0530, our room at Godzillas is full of light.  I manage to sleep off and on until 0730, usually I don’t adjust to the time zone differences so quickly.   Don’t want to wake up the others so I grab my computer and move into the hallway where there is a couch.  There is an older guy there in his 60’s, good to see, as I was worried that I would be the only person of my generation in the hostel.    

Whoa How do these Russian bathrooms work?

Jeff comes out around 0830 and we decide to get some breakfast.   We go back to Tsvetnoy bulvar and find a Кофе Хауз, same as last night, must be a large chain.  We get a breakfast menu, and there are some entrees for 300 rubles, about $11 Usd.  Jeff says this is too expensive and he just gets coffee.   I go for the entrée and get a very small bowl of eggs and toast, but it tastes great.    Time to hit the туалет(bathroom), as we’re going to walk down to the Kremlin after we finish eating.  Last night we noticed that public restrooms are very hard to find in Moscow.   I go downstairs and notice that the restroom is unmarked and has 2 rooms, a small ante room with a sink and then there is a small, enclosed stall with a toilet behind it.  The door to the ante room is open and there is a young Russian girl combing her hair.  The door to the toilet is open.  Wonder how this works…the room with the toilet is open but she’s busy with her hair, and it’s only a couple feet away from her.  So I wait about 5 minutes, she finishes, and luckily, I get to use the toilet with no one waiting.   Hmmm, think I just used my first Unisex bathroom.   Haven’t seen one of these since Ally McBeal.  Shyoht pajahlsta, we ask for our bill and start walking to the Kremlin.

Russian Patriotism

 

On the way to ul Tverskaya we start seeing lots of 9 May posters, WW2 Victory Day, also known as the ‘Great Patriotic War’ in Russia.  Over Twenty million Russians died in WW2, and it is not forgotten.  As a point of reference, American losses for the entire war were just under five hundred thousand.  This is celebrated by young and old alike, as Russians are very patriotic.

 

 

Changing of the Guard at the Kremlin

About 20 minutes later we arrive at the Kremlin.  This time we take in the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  This is a memorial dedicated to the Soviet soldiers killed during World War II.    The goose-stepping soldiers move in unison as Jeff takes a video.

Moscow – Kremlin Tomb of the Unknown WW2 Soldier

There is a large crowd of Russians taking it in along with a handful of tourists.

We need to buy tickets to get into the Kremlin, and there is a small office with a line and everyone seems totally confused by the tour options offered.  The option we want allows you to visit several of the museums for 350 rubles, but elsewhere it seems to indicate that the museums are not open.  No English is spoken by ticket salespersons, and we don’t know enough Russian to clarify so we buy the tickets and move on.

Inside the Kremlin

We walk into the Kremlin through Trinity Gate and immediately to the right is an unmarked apartment.  This is where Stalin and his wife lived.   His wife committed suicide here in 1932, and Stalin lived here until 1953.  It’s a simple looking structure, much like a military barracks.   There is a single guard outside and no one is allowed inside.

The Kremlin is an unusual mixture of churches, museums, government buildings and palaces covering Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union and the present.

 

Many of the churches are hundreds of years old and it is surprising they were not removed during Stalin’s time.   This is also the working  residence of the current Russian President but he does not live here.    We find that we can enter many of the churches but the museums are closed.  One of the churches has the tombs of several of the Tsars.

The Kremlin sits high on a hill above the Moscow River.  The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour can be seen in the distance.  It was originally completed in 1883 but was destroyed by Stalin in 1931 and was intended to be replaced by a gigantic monument to be called the Palace of the Soviets.   This project was never completed but during the Khrushchev era, it was converted into the world’s largest swimming pool.  This remained until 1990 when the Orthodox Church was granted permission to rebuild it, an exact replica of the original structure!

 

Around noon we see a military precision team entering the Kremlin grounds.    They march to Cathedral Square and perform there for 30 minutes.  They are accompanied by a military band.

Here is a video.   Moscow – Kremlin Military Band and Drill Team

We do some more walking and decide that we need a father/son picture in the Kremlin.  A couple of tourists volunteer to help us.  They are Chinese,  but speak English, so we talked for awhile and found that the older Chinese were from China but their sons were going to school in Iowa.

Kitay Gorod

By now we are both getting hungry and need to go on a restaurant search.  We’ve been walking for about 6 hours and want a place to sit down for a while.  Jeff wants Chinese food because there is not much Asian food in Mexico.    The Kremlin is right next to a section of Moscow called Kitay Gorod(Китай-город in Russian).  Translated that means Chinatown.  But we walk for an hour and the only restaurant we see is Mexican.   Exhausted we find a bar and decide to stop for a drink.  We find that they serve Russian food, so we randomly select some dishes from the menu, as there is no English.  I get a great plate that is a mixture of French fries and beef with a gravy sauce.    I once had something like this in Saigon in 1972 and haven’t seen it since.   It’s even better with Sibirska Korona.

