Last Days in Moscow

Alexander Gardens

Tuesday morning, breakfast of cereal, yogurt, fruit, juice and bread was delivered to our rooms at 7:30 a.m.  We set off an hour later on a walking tour of some other neighborhoods in Moscow.  Walking south along the west Kremlin wall through the Alexander Gardens, we reached the Moscow River and crossed a bridge with colorful banners flying in order to reach Zamoskvarechye, the Land South of the Moscow River.  Passing through a small park with colorful flower gardens, we came upon the Vodootvodny Canal and its fountains.  A pedestrian bridge crossing the canal had metal trees spaced down the middle of the lane, each bedecked with hundreds of colorful padlocks (mostly red) painted or etched with the names of married couples who had come to the bridge on their wedding day.  Securing a padlock to a tree is supposed to ensure a lasting marriage. 

Padlock tree

Zamoskvarechye was first settled in the 13^th century, when envoys from the Mongol rulers camped there when they came to collect tribute from the Muscovites.  Later, Kremlin palace guards were housed in the area, followed by various guilds of craftsmen, who built houses and churches.  Wealthy merchants moved into the area in the19^th century.  The 20^th century saw the addition of factories among the historic buildings.  Now it has residential buildings, museums, cafes, shops and small businesses, and it is less frenetic than the area around Red Square.

At the western tip of the northernmost island of Zamoskvarechye is an enormous bronze statue of an 18^th century sailing ship, perhaps made to scale.  In front of the mast is Peter the Great. 

The Kremlin from a bridge over the Moscow River

We crossed the pedestrian bridge over the Moscow River leading directly to Christ the Saviour Cathedral.  From the middle of the bridge, there is a great view of the Kremlin.  When you are near the Kremlin, you can barely see any of the inside structures, but from the highest point on the bridge, the palaces and cathedrals can be seen above the red brick walls and crenellations. 

Christ the Savior Cathedral by the Moscow River

Christ the Saviour Cathedral is an imposing structure—the largest church in Moscow-- with the usual golden domes.  Sitting in the middle of a large plaza, designed in the style of Greek Orthodox churches with perfect symmetry, the church is adorned with bronze reliefs of religious scenes all along the white marble walls of the exterior.  This church was originally constructed in the 19^th century as a monument celebrating the victory over Napoleon, but the first building was demolished in the early 1930s by Stalin, to be replaced with a proposed Palace of the Soviets.  This was never built, so the largest indoor/outdoor swimming pool in the world was created on the site.  In 1994, the mayor of Moscow drained the pool and ordered a reconstruction of the original cathedral; this expensive project was finished in 1997.  It is striking from the outside, but truly awe-inspiring on the inside.  Unfortunately, the kids could not enter because they were wearing shorts.  (They weren’t too disappointed.)  There were many people circling the walls of the spacious and glowing interior, stopping to cross themselves with two fingers, utter brief prayers and kiss and touch their foreheads to the icons.  I have to wonder about how hygienic this practice is!  Thousands of people must come through each day. 

Katya being a kid

On our way to our next destination, Arbat Street--famous for its lively atmosphere, architecture, shops and cafes, and historical sites--we passed through a narrow park with a playground as well as art work and photographs on display.  Katya could not resist the see-saw!

Matthew was set on purchasing a fur hat, and I was looking for gifts for family members.  We stopped in a few shops to get an idea about prices.  Unfortunately, the beautiful amber jewelry was all outside my price range.  Most of the stores seemed to have the same merchandise.  Before we bought anything, we stopped at a café serving Russian food.  Katya and I had blinnies, while Matthew and Peter had soup.  We bought the kids Kinder-eggs (hollow chocolate eggs with toys inside, made in Germany) for dessert for nostalgic reasons.  When we went to Kazakhstan to adopt Katya, we would usually buy her one each day while we were out walking.  Cute and adorable and well mannered, she always insisted on dividing the chocolate three ways and sharing.  Now, she popped it into her mouth without any thought for others!

