I think I feel another exclamation mark coming on.

 

Visited the State History Museum in Moscow, it’s extremely typical in terms of the exhibits, though with some quite fantastic external and internal architecture – each room has a different theme, concept or historical inspiration. The exhibits commence with prehistoric artifacts (flint axe heads) and progress through to nomadic times, then on to the Imperial period and Mongol invasion and occupation. The entire upper floor is devoted to costumes, regalia and pieces from the Romanov era onwards, and I paid it little heed, since there’s almost no interpretation in English and visually it seems almost indistinguishable from European equivalents ((presumably that was the foremost intention of the designers)). The funniest part by far was a comment, in the English-language interpretation attached to a paleolithic room, about early prehistoric social and family groups being the ‘first instance of social equality and collectivism at work’. Ummm.

 

 

On to St Basil’s, actually a misnomer. The exterior is well photographed of course, but the whole building seems much smaller in real-life, and the interior lacks the great open space of St Paul’s or Notre Dame – you ascend a narrow staircase from a ground floor of vaults and chapels, to a main floor which seems like a warren of chambers, the largest perhaps eight metres in breadth – but soaring upwards twice or three times that, with light pouring in. The largest chamber contained a four part male choir whose singing reverberated beautifully inside the structure.

 

Lunch was at a up-market cafeteria style eatery called ‘Moo-Moo’. The food is good, but the decor is dubious, with huge Fresian prints on the menus, tables, walls and anywhere else handy. Tolon-tolon flashbacks ensued.

Then on to the Kremlin proper, which is a curious mix of still highly-official buildings, such as the official residence of the president, and public spaces. The former Senate has been turned into a theatre used for opera and ballet. The main interest for tourists is the four ornate (gilded) Orthodox churches, with stunningly gaudy interiors, raised to the greater glory of whoever was running the country at the time. Well, there’s two more tourist traps – a giant useless broken bell, and a giant useless cannon, with over-sized balls.

Finally, a stroll down the Arbat, a pedestriansed and tourist-friendly shopping street, with many portrait-drawers and purveyours of Russian dolls. Also a set of stalls in a  cluster, each with a person and a small ornate dog, heavily groomed and ‘dressed’. I was extremely unclear what service was being offered – the dog, the dog’s offspring, or simply a chance to hold the dog.

Arrived in Moscow at 6am ((but this was almost an hour later than scheduled, quite usefully)) and crashed out at the hostel which thankfully has comfy couches and other useful amentities, such as fast, free internet. The hostel is another converted apartment (actually two) but the scale of such apartments as originally built is pretty impressive, the ceilings are actually higher than in Edinburgh or Glasgow.

After an easy stroll to Red Square, paid a visit to dead embalmed guy number two (of a three part set). The setup is the same as visiting uncle Ho, but with a short queue. Lenin himself looks very small, and somehow less lifelike than Ho – but I think that’s mostly the extreme pink lighting used to improve his complexion. Behind his tomb the great and good of the communist era are buried along the east wall of the Kremlin. And Stalin.

Red Square itself is impressive, bounded to the west by the immsense wall of the Kremlin, the north by an ornate museum, the south by St Basils (much smaller in real life than all the pictures make it seem) and to the entire east side by the GUM, which is an amazing arcade of pillars, bridges, columns and an arched glass ceiling. Inevitably all the shops are the expected lineup of Western designer boutiques, but walking around the space is delightful, at least when the sun is pouring in from above. After fleeing the outrageously prices of GUM, I did manage to locate (thanks to Lonely Planet) a well-stocked foreign-langauge bookstore, to remedy an accute shortage of reading matter. ((Would someone please make a decent e-book reader already? Dead tree is a rubbish way to move text around.))