We started with a little metro hopping but found it far harder to take pictures than in St Petersburg. With around nine million passengers each day, there is never a quiet time, and people move with speed and purpose through the stations easily blurring a photo. The earliest stations under Stalin are the most extravagant, while later stations are a little more uniform and utilitarian, but not without flair.
Komsomolskaya is named for the youth workers who helped with construction and had some interesting columns in the escalator hall, mosaic and corridor linking the M1 and M5 lines …
… but then we descended and were greeted with this confection …
The theme of the ceiling mosaics is the historical Russian fight for freedom and independence depicting various heros but it is the yellow and white decorated Hall,that really has the wow factor.
Next was Elektrozavodskaya, not surprising named after the nearby electric light bulb factory and also featuring reliefs of struggles on the home front during WWII.
Taganskaya had these Wedgewood like panels depicting various Russian WWII servicemen
Prospekt Mira was originally named for the nearby botanical garden so has images of figures planting and harvesting and generally living in harmony.
We stopped off at VDNH which stands for Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, a bit of a Stalinesque theme park of pavilions representing all Soviet republics. We had come for the Cosmonautics museum which is in the base of this huge titanium monument erected in 1964 to celebrate achievement in space exploration and depicts a rocket rising on its exhaust plume. Looking up at it again the moving clouds, it looks like it might tilt over!
It was filled with all things space and lots of models of spacecraft. Chris remembers space exploration from the beginning, but I was a bit young for even the first man on the moon to have made much of an impression in 1969 and was particularly fascinated. Here is a model of Sputnik, the first craft in space which was launched in 1957 …
… leading to dogs in space in 1960 …
… and a man – Yuri Gagarin in 1961 – who went up with the Vostock rocket in this tiny capsule.
In 1965, the first man left a spacecraft and went into outer space wearing a suit like this …
… and they landed the unmanned Luna 9 in 1966.
Kennedy was under pressure to overtake the Soviets in the space race and committed to having a man on the moon by the end of the decade and succeeded with Apollo 11 in 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and Chris remembers waving at him!
Having lost the race, the Soviets focused on other aims and here is the first craft to land on Mars in 1971 …
… and the Mir space station, in orbit from 1986-2001, which we went inside – the nearest we will get to being in space!
We might have walked further into the park, but at that moment the sky turned black and the rain started, so we headed straight back underground!
Novoslobodskaya has art nouveau stained glass panels depicting the intellectual professions with a mosaic called Peace in the Whole World at one end. The portrait of Stalin was replaced by white doves.
Barrikadnaya with marble in shades of pink and interesting lighting …
… As did Kuznetskiy Most, our last stop.
Keeping up the Soviet theme, we went and played at the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games, where we were given boxes of coins coins to play machines from the 1980s and 1990s. Some to too difficult to figure out without understanding Russian, but it’s not that hard to fire torpedos or shoot rabbits!
When we came out we realised we had luckily missed another of today’s showers and felt very lucky.
We have come across lots of buskers in Moscow, but returning to the hotel and walking through the underpass in Arbat Street these musicians were by far the best.
Sticking with the definite Soviet theme to the day, we returned to Varenichnaya No1 in Arbat Street.
We’ve found Moscow a great place to visit, far easier to make ourselves understood and get around than we expected, although we would be lost without google maps and google translate, and it will be even better when it is all beautifully repaved! As to some comments that it is expensive, that depends on whether you can be brave and get yourself about on public transport or rely on the very expensive organised tours.
- While many people don’t exchange a smile in the street, we’ve found most people we’ve spoken to friendly and helpful.
- The public transport is excellent with metro trains every couple of minutes and buses every 5-10 minutes, although they get caught up on traffic on the rush hour.
- There seems to be a huge repaving project with working going on simultaneously all over town causing chaos, but apart from this the city is spotlessly clean.
- People dress with a sense of style and quite smartly. Lots of tall slim girls, little dresses and high heels about. Pleased to say the gangster rapper style of trouser wearing has not reached Russia yet!
- The food is excellent – the choice, the quality, the presentation and the value everywhere we have eaten so far.
- Walking seems to be part of life for Muscovites as they walk purposefully and at speed through the long corridors at metro stations and stride out along the wide boulevards.
- For those who cannot walk fast enough, there are also lots of wheeled conveyances whizzing along pedestrianised routes, such as bicycles, unicycles, scooters, skateboards and inline skates.
- We feel we have seen most of what we wanted to see, although there were attractions that we didn’t quite manage like the Bolshoi ballet or even the ‘Shoot a Kalashnikov Tour’ advertised in our hotel, a snip at £55 each!
Tomorrow we leave Moscow for the Golden Ring …
Off Travelling Together 