Moscow Trip

I spent Easter with some Dutch friends of ours who live in Moscow. I needed to travel to Russia for my job and it worked out that I could spend a weekend in Moscow. It was a great time, I visited all the standard sites and will describe two significant impressions/reflections here.

First, shortly after getting back to Donetsk we met with Marina, our language teacher. I brought along a book of art from the Tretyakov Gallery, the main Russian gallery in Moscow. I had spent about three hours there and was impressed by the scope of their collection.

Marina was educated in an art school and could have spent hours talking about any one of the paintings, ranging from Orthodox icons to more contemporary Russian paintings. I am always fascinated by the little audio guides that are available at many art galleries which point out the history and symbolism in the paintings. But Marina was more thorough than that; she must have talked for 30 minutes about one painting of Peter the Great (who she says could be viewed as more “terrible” than Ivan the Terrible).

Marina said that when she was in Moscow, she was in awe. She remembers thinking to herself that the same stones on which she walked were “tread by Pushkin and Tolstoy.” In general it seems to me that the Soviets did a more thorough job of teaching history than was my experience in N. America. Nonetheless, it is amazing to stand on Red Square and then see the same square in that painting of Peter the Great. Laura and I have already decided that we will invite Marina to be our personal guide next time we go to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Who knows when that will be.

Second, I was not aware of how sprawling Moscow is. I was told that the Moscow metro is the largest underground train network in the world. I believe it. My train back to Donetsk left from one of the eight major train stations. It is on the “circle” line and, on the map, doesn’t appear to be too far from the place where I was staying. I allowed myself an hour to travel there and that was a mistake. I began to realize this about half way down the “green” line, before even making my switch to the “circle” line.

The rest of this is going to sound exaggerated, but it is the truth. I ran to switch stations and metro-trains and arrived at my metro stop a full five minutes before my train was scheduled to depart. I ran up the escalator and asked the first random person I saw where the train station was. He pointed me in the right direction and I ran. I arrived at the first platform one and a half minutes before my train was to depart … from the 7^th platform. I couldn’t figure out where the tunnel under the tracks was and am sure I looked like a total fool running all over the first platform (the signage wasn’t too helpful). As I came up the stairs to the 7^th platform the train was already chugging away. I jumped in the door of the last wagon, number 18, just as the conductor was shutting it. I proceeded, sweaty and with my heart beating twice as fast as it should, through the last ten cars to my bunk, the eighth bunk in the eighth wagon. After that it took me a while to calm down.

Dave

Photo: Me at the "center" of Moscow marker