Final Fling in Moscow

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

The tour is over, but we had pre-arranged for a private 6-hour guided walking tour (from Friendly Local Guides) on our extra day. But once we got here, we realized how much there is to see. So we emailed their contact and said we wanted to extend to 9 hours!

We promise it will not take you 9 hours to read this post, but we do want to try to capture as much of our amazing day as we can.

After having near-perfect weather for two weeks, today was noticeably cooler with a high chance of rain. Our guide Lena (who was absolutely wonderful) met us in the lobby at 9 and off we went at a pretty quick pace. We were not fully recovered from our 8+ miles yesterday; little did we realize we would walk 10.5 miles today!!!!

We first went to the Hotel Metropol, a city center landmark built in 1899 and the last remaining Tsarist-era grand hotel.  This was also the setting for the recent wonderful novel A Gentleman in Moscow.

The main dining rom features an impressive glass ceiling.

(Internet pic)

In the Metropol lobby

We then walked a few blocks to see the Bolshoi buildings. We have all heard of the Bolshoi ballet company. They train in one of the three buildings. Other artists (singers, actors, etc.) train in the others.There are two smaller buildings and the main bigger one. And....that is what "Bolshoi" means: big!!!! We always assumed it was the name of the founder or somesuch.

Here is the main building...in a beautiful square with fountains.

Directly facing the square on the other side of the street, is a statue of Karl Marx.

Lena said it is rare to take a picture of a statue without a bird at the top!

We then headed over to stand in line to see Lenin's tomb. As we went, Lena provided info on life in Russia today, and included some of her own family's history. She is also Jewish, and said she is "...very open about it. There is no reason for me to hide it from my friends and no one has a problem with it.".

The tomb is only open 4 days a week, and then only from 10 - 4. We got there at 9:45 and there were already several hundred people in line! Lena offered to stand in the queue while we went to walk more around Alexander Gardens (the tomb is on Kremlin Street...

….in Red Square just outside the Kremlin).  Here is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and eternal flame.

We then rejoined Lena in line and waited...and waited. Turns out it is different than when we saw Mao's and Ho Chi Minh's tombs. Here, the guards only allow about 20 people at a time to go through the gate. So you wait...move up 10 feet...wait...move up...…

We eventually got in at about 10:35 (and at that time the line behind us stretched for several blocks). Again it was different as there was no restriction on bringing in backpacks, cameras, etc. The tomb is part of a larger cemetery  where Soviet dignitaries of the last 100 years are interred. Each has a column with his bust at the top.  Unfortunately, just as we got here the skies opened up so we ran to get cover inside the tomb!

But here is an internet pic to give you an idea:

And here is a rain-drenched photo of Stalin's grave; excuse the quality of the picture -- best we could do due to torrential downpour!

Here is the mausoleum itself:

Once inside everyone files past (no pix here of course). But it was not "Keep moving" like in Beijing. Much more relaxed. There have been rumors in the past that this is not actually Lenin's embalmed body, but a wax replica instead. Lena said she believed it is him.  He looked pretty well-preserved (literally) for a dead Communist.  Now we have seen three "peasants under glass!"

Note that for a few years Stalin was also entombed next to Lenin. But, according to Lena (more later), Khruschev really hated Stalin, so he had his body moved.

Next we headed to the Metro. Along the way we posed in front of the former KGB building. We have been on our best behavior throughout the trip and are very confident we were not trailed by the KGB at any time (even while waving our Cubbies' W flag on Red Square!).

We boarded the Metro for a ride to the synagogue. Since we would be riding more later to view some of the beautiful stations, Lena got us a 6-ride card. Yesterday we paid 55 rubles for each one-way ticket. The 6-ride card is 36 rubles per ride! And if you give then the used card back when you're done, you get 50 rubles back! Such a deal!!!!!

We came out of the Metro and walked several blocks to the Moscow Choral Synagogue.

It took over a decade to build, mostly due to red tape, and was finished in 1898. But religious services were not held here until 1906 when the Tsar finally allowed them. In 1948 Golda Meir visited here. We were given an oral history (translated from Russian through Lena after the synagogue administrator asked if we could speak Yiddish!). He then blessed us and invited us to stand on the bima so he could take our picture!

Then, it was time to eat again. The tour as planned included a kosher lunch at another synagogue. But we felt seeing this one was enough, and Lena had been telling us all morning that we had to try Georgian food as "....it is real Russian food". We were all in, though we did not tell her we had had some at that log cabin restaurant a few days earlier.

The Georgians have their own language and alphabet (looks somewhat Arabic); Lena said she cannot understand any spoken or written words. We walked about 6 blocks to Saperavi Café. We wanted to try as many things as possible, and Lena helped us navigate the menu. Once again, we probably overdid it on the number of dishes. Wayne even had Georgian beer (which was quite tasty).

Wish we could tell you all the names in Georgian, but we didn't write them down (the menus were in English and Russian). But we had eggplant rolls:

Some sort of peppers and nuts (on a decorative stone-- with hard bread and salty cheese..

