Moscow

("Listen: Moscow is speaking!")

Caveat: I really don't like Moscow. By all accounts it is dirty, ugly, crime-infested, imperial, and capitalist (but I repeat myself). There is some beautiful public art, like the metro system, but it is besieged by ugliness. I hoped to avoid it entirely on this trip, but as it turned out we spent a few hours there due to the fact that all train lines pass through the capital. There may well be districts of Moscow that are delightful to visit, but we didn't have the means to see them in our short time there.

The train attendant woke us at 4:30am, an hour before we arrived. This was necessary because the washrooms are locked within 1/2 hour of the city for sanitary reasons. Through the window we saw dachas, tower blocks, hovels, highways, and cooling towers. When we arrived, we walked half an hour from Leningrad station to Kursk station (Moscow has 9 major train stations) to leave our bags until departure. The streets were filled with drifts of garbage, sleeping vagrant dogs and men, and loud and dirty cars. To be fair, the area around train stations is generally the worst part of a city.

We then walked around for several hours looking for a decent meal for less than $20. We eventually ate at a cafeteria-style place for $15 each. In the interim we passed through an ultra-ritzy shopping mall where coffee or tea was $7 and it cost $1 to use the washroom.

The only tourist sight we had time to see was Red Square. Here is Spasskaya Tower, and below is St Basil's Cathedral.

The monuments are impressive, as their creators intended, but I can't help feeling uneasy about them. St Basil's was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible to celebrate his conquest of Tatarstan. The modern Kremlin was built by the Bolsheviks. Likewise with the other statues and buildings nearby. (Lenin's mummy is a whole new level of creepiness.) Should I overlook this history and simply enjoy them as a visual spectacle? I don't know. I just wish there were more monuments to beauty, peace, and brotherhood and less to conquest and domination.

I had similar reservations about the rest of downtown Moscow. In our walks, we saw many richly-dressed Moskovites who studiously ignored the litter and vagrants underfoot. I can't celebrate Russia's economic renewal in good conscience if this capitalisme sauvage is the consequence.

The only building we visited was the State History Museum. Among many other things, it has furniture, carriages, and finery from the Romanov dynasty. I found that although there were some excellent historical and artistic pieces, they were mixed with out-of-order, trivial, and poorly presented items.

After our late lunch, I realized that I had misread our train tickets. We missed our connection to Vladimir, and we lost about $50 and four hours taking the bus. There was so much traffic that it took almost two hours just to get out of the city limits.