Moscow is home to one of the world's greatest subway systems. The Metro is reliable and fast; in fact, because of Moscow's traffic, some say that the Metro is the fastest mode of transportation in the city. Those who travel primarily underground quickly become familiar with the
Metro Map:
Well I've spent my fair share of time on the Metro since I've been here and I noticed that some stations seemed either closer or farther away from each other than how they appear on the map. Well I spent much more time than I care to admit plotting each of the stations on a map, but here you go. It's mildly interesting at best...
I decided to get out of the apartment for a while today, so I took the metro to the center of Moscow and went for a walk. I always love seeing the different art at each metro station. I can't remember which station this was at, but I think it was Novokuznetskaya (новокузнецкая).
I think the best part of my walk was listening to the street musicians. I saw people playing guitar, violin, and accordion today.
Since it is Sunday, I thought I would check out a few of the cathedrals in the area. This one is called St. Clement's Church (храм священномученика климента). The churches are incredibly beautiful on the inside, but I didn't want to disturb the people inside by taking any pictures.
Crossing the Moscow River on the Luzhkov Bridge, I got to see some "love locks" like the ones in France. I'm guessing many of these were put here on Valentine's Day.
This one says: "You and I Forever."
I guess when the trees on the bridge fill up they're moved over to the walkway along the river. There must have been dozens of them.
As you walk into the park there's an enormous monument to the Russian painter Ilya Repin.
Eventually I found what I was looking for: "
Children are the Victims of Adult Vices." I guess the idea here is that each sculpture represents a different vice that children can fall victim to. The centerpiece of the display is Indifference.
Starting on the left we have: Drug Addiction, Prostitution, Theft, and Alcoholism.
Next to Alcoholism we have Ignorance and Irresponsible Science (Pseudoscience).
Here we have Indifference, Propaganda of Violence, Sadism, and For Those Without Memory (Capitol Punishment).
On the end we have Child Labor, Poverty, and War.
Despite the disturbing statues, it was a nice Sunday walk; clear blue skies, sun shining. Hopefully it won't be long before my family can join me out here for some more exploring!
As I've been getting settled in, I've had a little extra time to wander around the city looking for Snowden. I've been getting familiar with the metro system, too. Usually it isn't very exciting, but the other day there was an accordion player on the train. I also took this picture on one of my very first train rides (I guess he must have escaped from Sochi):
I made my way to Gorky Park to look around. It was a weekday, so there wasn't much to see, but it's a beautiful park - even in the winter. This was part of the park's entrance:
There was a really cool spaceship at the park on the walkway along the Moscow River.
Speaking of the Moscow River, this was what the river looked like when I walked to the park.
It's still pretty cold here, by most standards, but the past few days have been a bit warmer than usual. Here's a picture I took of the Moscow River about a week later:
I've been trying to scope out some fun places to go with the family when they get here. The Moscow Zoo looks like fun!
Here's a view of one of Stalin's Seven Sisters, a series of skyscrapers built under the direction of Stalin after WWII. I took this picture from Old Arbat street, a popular street for tourists to visit for all the street vendors and cafes.
There are several large malls in Moscow. I'm sure my wife will feel right at home! Here's the view from the top floor of the European mall at Kyivskaya. (The fountain actually tells the time - you can see that it's about 2:30 in the picture)
Another mall at the Vystovichnaya metro station had some enormous Matryoshka dolls!
My last stop was
ВДНХ (or VDNKh). The name is an acronym in Russian for the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy. There is a huge park with pavilions and statues, but I wasn't able to see all of it (another stop I'll have to revisit later). Here is a picture of the
Monument to the Conquerors of Space, a monument celebrating all the achievements made by the Russian space program.
So that's what I've been up to for the past few weeks. I'll try to make the most of my time here, and who knows, maybe I'll bump into Edward Snowden somewhere around town!
I had a little bit of time today to continue my search for Edward Snowden, so I decided to check out Moscow's famous Red Square. I started off at
St. Basil's Cathedral, which was beautiful in the snow.
There were a bunch of ice sculptures around the cathedral. I thought the mini-cathedral sculpture was pretty cool.
I was told that there are different displays and attractions in the middle of the square every few months. Right now there's a big ice-skating rink decorated with the Olympic colors.
Right outside Red Square there is a huge statue to a Russian Army General,
Georgy Zhukov.
Whoever designed the Olympic mascots did a horrible job. Nevertheless, the Russians seem to like them. I've seen the mascots all around town taking pictures with tourists.
Also outside of Red Square was this really cool Olympic countdown clock. Only 25 days left!
Across the street from Red Square is a huge underground shopping mall at Manezhnaya Square. It had a really cool food court with a bunch of American restaurants (if you look closely, you can see a sign for Sbarro above the fountain).
There is another large mall that is part of Red Square called GUM (it's pronounced "goom"). This mall was even more high-end than the other one. I liked all the Olympic decorations.
I thought it was pretty funny that they had a dude dressed up as an Olympic glove at one of the entrances.
They even had a store full of official Olympic merchandise. I wanted to buy something, but everything was super expensive.
Well, I guess I didn't find Edward Snowden at Red Square, but check out who I found instead: Stalin and Lenin!
Hi everyone! A lot of people have been asking me about my trip to Moscow, so I thought a blog might be a good way to keep everyone informed. Feel free to stay in touch with me through email and Skype. My information is on the "Contact Me" tab.
I'm in Moscow teaching English for a company called Novel English. You can access their website on the "Novel English" tab above.
A taxi picked me up at the airport and drove me across town to my apartment. The experience was horrifying. I felt like I was living one of those crazy Russian Dash Cam Videos from YouTube.
I'm not much of a writer, but I've taken some pictures of the area around my apartment, so I'll just post the pictures with a short description. Our apartment is in the North-West corner of Moscow, in the Mitino District. We live near the Mitino metro station (circled on the map below).
They say the Mitino station is a "sleeper" station; meaning that the area is full of apartments. The apartments are pretty old and dirty, but they're not as run down as I was expecting. Here's a picture of the entrance to our building:
The buildings are all over 20 stories high. Here's another view looking up to our apartment (ours is on the 4th floor):
We have a pretty nice view from our balcony:
Our refrigerator here is about half the size of our refrigerator back home. I'll have to do a post sometime about some of the cool foods they have at the grocery store.
It's only a few minutes to the metro station from our apartment. Most of the stairs in Moscow are stroller-accessible. (There's also graffiti all over the place).
There are so many cars here that parking can become a problem sometimes. Drivers have to get creative sometimes, parking up on the sidewalk (either fully or partially).
Getting around by metro is pretty easy. This is one of the entrances to our station; it says, "Moscow Metropolitan Mitino Station."
The metro stations are all really nice. You just swipe your card here to get in.
Here's a look down the stairs to our station.
This is a shopping center near our apartment. The big sign on the top says "Mitino" and underneath it says something like "Deli Standard." The big beaver says something like, "I Beaver" on its shirt. I think it might be one of the restaurants in the shopping center, but I'm not sure.
There are a few familiar fast food restaurants around here. These Golden Arches are right across the street from our apartment complex. I haven't been there yet because I'm afraid they'll ask me to Supersize or something and I won't be able to understand them.
We were able to order some Papa John's the other night. I was really impressed by how close it was to the Papa John's in the US; they even had the pepper and garlic sauce. I think it's funny that they use the apostrophe still, even though there are no apostrophes in Russian.
Let me know if you have any questions or if there's anything you'd like to see me post about. Hopefully I'll be able to track down Edward Snowden before I leave!
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