...a cheesy bread that was cut in wedges like a pizza

...grilled veggies

mushroom dumplings. Lena told us there is a special way to eat them. You pick it up by the "stem" and take a little bite. Then you drink the liquid inside. Then you keep eating away at the dumpling. If you get no dribbles or droppings on your plate, you win!!!!

...inside the dumpling

...and chicken shashlik with onion fried potatoes.

Another food coma ensued. No...we did not finish all of it.

Then, finally, it was off to see the best Metro stations.  Some of the stations are quite plain, but amazingly, all of the platforms walls in every station are made of marble! Each of the more highly decorated ones will have a theme, like "WWII", "Russian Heroes, "Dostoyevsky,.Ukranian History."  And, much like stained glass windows in a church, each of the "images" in the station tells part of the story. We say "images" as some are painted, some are mosaics, and some are statues. Lena was able to give us lots of great info about each grouping we saw.

Here are the pix (sans explanation; you may be able to figure some out yourself).
From Komsomovskaya (note: these are huge mosaics on the ceiling!)

From Novoslobodskaya (some stained glass):

Note the eagle on the upper left in the mosaic above. It was originally a profile of Joseph Stalin, but Nikita had it replaced.

Kievsky (tells the story of Kiev):

Lenin

Patriotic People

Gaaa!!!! Pushkin again!

(There is a Dostoevsky station with one

abstract mural, but we did not stop there)

Another Kievsky station on a different line!

Some cabbage! This picture truly says "Ukraine" to us

More happy peasants

Park Pobedny. This station has 36 statues. People rub some of them for different things:

...the dog's nose for luck....

...and the chicken for wealth

(because.....?????)

Maryina Roscha. Maryina is a name (Marina); roscha is a forest with one kind of tree.

This is one of the few that is actually

on the wall on the other side of the tracks

(that is, looking across the tracks from the platform)

All in all we rode on 5 of the 17 lines and stopped at 6 stations to view the sights and several others in transit. We would often get off one train, go up (or down) the stairs, hop on anther one and go to a different station. There is no way in the world we could have done this by ourselves. Most of the times the trains were crowded. But everyone follows the "stand to the side to let them get off before entering" rule. Each train is at least 10 cars long (and the cars are probably 50' in length). There are benches (sometimes cushioned) along both sides of each car. The trains come every 90 - 120 seconds, and during rush hour, every 45 seconds! Can you believe it!?!?!?!  And they go very fast through the tunnels. One fascinating thing: on the train the stations are announced in Russian and English. If you are heading toward the city center, the PA is a male voice; heading outbound, it is a female voice! We were very much impressed with the cleanliness (of the trains and stations; zero graffiti) and the efficiency of the system. Our folks could learn a lot! The only downside is that the trains are extremely loud. It is that ear-piercing screeching sound in our own CTA subway. So loud you have to shout to have a conversation. Average daily ridership is about 7 million people. The Park Pobedy station is one of the deepest in the world. For more, click here .

We then rode / walked to the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center. Turns out it was more "museum" and not much about tolerance (unless we missed that part of the exhibit). The first "stop" is a movie experience. They give you 3D glasses. It is like a slightly tamer version of Disney's "Star Tours"--starting at creation (voice over in Russian; subtitles in Russian and English). It goes through Abraham and Moses.Along the way, the seats rise and fall and move side to side. During the telling of Noah's Ark, you are sprinkled with water!!! During the plagues, jets of air blow at you as 3D locusts whiz by!!!! It was...an experience.

Then a very nicely curated set of exhibits showing Jewish life through the years. However, only about 10% of the explanations were in English, so we probably missed a lot.

One of the exhibits showed Jewish settlements and migrations over the centuries. Here is a map showing the borders and some towns in the mid-1800s.

If you've picked up any knowledge of Cyrillic over the last week, you will see that the top two towns in the middle are Tikocin (Tickoshin) and Biyalistok (Biawishtok); the towns where Wayne's grandparents came from.

Stop #9 was an IMAX-style presentation of the Holocaust and Russia with a review, for us, of  the Nazis' extermination strategies at the western edge of the Soviet Union (was it only 10 days ago that we visited the Ponary Forest outside of Vilnius? and Rumbla outside of Riga?).  At one point in the film, a map appeared with over 100 towns/cities-showing the number of Jews murdered in each (and this was not in the camps but by being shot into ditches). Apparently 2 million Jews were killed in Eastern Europe in this way. This was chilling and sobering.  As to the Jewish population farther east, for example in Moscow and St Petersburg, life was very hard during the war, but because the Germans did not actually occupy those cities, the devastation and causes of death played out differently.

Stop #10 was the Remembrance Hall--vaguely reminiscent of the children's memorial at Yad Vashem.

We could have spent more time at this powerful museum, but we were running out of energy so after an hour we got back on the Metro, stopped to walk down Arbot Street, and then headed back to the hotel. 

This post finds us at the Frankfurt Airport waiting for our connection.  We will complete our chronicling of this amazing journey when we get our sea legs back in a day or so. 

love,
w&w