Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We spent three nights in Moscow on board our boat taking tours each day and one night tour. Our friends from Newcastle, England, Helen & Don travelled with us. Moscow traffic is very slow they used to have a great road system before private cars were allowed. Red Square (named from the Russian word beautiful), a cobbled square basically for military parades lies between the Kremlin outer wall and the Gum a large department store similar in ways to the QVB but much larger with three of four glass topped arcades. The Kremlin, an old fortress is triangular in shape and now houses the military offices, the old arsenal, a few churches etc, (one American asked what was on the fourth side of the triangle!!!) Red Square was being prepared for the May 9 Victory Parade relating to the victory over Germany. While visiting the Kremlin we say the rehearsal of the low level fly over,helicopters, transports, air warning, refullers, bombers and fighter aircraft - very exciting. The next night we saw the tanks and rocket launchers in the square and viewed the city by night - very impressive churches and views to the Olympic Games park and ski jump.
Our first optional day trip was to Sergiev Posad or St Sergius Monastery, one of the most important monasteries with gold encrusted onion domed roofs and full of icons, treasures donated by the Tsars and highly decorated walls; local were lined up to kiss statues and buy holy water.
We used the underground in both Moscow and St Petersburg, both are very deep - longest escalators I have ever seen; there is a controller in a box presumably to get the tidal flow right on the three escalators, very few people walk not like London when you stand to the right to allow walkers. Moscow Soviet stations are so over the top grand all marble and chandeliers with statues and mosaics depicting the happy workers. While the population lives in tiny apartments in huge blocks the old ones 5 storey's as you needed a lift for 6 storey's, newer Soviet unit are very ugly, dilapidated in long blocks of 8 to 12 storey's, post Soviet units are more interesting and varied.
The only houses and Daches are in the countryside. The best old block overlooking the river in Moscow housed mainly party officials, over 90% of the occupants did not survive Stalin. The buildings and infrastructure has been let go for at least 20 years and there is now an effort to catch up, new buildings, freeways and services are appearing. Trains, ferries, buses are 30 - 40 years old.
We were amazed to see so many churches. They are the predominate structures over the whole country far more evident than the churches and cathedrals of England, Italy, France etc, all with their unusual onion domed roofs, These roofs were often gold plated and set off by bright blue or green domes. How have these survived the Communists & Stalinists? An explanation is that many were demolished and some stayed as museums. Many have been recently been rebuilt as we witnessed but most, particularly from a distance, look well preserved. Although many were demolished in Soviet times as this was/is a fairly backward country and superstitious, the church is still very important to the masses. As the communists have relaxed their stance to the church after WW2, there are quite a few rebuilt. In our tour we visited many churches, too many. The churches may have survived for many centuries as they were built of brick when the residential buildings of timber did not or were not redeveloped.
- comments