Red

Back from Moscow! Where to begin? I’ll start with this: it was AWESOME. I kind of went into this trip expecting Moscow to be dreary and much less likable than Petersburg, but I was definitely surprised at how much I liked the city! With that said though, I was only there for a few days, and I never for a minute second-guessed my decision to study abroad in Petersburg over Moscow. My interests in Russia revolve around St. Petersburg, and I found that my bucket list for things to see in Moscow was a whole heck of a lot shorter than the one I have for Petersburg. In any case, I hope that someday I’ll be able to return to Moscow for a longer time. 

So I guess I’ll take this day by day. 

Wednesday: We all met at the Moscow Railway Station in Petersburg at 10 in order to board our night train. The days leading up to Wednesday were slow. I couldn’t wait to pack and I felt like a kid because of how excited I was to travel with everyone. One big family trip indeed... 

I enjoyed the night train. It was a bit disorientating to go to sleep and wake up in a completely different city. Part of me didn’t really believe I was in Moscow until I saw Red Square, but I definitely knew upon arrival that I wasn’t in Petersburg anymore.

Thursday: We had an early morning, but luckily I had slept fairly well the night before. Our first stop was check in at the Godzilla hostel (my sheets were green, hehe), where we dropped of all our bags in storage before we headed to breakfast not too far away. 

My first impressions of Moscow were what I had heard to expect: mainly that the city was big, grey, and full of tall, Soviet-looking buildings. It’s not as dreary as I just made it sound, but again, we had beautiful weather throughout the whole time we were there. The roads are designed for a lot of cars, and I started to understand why some people have said that Moscow is more of a car-oriented city, whereas St. Petersburg is much more walkable. 

Anyways, after breakfast (an interesting egg-jello cube with red and yellow peppers, kasha, and tea), we took the metro to the Kashirskaya stop, walking behind Mike and Elena like little ducklings following their parents, where we got off and headed towards Kolomenskoe, a big suburban park. The Moscow metro has a reputation of being pretty fabulous. I don’t think I was ever in a marble platform, but the metros did have chandeliers, intricate designs on the ceilings, some stain glass designs, cool statues, and interesting architecture (for example, in the Mendeleev metro stop there were chemical bond sculptures hanging from the ceilings). 

When we entered Kolomenskoe, it was like walking into spring. The grass was a luscious green, and there were dandelions everywhere. The trees were in the process of blooming, and the sun was beating down on all of us as we shed layers and took out our sunglasses. The park is so expansive that from the entrance we chose, you definitely couldn’t see even a third of its entirety. There were plenty of open spaces, tree groves, paths, and by the entrance we came through, Peter the Great’s childhood home, which is a beautiful wooden/log structure. 

We arrived to Kolomenskoe about 45 minutes early before our guide was to arrive, so I took the frisbee out of my backpack, and me and six others headed for some open space. We tossed for a while, and then set up a three-on-three game, with one handler playing for both teams. Since Hunter and I are the only ones that play ultimate, I was expecting this to be silly and a free for all, but everybody else was surprisingly ready to run! Within minutes we were sweaty and out of breath. People were sprinting and finding open space, and there were some highlight-reel worthy moments for sure. It was a ton of fun, and countless points and a bunch of grass stains on my jeans and sneakers later, we ended our game and headed back to meet up with the rest of the group. 

Shortly after, we were met by our guide: an older man in a grey t-shirt and brown corduroys. He had a raspy voice, which made him hard to understand, but he spoke loudly and would say something funny every once in a while. He led us through the park for two hours. In sum, the park was a green, springy wonderland full of paths, colorful flowers and beautiful views. I thought it was a great way to introduce Moscow. NATURE HUZZAH.

After lunch, Adam, Hunter, Dylan and I walked to Red Square, which ended up being about 20 minutes from our hostel. After walking through a few streets hidden beneath all the towering apartment buildings, we found ourselves in a really, really nice sector. We walked past the main bank and past fancy restaurants and designer stores. These streets continued along and around the Bolshoi Theater, which reminded me of a mini-scale Pantheon. There were open squares that were filled with a ton of people. Although it’s just the beginning of May, it seems like the tourists have arrived. Just that walk to Red Square was enough to convince me of how cool Moscow is. Walking past all the squares and the fancy stores reminded me of Paris. The thing is, in St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospect is the main avenue with all the fancy stores, but in my opinion, it’s not that fancy or over the top. I don’t think Moscow has an equivalent to Nevsky, so instead there are a bunch of streets in different areas, obviously of a smaller caliber, that make Moscow seem much more capitalistic than it would probably like to appear. 

