Moscow

OK. Today is the 2nd of August. At midnight we take off from Moscow to St. Petersburg on the overnight train. I have to leave the group a day early so will be taking off for Prague the afternoon of the fourth.

How to condense 72 hours on the trans siberian rr and two nights and much of three intense days in Moscow for you.

Say... "are we in Russia yet?" or, "are we still in Russia?"
What a totally amazing, huge, grand scale place is Russia and Moscow. I don't know what I was expecting, but whatever it may have been, everything surpassed expectations.

First, 72 hours on the train. Janette, Jo, Kay and I got into a sort of rhythm of packing and unpacking and moving in and out of the compartment we were all sharing. The first full day was a bit tough but things got easier as we progressed on and on and on through Siberia. One of our main anticipatory activities was scanning the schedule to see when we might get off the train for a 10 or 15 minute break. I used these breaks striding the length of the platform to get my legs moving; buying an egg from a babushka; seeing another one eating from a garbage bin; watching: provadnitsa's on different trains standing or sitting in the doorways of their carriages; the other passengers buying ice cream and meat or cabbage pies; little kids running; vendors sliding under trains to get to another one; rr workers making music as they check the wheels with a hammer for cracks. First they shine a light and then tap with the hammer. The breaks on the platforms were like recess. At one point we saw a train with cars going to North Korea. Other trains were headed to Vladivostok.

We had a party with champagne in the dining car when we crossed from Asia to Europe in the Ural mountains -- or hills as the case may be.

We played toss the pig, scrabble, and read. We kept trying for the best sunset shot, or for a water tower or the train as we rounded a curve. I wanted to capture the little wooden villages we kept passing, or the hay stacked in a field, or people swimming in the rivers. From a moving train photography is a challenge and most things are memories which are probably best anyway.

There are a lot of trees ..... and then there are more trees and fireweed and other wildflowers and villages, industrial areas and, and, and.... the trees were genuine taiga vegetation, larch, yellow pine, spruce, birch and in some areas poplars.

We passed Ekaterinburg (sp?) where the remains of Nicholas and Alexandra and ALL the children were found down a shaft in 1987. We read about Gullags in the guide book. Learned more about how long the white Russians held out against the Red Russians... and that nuclear waste is being reprocessed not far from Ekaterinsburg.

I can't say I was terribly sad to leave the train on arrival in Moscow :) Our hotel which will be demolished in January is right next to Red Square and the Kremlin. It is the second largest in the world with 3000 rooms and beds for 5000 people. Once it is gone, there will be no three star accomodations in the center of Moscow. Hey, we are a part of history.

St. Basil was built by Ivan the Terrible and looks unreal, over the top, disneyeque at first. Then it simply becomes a part of the overwhelmingly beautiful Red Square. Red in Russia has a double meaning, beautiful and the color. Red square was called red square long before the revolution and while the Kremlin walls were still white. The Kremlin was a city within a city and was established in the 12th century, when the walls were indeed protection. It is a roughly triangular area with the Moscow River flowing by one side and another river, now underground flowed on the other two sides. There was a draw bridge leading into it and 20 towers. When the walls were no longer protection due to change in weapons, the walls were left to deteriorate. When the white wore off, it was discovered the walls were build of red brick and so they have been red ever since.

Red Square is massive with St. Basil at one end, a now museum at the other, the Kremlin wall with the entrance for Putin on one side and the GUM an incredible edifice that looks like a RR station in France but is a huge mall like affair on the other side.

Moscow's initial impression to me and several others in our group was how like Paris it is. That is because of the massive scale, the river, and bridges. It is unique, however, and the differences as strong or stronger than the similarities.

Yesterday we took a city tour, saw the nunnery where the czars and noblemen who were tired of their current wives or unweddable daughters sent them. It is still an active nunnery and the life of a nun extremely hard. We saw the famous apartment building where all the inhabitants were killed... purged... their servants were KGB. Now the apartments are shi shi and much in demand as they have a great view of the river and are "downtown". We also saw a huge ski jump, the university building, parks, Putin whiz by with his security on the major road that was closed off so he could get to the Kremlin, and.......

After the tour by Kira, Monty took those of us interested on a tour of the metro. It is incredibly efficient, you never have to wait more than a couple of minutes for another train. It was started in the 30s, and, stories say that Lenin? dropped bombs around Moscow to see how deeply the ground was affected and then built the lines below that point. The elevator down makes you wondering just where you are headed.. At the lowest level, there are monuments, statues, mosaics, stained glass all honoring the "heros" of Russia -- e.g. athletes, farmers, workers, and so on. The stations are incredible. Supposedly, one of the reasons that Communism caught on so well in Russia was because the culture emphasized "harmony" or the health or well-being of the community over the individual. Even now, the Russian people have a hard time having a hero of the people. Yuri Gargarin probably came closest.

We then went to old Arbaht street and did the tourist, shopping thing and drag tailed home about 10:00 -- at least I couldn't last past that.

Today we spent hours in the Kremlin looking at cathedrals and the museum in the armory. In the museum we saw Peter the Great's boots (he was about 6 foot 4 but had really small feet so had shoes inside of some big boots he made), Coronation dresses, crowns, bibles with covers covered in precious jewels, a horses ornament with 999 diamonds, faberge eggs, coaches that look straight from Cinderella.

We were supposed to go into St. Basil's, but we were all dragging tail by the time we got out of the museum. Red Square was closed because today is celebrating / honoring soldiers and paratroopers. Apparently last year there was a lot of problems with drunk ex-servicemen all over the city, so they decided to try to confine all the whoopla to the square. I,m not sure how well they were succeeding. There were guys passed out with their heads on the table and a great deal of good cheer apparently going on.

Gotta sign off. Just a fashion observation. The young women wear pretty skimpy clothes and stilleto heels and many are super thin. Fashion is really important here. We all look loke something the cat dragged in. The men have some pretty funny shoes with about 2 to 3 inches extra at the toes and the "cool" look for elegance appears to be beige loose suits remniscent of the 80s. Many people just wear jazzed up casual.