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We went out for a yummy lunch of traditional Russian food (Anya tried to take
us to Pret a Manger, which Carmel was fine with, but I had to make an
executive decision against it), then wandered through the Red Square and to
St. Basil’s Cathedral. (Credit Kate for pano idea)
Anya and Carmel at the entrance to the Red Square.
The Red Square is so named not
because of the red link to communism, but because red meant beautiful long
before communism came around.
Even the Russian girls love to dye their hair bright red, and wear
bright red lipstick and shoes.
St. Basil’s Cathedral, the symbol of Russia. Ivan the Terrible blinded the
architect who built it so that the architect would never build anything more
beautiful. It was almost torn
down by Stalin.
We are the first people ever to take their photo in front of the cathedral.
Anya led us around the streets of Moscow
for a while, and we eventually reached the hotel where the conference was
at. The conference hooked up its
participants and their guests. We
received free registration and accommodation at the 5-star hotel (Carmel and I got an
extra giant suite because we were not students). The President of Azerbaijan rolled on
through while we were in the lobby.
Even the Backstreet Boys had stayed there. The conference gave us nice conference
bags that contained 2GB memory sticks.
Normally, these kinds of science meetings in Russia
receive very little funding, but Vladimir Putin’s wife is on the
organizational committee. In the
evening we went to the plenary talk (Nobel laureate Dan Kahneman), followed
up by a great cocktail party. We
went back to Anya’s flat for some vodka and to gather up our laundry
and eventually made it back to the hotel for some well-deserved sleep.
The next morning we went to the fantastic buffet breakfast and headed to the
nearby Tretyakov Gallery, which is the treasure trove of Russian art. We popped back for a bit of lunch, and
took a bit of a siesta/nap. Carmel and I went to a
conference talk in the afternoon, then met up with Anya and headed out on the
town for the evening. On every
street were parked loads of shiny black BMW’s, Mercedes, and Range
Rovers. We went to a Georgian
restaurant (Genatsvale) for dinner that was phenomenal.
A bit of live Georgian music behind me.
Sounded nothing like Ray Charles’s Georgia On My Mind.
Scribbled on the bathroom wall: “Condi was here.”
The Georgian food was waaaayyy better than some other options. (By the way, c’s are pronounced
as s’s and p’s are pronounced as r’s).
Afterwards, we walked around some cool streets and neighborhoods for a couple
of hours led by Anya the tour guide, then returned to the hotel for the
night.
One of seven identical Stalinist buildings imposing on the city.
Another one not too far off.
Something, I have no idea what.
This is what was called an art garden.
Amazing what they can grow here.
This is the new traditional lock tree that newlyweds come to and attach their
lock to it (symbolism?). There were brides/grooms all over Moscow
and St. Petersburg
taking photos. You kind of knew
you hit a tourist spot when there were a few brides in the vicinity.
Ugly ship statue thing dedicated to Peter the Great. Moscow
people hate it because P the G moved the capital of Russia away from Moscow
to St. Petersburg.
The much prettier Christ Redeemer church nearby.
Another view.
Our third day in Moscow
started off with a trip to the Kremlin, which actually proved a bit more
difficult to enter than would be expected from its well-protected red brick
walls. There was some sort of
massive security event going on there and all the entrances were closed off. We walked around it a bit, but
eventually gave up and took shelter from the light rain in the nearby metro
station. We walked inside the
metro station for a bit, but eventually made a wrong turn. We emerged from the station behind the
security lines and inside the Kremlin entrance area. There were only a few tourists gathered
about—not the usual hours of lines that are generally there on a Sunday
afternoon. Cautiously, we decided
to see how far we could actually get with going in the Kremlin, and sure
enough we were able to purchase tickets and wander around the grounds inside
on an unusually quiet and peaceful day.
Entrance to the Kremlin.
One of a cluster of many cathedrals in the square. How does one choose which one to go
to? Certainly not location as
they are all 20 seconds from one another. Not the comfort of the chairs
either—apparently everyone must stand in Russian Orthodox
churches. This particular
cathedral had my favorite cathedral name ever: Cathedral of the Assumption. Carmel’s
favorite named one was right next door (Church of the Deposition of the
Robe).
Next, we went to the Pushkin
Museum, which was one
of the best museums we visited and contained a high density of works by
famous artists.
More from Kandinsky.
We returned to the hotel for Carmel’s
poster session.
 
Afterwards, we walked into the city center with Anya for dinner at an Uzbekhi
restaurant, which, like the Georgian restaurant, was fantastic.
We spent the rest of the evening exploring the metro, which is a tourist destination
in its own right (there were tour groups at a lot of the metro stops) due to
their intricate designs.
 
Supposedly, there is a whole second secret metro paralleling the one that
normal people use.
Anya’s parents called and offered to pick us up and drive us around the
city, so we took them up on that offer.
We zoomed around quickly to all the places that had taken us all day
to walk around, until finally they took us back to our hotel where we fell
asleep, exhausted.
The GUM shopping center.
Walls of a convent across the pond.
For our last day in Moscow, we realized that
we pretty much did everything that we had on our list for Moscow. It was a nice day so we decided to
head back to St. Basil’s and the Red Square
in search of a mini-St. Basil to add to my collection of cheesy
mini-monuments.
We returned to the hotel for lunch, found Anya, and headed out to the convent
for the afternoon.
Mini-convent.
In the evening, Carmel and I went to the
ballet (ballet originated in Russia),
Giselle, at the Stanislovsky Theater.
After 1 hour, the main girl died, the curtain closed, and everyone
applauded as the dancers came out to bow. Carmel
and I looked at each other and said, “That’s it?” We soon realized it was just
intermission, but we had no idea what they would do for a whole other
half.
After intermission, the second half started, and we saw a trippy dream world
thing where she came back as an angel and danced around with a couple dudes
who were into her (or so we thought, you can check out the actual plot on Wikipedia).
We caught a late dinner at Uncle Vanya’s, which served authentic
Russian food. Anya met up with us
afterwards and went out for drinks and dessert. I got a cherry vodka to start, which
was kind of gross and tasted like cough syrup. Anya picked the second one, which is
perhaps the worst thing I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was horse-radish vodka. It was a struggle to get down, but I
eventually did and Carmel
and I went back to the hotel for the night.
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