STOP PRESS: please note that the ABBA blog ("We Want ABBA") has been updated.
Moscow is big. Russia is bigger. We are overwhelmed. Our feet hurt. Paul bought new sneakers. Even without its former USSR states, Russia covers 17 million square kilometers (Australia covers 10 million). Moscow now has almost 10 million people and is officially Europe's largest city (in population).
First thing that hits you about Russia and Moscow is how imperial it is, ie, it still has big traces of red! The building in the first photo is actually our hotel (we stayed on floor 28 out of 29), converted from one of many "Stalin Scyscrapers" that dot the city.
Red Square is.. well... red! In the second photo you have the red walls of the 1150AD Kremlin (walled city of the old and new government) all around you, Lenin's red and black marble mausoleum (we waited 2.5hrs to see the preserved Lenin in a glass coffin - he looks like wax and has a golden "colonel sanders" beard!!!) and red with every other colour onion domes of 1561AD St Basil's (built by crazy Tsar Ivan The Terrible to "show off" and not actually a real Orthodox Church!). In the third photo is the other side of red square with the rest of the Kremlin, the red 1883AD Russian Historical Musuem and the not so red GAM old markets building that now houses the ritziest capitalist shopping centre in the city. The fourth photo shows you only part of the interior of the Kremlin which houses palaces (Old Tsars and Putin's house), the Senate, the 1489AD Annunciation Cathedral, the 1508AD Archangel Cathedral, the 1511AD Dormition Cathedral, three other churches, the magnificent Armory Musuem (collections of Russian antiquities from the royal Tsar "glory box"), the fabulous Diamond Fund (or Treasury, containing several kilos of diamonds, the world's largest flat diamond, even more kilos of gold and the largest chuck of platinum in the world) and even the largest bell in the world (202 tons and never rung). The Kremlin could easily take three days to visit and we did it in one and almost collapsed!
The Moscow subway is its strength. You never wait more than one minute for a train! It is always full of people. The trains are preshistoric but travel at warp speed! The metro has highly decorated stations (like a musuem, with marble, mosaics of Lenin, bronze statues of happy comrades, stained glass, art deco chandeliers, two have won USA New York architecture prizes). The folks in the country are generally friendlier - we met many "baboushkas" (grannies), who helped us out more than the city people!
The Russians in Moscow are exactly like the Greeks in the 70's and 80's: they cannot speak English, do not like tourists, use their heads to show you directions, grunt to speak, drive crappy cars (Russian built Ladas) with no seatbelts, taxis try to rip you off, public servants take breaks and keep you waiting and cars do not stop at the pedestrian crossing (there is only one in Moscow!).
We also visited Victory Park (a huge outdoor avenue, plaza, tower and semi-circular museum) commemorating Russia's victory over the French in 1812 and the Germans in 1945. The highlight for us was watching the Bolshoi Ballet of Tchaikovski's "Sleeping Beauty" - what a show!
The other aspect of Russia is its monasteries and churches - look at the next blog.
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