Feeling more energetic after some food, we began shopping in earnest.  The girls got separated unintentionally from the guys.  When Katya and I encountered them again, Matthew had bought a black rabbit fur hat and was quite excited about it.  It was hard for me to decide which store to enter.  Bargaining was part of the process, and I never feel comfortable with this.  I felt drawn into one store in particular.  We ended up buying several items and having a conversation with the clerk, who was pleased to be talking with people from America.  She has tried to get a green card three times.  I talked with her about student visas, which, as she is no longer in school, she did not realize she would be eligible for--if only she can support herself while in the States studying.  She was really excited to learn about this opportunity and gave us a couple small gifts in appreciation.

Katya on Arbat Street

We passed a number of buskers on Arbat Street playing various styles of music.  Two of them were playing instruments we did not recognize.  All of them were quite good. 

Back at the hotel, we rested.  Peter and Matthew were still recovering from jet lag, so they needed long naps.  After about three hours, we set out to find a place for dinner.  Peter was particularly interested in finding more Russian food.  Through Frommer’s guidebook, I found a couple possibilities, and we ended up at one only a few blocks from our hotel.  Fortunately, the entire cellar dining room was non-smoking.  The food was good if rather expensive, but high prices have been the norm.

It seems that many more Russians smoke than citizens of other countries we have visited or lived in.  Moreover, they simply drop their cigarette butts on the ground whenever they have finished, despite the fact that there are places for disposing of them on the sidewalks.  Finished the last cigarette in the pack?  Just toss the empty pack on the ground also!  Surely everyone does not do this, or the sidewalks would be filled with litter, but enough do that it is noticeable.  Also, Russians walk around drinking beer from bottles and cans.  Although most of them put the empty containers in trash cans, some people seem to feel it’s perfectly acceptable just to put them down on the sidewalk just after they have taken the last swig.  The litter, pervasiveness of public smoking and prevalence of street people and even beggars is particularly striking to me after having just visited Japan and South Korea, where smokers have designated areas both indoors and outdoors, litter (particularly in Japan) is non-existent, and street people are not seen at all in Japan and very rarely in Seoul (at least in the area we visited). 

Another glaring contrast is the attitudes and behaviors of the people of these countries.  Everyone we encountered in Japan and South Korea was respectful, courteous, willing to help and smiling.  While the staff in the hotel and in restaurants have been quite nice, this does not hold true of others whose job it is to serve the public.  Stern women act as guards in rooms in museums and are quick to admonish anyone who does not follow the correct route or who takes photos when not permitted.  At the metro station, when we asked for information in order to purchase tickets, the woman at the ticket counter acted like we were imposing on her to expect her to do her job.  She actually snarled at us!  When standing on the street, consulting maps and looking perplexed, no one ever stops to offer assistance to us.  Certainly, no one ever says, “Have a nice day!” 

But, back to the travelogue!  After dinner, Katya and I set off to visit a bookstore we had passed on the way to the restaurant.  We were relieved, I’m sorry to say, to leave Matthew with Peter.  He was still tired and somewhat grumpy.  Although we have all traveled a lot, I believe this is the first time he has been somewhere, other than when he was too young to read well, where he has not known the alphabet and has been unable to understand any written or spoken language.  He has found this quite disconcerting.  While I have no fluency either, it probably helps that I at least am familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet.  Katya is doing quite well at reading all the signs although she is making no attempt to speak in Russian.

GUM on Red Square at the beginning of a long twilight

The bookstore was already closed, so we walked a couple blocks to GUM, the former State Department Store of the Soviets.  This enormous building flanks the entire northeast side of Red Square.  The former socialist emporium is now a three-story shopping mall with three parallel arcades under a glass roof, a hotbed of capitalism and conspicuous consumption showcasing mostly international chains.  As the long twilight hours set in, the edifice was outlined in white lights, looking like a storybook palace. 

On Wednesday, our last day in Moscow, we slept in and rested in our rooms all morning until time to check out at noon.  The hotel staff stored our luggage.  We stopped at a small grocery store on our street and bought some snacks, which we ate on Red Square.  Then we caught the subway for Sportivnaya station (after some disorientation in finding the right platform) in the southwest part of Moscow in order to visit Novodevichy Convent and Cemetery.  Less crowded and less fashionable than downtown Moscow, the area near this UNESCO World Heritage Site seems more down-to-earth than the fact-paced atmosphere near Red Square, where most women seem to wear shoes with absurdly high heels (for sidewalks which are uneven or made of stones) and form-fitting short dresses and skirts. 

