The long view of the Red Square

Woke up this morning feeling somewhat more chipper. The gal showed up at 10am on the dot. I guess my luck was set to break as she was not a 20 year old college model. Her name is Olga and she's an elder gal - nice person but not the drop dead gorgeous model I was expecting. Cest la vie.

So I found out from her that the hotel I was in was located pretty far out in the suburbs. Like about the same distance as I am in Hillsboro to go to downtown Portland. Well feh. Good news is that she said the area I was in was really safe and nice, though there really isn't much around here at all.

So we hopped on the subway to get to downtown Moscow. The metro (what Europe calls a subway) is very efficient with trains coming by every couple minutes. The marking are clear and subway maps are everywhere.

we ended up coming out near the Red Square but first by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There is a 24 hour honor guard stationed there on each side of the tomb, and there is an eternal flame always on. Pretty cool tribute to their fallen comrades. We started to make out way to the Red Square but we stopped by a massive high end mall to get a coffee real quick.

I ended up having a halva latte (which was quite good) and a Russian cottage cheese filled pancake thing with jam on it. It was a traditional thing. The weird thing is that there were police keeping an entire section of the mall closed. Then later, when we went outside, we noticed that the Red Square was blocked off and that there were police EVERYWHERE. The Kremlin is next to the Red Square, so I think what was happening was some kind of political summit or Putin was doing something or other. So, in a nutshell, we had to forgo a lot of the tourist things that we were going to do.

There are 8 churches under one roof. One for each war victory.

We ended up having to take the long way around to see if we could check out the Red Square/Kermlin from an opposite side. Which was cool since we walked over a bunch of bridges while she pointed out cool stuff that was in downtown Moscow. 

Apparently way decades ago, Russia created a giant statue of Christopher Columbus and wanted to sell it to the US. We though the thing was butt ugly and told them so, refusing to buy the thing. So the Soviets did the next best thing. They cut the head off of the thing and instead placed the head of Peter the Great onto it. This thing was HUGE. The photo was from a great distance.

There is a tradition in Russia where you engrave the name of you and your lover on a lock, then lock it to a bridge and throw the key into the nearby canal. This apparently dates back to the WWII days in Serbia when a young war couple (Nada and Relja) fell in love. When he went off to Greece, he ended up falling in love with a gal over there and Nada died of a heartbreak. After which, young Serbian women would engrave they and their partners names to a lock and attach it to the bridge where the young lovers had met- in hopes of not falling to the same fate.

Years later it has become a tradition across Europe. In Moscow they even built special iron trees where newly married couples would stop during their wedding day to attach a lock onto these trees. Now they are all over Russia but there is an avenue next to a park near the Red Square where this is especially a tradition. The streets is lined with iron trees covered in locks. Once there are too many, they set down another tree.

So we walked all the way around the Kremlin and Red Square until we were back to the Metro station near the Kremlin entrance. Unfortunately, since I had forgotten my Visa card and had little money, I could't get tickets to check out the Kremlin. So I plan on hitting it up tomorrow after the Metro/Arabat tour. I did get some bitchin' outside pics though.

I headed back to the hotel and chilled out for a while, then decided to walk around the local area in search of food. Moscow seems to basically be Russia's version of New York. Big financial area, mostly working, but with a huge downtown. The city really is huge and very modern. But dirty. Really really dirty. The cars don't have catalytic converters, the factories have no incentive to be eco-friendly, and everyone and their mother smokes (seriously, everyone's moms smoke more than they do). Russia took one look at their environment and said "Nyyyaaaaaa, fuck that..."

As a result, you can see the smog in the air at ground level. Anything more than a couple blocks away has a foggy feeling - but that there isn't fog son. Walking next to the roads you can taste the pollution and my nose somewhat stung after being in the for a while.

I ended up walking under the railway tracks to the nearest highway road. I figured there would be some restaurants on it. No such luck. Tons of buses and cars about, but the stores lining the road were more of a utilitarian nature. Auto parts stores, clothing, rugs, banks, etc. Not even many markets. In Europe they tend not to have a lot of big markets, they have lots of small markets spread out all over so people can walk to them.

Anywhose, I finally ended up walking all the way back to the hotel and hitting up a tiny buffet style place called De Cafe. It was a cross between a Paris and New York themed interior, but serving strictly cheap Russian food. I had some kind of meat patty with a poached egg on it, macaroni noodles, cucumbers with sour cream drizzled over them, a bowl of beef and veggie soup, and a Coke. It only cost me 300 rubles and it was filling, so what the hell.