 

 

 

 

Lenin, Stalin, Breshnev, Yuri Gagarin and John Reed

Recharged, we decide to go back to Red Square and look for Lenin’s Tomb.  Lenin died and was embalmed in 1924 and has been on display ever since with the exception of the WW2 years when he was moved to the city of Tyumen in Siberia.  The Nazis actually got to within 15 miles of Moscow and Stalin prepared to evacuate the city but the Russian winter and fresh troops from Siberia turned the tide.   We find the tomb is closed as Red Square is being prepared for the May 9 Victory Day parade.  Big disappointment, will have to catch it next trip.  There are other famous Russians buried in the Kremlin Wall itself right next to Lenin’s tomb including Stalin, Breshnev, Yuri Gagarin and  also an American newsman, John Reed the character played by Warren Beatty in the movie Reds.

Next we decide to tour the Russian History Museum.   This is the other huge building on Red Square that you see during the May 9 parades.   We each pay 250 rubles.  We walk through 7 floors that start with Prehistoric Russia and end with the Romanov reign.  Quite interesting but no Soviet history for some reason.

First Ride on the Metro

It’s late afternoon now and we decide to visit Victory Park as I’ve heard there is a great WW2 Museum there.  We walk over to the other side of Red Square into the huge GUM department store to get on the Metro.   I’ve read a lot about the Russian Metro and am anxious to see it.   It was built during the Stalin era and is hundreds of feet underground.  This was done for military purposes.  But the Metro itself is filled with bright colors, artwork and sometimes chandeliers.

It’s not busy today and the entrance to the Metro is larger this time, but again there are no ticket machines, you have to go to the Kacca and buy one.  “Dvah billyete pajahlsta”  gets us 2 tickets.   We pay 15 rubles each.  We get 2 cards about the size of a credit card, walk to the turnstile, and place the card over a yellow circle.  A little LED turns green and we pass through.   Now we get on an escalator and descend at least 200 feet.  At the bottom I try to take a picture to capture the entire length but it is not possible, as can’t see the top.  One thing that is obvious immediately is that the Metro is 100% Russian,  no English, that’s manageable but there is very little information in Russian.   The routes are numbered and color coded like most other cities, but all of the stops are cluttered together, and the stops seem to be cluttered together for multiple lines.  Nowhere is a Metro  map available nor is there one posted on the wall until we get to our car in the departure area.  How does this work?  Anyway, we want the Red line which is line 1 so we follow the signs, now we just need to make sure we are going the right direction.   We find the one going to университет which is the University.  The car is packed and stays that way for our 20 minute ride.

 

Long Walk to Victory Park

We get off at the University; I check the map and see that Victory Park is about ‘2 inches’ away.  That was the same as the walk this morning which took about 20 minutes.   Sure could use a WC but we can get one at the Museum.  We walk about 20 minutes and notice that we have covered about ¼ inch on the map…. oops we’re on the back of the map now and the scale is 4x compared to the front.   Jeff immediately loses confidence in my ability to navigate as it becomes apparent that we have a 2 hour walk instead of 20 minutes.   Out comes the Iphone and Google Maps.  Jeff did not purchase a 3G package so not sure why Google Maps is showing our current position unless we briefly connected to free wifi.  The map is not used during the remainder of the trip.

We manage to arrive at Victory Park about 5:00 and the museum is still open, but we need to rush as it is only open for another hour.   We pay 100 rubles each, but no pictures are allowed which is disappointing.  We find the WC, men and women are separate this time, and take care of that.  We check in our backpacks and coats in another area and start walking.   A good deal of the museum consists of murals of WW2 battles.  From the hundreds of WW2 films I’ve seen, some of these are recognizable, Berlin, Stalingrad and Leningrad for instance.  There is not a lot of weapons, uniforms or military equipment.  We walk upstairs and enter a room called the Hall of Glory which is very impressive.   It is a large circular room with thousands of names engraved on the walls.  These are the recipients of the Hero of the Soviet Union award.   In the center of the ceiling is a large ‘CCCP’ surrounded by the Red Star.  It is interesting that the museum was built in 1995 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At 1900 we leave the museum and start to look for the Metro.  Victory Park is huge and it takes awhile to leave the grounds.  There are lots of Russians walking around and eating at the food stands nearby.  We walk toward the Triumphal Arch that was built to celebrate Russia’s victory over Napoleon in 1812.

 

The World’s Longest Metro Escalator

There is a Metro stop there, we buy tickets and take Line 3, then 9 back to the Tsvetnoy Bulvar.  The escalator at Victory Park is 276 feet long and is one of the longest metro escalators in the world.  The escalator  ride takes about 3 minutes as this is one of the deepest stations in Moscow.  About an hour later we are back at the Hostel.

Now we’re super hungry and don’t want to look for restaurants.  We decide to hit the food stands on Tsvetnoy Bulvar.  We find one with shish kabob pictures that look good.    But it is not what I was expecting, think it was lamb and came with rice and curry.  Don’t like curry and don’t like lamb but the beer that came with it was excellent!   We get back to the Hostel around midnight, talk to our Argentine roommates for a while and get to sleep.

Next:   Walking around Moscow Day 3

Prior:  Walking around Moscow Day 1