Church of the Transfiguration, Novodevichy Convent

The spires and domes of the churches of the convent rise above the trees, leading the way to the white-walled convent, where the wives and daughters and sisters of the nobility were sequestered as well as female foes of the likes of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great.  Originally established in 1524, the complex grew to include churches, residences for the nuns and an orphanage.  The Kremlin provided generous funding for this accommodation for the women of the rulers, which allowed it to build many churches on the site as well as acquire a substantial amount of land and serfs. 

Some of the buildings are now museums.  One exhibition showed how churches throughout Russia were destroyed by manual labor during the Soviet era.  One room had icons that had been saved from these demolished structures.  The central building is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Smolensk (or Smolensky Cathedral), one of a few white structures among deep red brick buildings.  Like the other Russian Orthodox churches and cathedrals we have visited, it is lavishly decorated with gold, delicately detailed icons and frescoes in deep, vivid hues.  

Candlestick in the Assumption Church, Novodevichy Convent

Novodevichy Cemetery

Behind the convent is Novodevichy Cemetery, which has been considered Moscow’s most prestigious burial site since the 18^th century.  Each monument is distinctive, usually having a bust or a full, life-size figure of the deceased.  Sometimes there are sculptures representing their achievements.  Many planted flowers were blooming and many of the graves had bouquets of fresh flowers.  It was obvious that family and/or friends visit these graves regularly.  Writers, composers, cosmonauts, generals, and political leaders are buried here.  We saw the graves of Khrushchev and Boris Yeltsin, the latter having no likeness of the man but simply a tri-colored, flowing stone in the likeness of the Russian flag. 

We found a French bakery on the way back to the metro station and got some delicious treats, which we ate on a park bench before taking the subway back to Red Square.  We sat for a while by a large fountain in front of the Bolshoi Theatre to rest then visited a bookstore, where Peter purchased an English language book of Tolstoy stories.  We still had a few hours until our overnight train to St. Petersburg, so we went back to the hotel, sat in the lobby and read.  Lulled into a sense of abundance of time, we set out for dinner a bit late.  The receptionist at the hotel suggested a restaurant a few buildings away.  The Champagne Café is an elegant and somewhat expensive place, but we didn’t have time to search for anything else.  We ordered inexpensive meals and expensive bottled water (How I miss free water and free refills like we have in the States!), wolfed down our food when it came and sprinted back to the hotel, where our taxi should have been waiting for us at 7:45.  However, he didn’t show up until nearly 8:00.  Panic was beginning to set in, as our train was scheduled for 8:40, and we really had no idea just how long the ride to the station would be.  Then the taxi driver, in Russian, seemed to be saying that he could not take us because there was too much luggage.  The staff at the hotel helped out and we agreed to pay an additional couple hundred rubles for the luggage.  With bags on our laps, because only two would fit in the trunk, we headed off for Leningradsky Station.  The driver, realizing that we were running out of time, drove like a maniac, weaving in and out of lanes (not that many other drivers weren’t doing the same!), and we made it to the station in less than 20 minutes in heavy traffic, even though the hotel staff had said it was a 30 minute ride.  Luckily, we didn’t have any trouble locating the platform for our train, which we reached with 10 minutes to spare, even though there were only stairs (no escalators!) into the station, making managing rolling luggage a bit of a challenge. 

Matthew in a top berth, departing Moscow

After the adventure of getting to the train on time, we have now settled into our sleeping compartment for the night.  Matthew and Katya are in the top berths.  They fell asleep fairly early.  We have passed by small towns and large swaths of birch and conifer forest as well as one quite large lake.  We will arrive at St. Petersburg at 4:40 a.m., only 5 hours from now, so I need to get some sleep also.  Luckily, at the 60^th parallel, the sun will be rising just then.  Even now, at nearly midnight, the sky is not completely dark, with sunset occurring less than 30 minutes ago.