Day 64 - Meandering around Moscow

This was our last day of the trip so once again the theme was to take it easy and just go with the flow as much as possible. We didn’t sleep in quite as late but by the time we had consumed a hearty breakfast it was nearly 11:00am before we set off.

Space exploration monument

The plan was to walk to the Orange metro line and catch it out to the suburbs to see the All-Russia Exhibition Centre, known by its initials as the VDNKh, which stands for the “USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition”. Just outside the VDNKh there was a museum of Soviet Space Exploration, but since it was a given that there would be nothing in English in any of the displays, and also because it was obviously a favourite destination for school excursions, we decided not to go in. We did, however, check out the quite impressive (and big!) metal sculpture which sits above the museum – a massive stainless steel curve shooting into space with a rocket at the top.

The VDNKh park area is 2kms x 1km and the central boulevard is lined with pavilions that were originally intended to showcase the achievements of the Soviet economic system. Patriotic Soviet style statues also adorned many of the buildings and fountains. From what we could see a number of the pavilions now appear to be unused, and a fair ground has been added to the mix, though of course very little of that was in operation this late in the season. There was a big display of agricultural equipment at the start of the park and so varied was the range of machines on display that even I was not sure what some of them were for. The big plus though was finding that the park was now home to quite a large collection of market stalls. This kept us both entertained for quite some time, especially trying to work out what the large buckets of different food types were exactly. They were definitely popular, anyway, with ladles and scales working pretty well non-stop to serve customers.

Hammer & sickle bearers

On the way up to the VDNKh we had noticed that a monorail connected the Metro station there to a further Metro station on the Grey line, which runs through our “local” station. Since this was a rare opportunity to see a bit more of the Moscow suburbs we decided to try it out. First up we went one stop to the end of the line so we could get a better view of an enormous soviet style statue. Then in order to get a photo of it from the front I exited the station and walked to the other side of the park to take a few shots then come back in. Fortunately the monorail (as per the Metro) only costs about A$0.80 to ride as far as you like, so it was no big deal “wasting” a ticket.

The monorail ride was interesting, though not as smooth or as fast as some others I have been on. We did get a close-up view of some of the suburbs, namely block after block of mostly fairly run-down housing units. I noticed that it seems a lot of the multi-story apartment buildings are between 20 and 22 floors high – each one must house a lot of people.

After the monorail ride (which was packed by the way) we caught the Metro back to base, via a coffee shop for an afternoon tea in lieu of lunch. After a short rest we set off to walk back into the Red Square area to have our last dinner of the trip – ignoring the fact that one of the meals on our flight home will probably count as dinner in whatever time zone we are flying through at the time. We chose the Italian buffer where we had lunch a couple of days ago since it was quick, comparatively inexpensive and tasty.

St Basil's at night

I had brought my tripod with me on this excursion for the express purpose of getting some dusk photos in and around Red Square. Laura people-watched while I spent about 40 minutes taking a range of shots of the different features that were nicely lit up.

Metro ceiling mosaic

Photo project completed we did a bit of a Metro excursion on the way back to the hostel so we could see two of the stations renowned for their artwork. The first was a platform on the Red line which contains 76 bronze figures that celebrate the creation of the socialist world. We noticed that where a statue included the figure of a dog the dog’s nose was clean and shiny as a result of passing passengers rubbing it for luck, which many were doing at the time. The other station we saw was a series of beautiful arches. The ceiling was decorated with a couple of dozen mosaics of various Soviet themes, some of them quite colourful. Then it was back to our hostel, noting along the way the station where we will have to change trains tomorrow on our trip to the airport.

We have had an enjoyable time here in Moscow, although two things we will not miss is the constant exposure to cigarette smoke on the streets and the sight (and sound) of people spitting on the footpath.