The walk to Red Square was also a bit unnerving. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more Russian policemen throughout my entire time in Russia than I saw throughout those three days in Moscow. Of course, we were there for May Day, and next weekend is the Victory Day celebration, so it makes sense that there were so many policemen (not to mention all the crap that is currently going on in Ukraine! I want to look into a crystal ball to see what’s going to happen SO BADLY). Policemen in Maine scare me, so you can only imagine how much I avoided making eye contact with the police and security in Moscow (except for that cute one who let me through the Kremlin security ;). They are large and basically what you would imagine a Russian police officer to look like; like someone who was going to EAT YOU WHOLE and then deport your bones on the next flight out. I was much more attentive to how loud I was speaking English. We all tried to appear as inconspicuous as possible (Hunter’s red Canadian hat was the icing on the cake). It’s weird. I’ve forgotten that hiding your American citizenship isn’t really the norm. Obviously being American isn’t a crime in Russia (yet), but you definitely don’t want to advertise it, especially with everything going on. You never know how people will react. 

Anyways, with Dylan’s memory from last semester, we made it to Red Square easily enough. We walked through GUM, Moscow’s main mall, and I suggest looking it up online. It is extravagant, way over the top, and certainly worth just looking though (we didn’t go into any of the stores but I felt slightly underdressed just walking around). Unfortunately, because of May Day, Red Square was closed. We still walked up to the make-shift gates and took in St. Basil’s Cathedral though, which, my god, is CrAzY. It’s definitely one of those moments where you’re like, “Is this even real? Am I even here right now?” Yes, yes you are. In my opinion, St. Basil’s Cathedral is a lot smaller than I imagined it to be. It’s bigger than the Church on Spilled Blood in Petersburg, but it’s not gigantic. It’s also not as... red as I expected it to be. In fact, I would almost go as far to say that it’s very much a burnt orange with some red thrown in there, but nevertheless, it’s a beautiful creation. So beautiful that apparently Ivan the Terrible had the eyes of St. Basil’s architects' gouged out after they finished contructing the cathedral so that they could never design something as beautiful after (shout out to Alice Brock! Wish you were there with me!). We circled the cathedral and sat on some grass, with St. Basil’s to our left, and killed time before dinner talking about whether or not the original James Bond small black pistol was sexy or not... (consensus: yes). 

We showed up at dinner about ten minutes late, but we found our way back to the group alright. After dinner we literally walked right next door to the circus, which I won’t spend too much time talking about. I only stayed for the first half because I heard that tigers and lions are treated terribly in the second half, but even the first half wasn’t really my thing. The woman who did stunts on a large suspended swing made me feel like I was going to have a heart attack every time she attempted a move, even though she was attached to a safety wire, and while the clown was funny, that's not really my kind of humor. There was a baby bear at the beginning, and the last act of the first half featured four enormous sea lions doing mind-blowing tricks. Damn, they’re smart! But ugh, I am so glad my parents never took me to the zoo or the circus when I was young. I will do the same if I have kids because ahh, it’s painful to watch! I can’t even think about puppies in kennels, hell no. I won’t dwell any further on animals in cages/outside their natural habitats any longer...

So a few of us left after half-time, and what do we do? We went to the Beverly Hills Diner and got 360 ruble (around $10) milkshakes. Normally I would have refused outright to pay that much for a milkshake, but I’m me, and I was in Moscow, and they looked REALLY good. I ended up getting a mint chocolate milkshake, and it was so worth it. I had to waddle back to the hostel, but I have no regrets. 

We relaxed when we got back to the hostel, and I crawled up in bed with my iPhone and wifi. I ended up in an 8 person room, filled with seven other guys, which was funny. It was just how numbers worked out I think, but we were all trying to figure out rooms down in the lobby earlier that day, and from behind a group of people I just heard Elena say, “...well then one of the girls will have to stay with all the boys...”. Acting quickly, I stood on my tip toes over the crowd of people in front of me and said, “I volunteer myself as tribute!” And that’s my story about how I ended up spending two nights in a room with seven guys in Moscow. 

And that’s all I can remember from Thursday. I’m going to take a break and get to the second half of my trip in a bit, but here’s what I have so far! Pictures soon.