The Stolitsa, Part One

Moscow, the object of much anticipation. Moscow, the sometimes capital of the Russia country. Moscow, in contrast to St. Petersburg. And so on and so forth.

Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral, Kitay Gorod, GUM, Arbat, etc. etc. we walked highlights of the city, as lead by our friendly tour guide, Mikhail Pavlovich. He was a riot, especially if you could understand his Russian. Anything of historical interest about the city I'm sure you could google to you satisfaction, much better than I can explain. So I will provide my впечатления (vpechatleniya - impressions), in roughly chronological order.

But I am getting ahead of myself. How did we get to the столица (stolitsa -- capital)? Train! What kind of train? Sleeper! When did it leave St. Petersburg? Eleven o'clock at night! Not many people slept on the way there, but I sneakily selected low-key coupe mate (i.e., Russians) and fell asleep at a reasonable hour. Or at least "fell" as in on to my bed. It wasn't too easy or pleasant to sleep on the upper bunk, especially as I didn't take the time to fully make my bed or put on pj's.

We arrived bleary eyed on Saturday morning. I had set my alarm for 6:45, fifteen minutes before our scheduled arrival. Turns out there was no need for such precautions: cheesy Russian pop music jolted me from my sleep sleep half an hour from arrival. The train had it's own radio "station": Dorooooozhnoe radioooooo! goes the jingle.

Skip the checking into the hotel, fast forward to Red Square.

It was smaller than I expected, чесно говоря (chesno govorya - frankly speaking), and I was surprised to notice that, standing in front of the State History Museum on one end and looking at St. Basil's cathedral at the other end, the latter looks sunk into the ground. I guess the square is built on a hill? There's one difference between St. Petersburg and Moscow -- the latter is far more curvy. Moscow would be far more interesting on a bike than dear ol' built-on-a- river-delta Piter. This impression was reinforced the next night: Amy and I were watching a movie, Статский Советник (Statsky Sovetnik), which takes place in Moscow. The final shot of film was of Oleg Menshikov, the most attractive Russian actor I've laid eyes on, walking away from St. Basil's Cathedral. First, I was excited that I had just been were he was walking, and second, I noticed that he seemed level with the domes, rather than the entrance.

ГУМ (GUM -- think "goo" plus m) lines one side of Red Square. This State Universal Store (it sounds better in Russian) is crammed with high-end stores, into which I was afraid to enter while sporting my large, unclassy coat. I did make it into one store with the goal of gasping at the prices. I found the tag on a fashionable shirt, and if I remember correctly, it was 5000 roubles. I don't even want to translate that into dollars. Everything is expensive in Moscow, since it is home to the more billionaires than any other city in the world. Side note: the man that compiled the list of the billionaires, published by Forbes soon after died, presumably bumped off by one of the men he named.

Features of the building that puzzled me: fake trees planted on a strip of fake grass (an the woman that was tying dark ribbons around the trunks). Feature of the building that pleased me: a round, white bed, piled with pillows. It was realllly comfortable and covered with people on our program from the time we found it 'til the time our guided tour began.

Храм Христа Спасителя (khram Khrista Spasitelia -- Cathedral of Christ the Savior), formerly a swimming pool under the Soviet regime was a highlight because also under the Soviet regime, it was the site for the Palace of the Soviets, a MASSIVE construction that never came to light, but which we studied in my class, "Stalin Culture before World War II." The kram is huge -- the Palace of Soviets was going to be even huger. The statue of Stalin that was going to top the building was planned to be taller than the Eiffel tower. Crazy!


Well, I'd better wrap it up -- I want to get to the Thursday evening service at the Lutheran church not far from here. Tonight I will make sure to get a bulletin, which should do wonders for my comprehension of the богослужение (bogocluzhenie - divine service). I don't know how cold it is now that the sun is down, but I've got my long underwear on, never fear.