Pineapple Church

That morning didn’t look promising as I arrived cold and tired in Moscow’s Leningradsky Station, a huge Soviet mass surrounded by hundreds of people who were waiting for a train or who had just arrived. I sat down on the floor and prepared to wait four hours for Gustavo to arrive, but after one hour I saw a Japanese guy called Tatsushi (which is not a type of sushi) who I’d shared a room with in Peter, so we started chatting until a more normal hour. It was very interesting to talk to Tatsushi. We talked a bit about everything and I learned different things about Japan’s history. At one point we started talking about shoes and the fact that Russian women wear heals a lot came up. Tatsushi admitted that he hadn’t noticed the fact that they wear them a lot as for Japanese men short women are the more attractive ones!! Like a proper Japanese guy, Tatsushi is really friendly and helpful and waited with me until Gustavo arrived (late like a proper Latin American) and even helped me to make a phonecall as his Russian was much more advanced than mine.

When we were back in Gustavo’s house, I met Olga, his girlfriend, and we prepared to have breakfast of guava bocadillo. They were really happy to be able to have it and I was even happier not to have to carry it any more. As my stay in Moscow was short, we left immediately for the Kremlin. Since I was a child I've had the dream of being able to see the Red Square with its beautiful church. As it had been a wish for such a long time, when I arrived I said to myself, ‘Is that it?’, but after a while of walking around I started to like it. The St Basil church or the pineapple church, as Victorian travellers said, is deceptive as it’s much smaller than it seems and the one in Peter was more impressive in my opinion. We bought tickets for the Kremlin and felt a bit sad because Lenin’s mausoleum was closed (and I had really been looking forward to seeing Lenin’s body) and we went into the Kremlin after an airport security check. I already knew that in the Kremlin they’re really fussy about people breaking ‘the rules’ by a millimetre. If you sit on the floor, that’s bad; if you lean against the wall, that’s bad; if you don’t cross the road in the right place, that’s bad; if you climb the biggest bell in the world that was never rung and split because of its size, that’s bad; if you want to touch the bullets of the largest cannon in the world that was never fired, that’s bad; it was entertaining to see Chinese tourists listening to whistles and looking in all directions as if to say, who is whistling?

One thing, Russian women aren’t asked to have their pictures taken. On the contrary, every photo has to be taken in 5 different poses! This means that all the photo opportunity places are full of Russian tourists having a photo session. I took advantage of this by taking pictures of a few people so they’d hurry up, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.

One interesting thing about the Kremlin is that you see elaborate and highly decorated churches and buildings next to Soviet concrete blocks. This gives the place a special feel..

I would have liked to spend more time inside the Kremlin but time was pressing and my guide had plans for later. From the Kremlin we went to see a park called Tsaritsyno which was like a summer palace with a forest that was really far from the centre but was worth it, if only to see Moscow’s ethnic mix. In Peter you mainly see Russians but in Moscow there’s a mix from Asian Russia with people who have features that are very different from European features.

That evening Gustavo and I chatted with the help of a bit of vodka. He entertained me with stories about Russia, about corruption and the mafia that are destroying people. At one point he said that while in Colombia there’s a popular saying that it’s a country of secretaries and watchmen, in Russia it’s said that it’s a country of only watchmen. I got a chance to see what he meant when that evening we unashamedly handed 200 roubles to the security guard in his building so that he would let me stay!!

The next day Gustavo took me to the exhibition fair, a type of park equipped with huge Soviet constructions. They were enormous, imposing and with a specific type of Soviet architecture, adorned with stars and statues to the people. It was good that we rented bikes because that place was far too big to walk around. We also went to the botanical gardens that were so big they were more like a forest. There was a torrential downpour and we got soaked so had to go home to changed.

The Soviets had the idea that art belongs to the people, and that’s why you can find statues in just any street in just any neighbourhood. Based on this concept, the metro stations were decorated in such a way that they seem like art galleries – so that afternoon while it was raining, we did a tour of the metro.

That evening I met up with a friend that I’d made in Brighton 6 years back. She’s still just as quiet but it was cool to see her again and after dinner we went to have a look at the pineapple church by night :)

In Moscow there are these buildings called the 7 Muscovite sisters which are Stalinist-style towers (like in the shape of a wedding cake). The biggest of these towers is the one which belongs to Moscow State University, but as they’re so similar, every time I saw one I asked Gustavo, ‘Is that the university building?’ ‘No, not that one’. ‘Ah..’ I asked him so many times that on the last day he took me to see it. And of course, it’s another scary Soviet monster and it feels like it’s going to eat you up. According to Gustavo, the student halls have a bad reputation.

From there he took me to see Yuri Gagarin’s statue and then he came with me when I went to get my train. Thanks, Gustavo, for the great tour you gave me and for the great time we had together.

I had been kind of against Moscow. I knew it was huge and a bit aggressive, but actually I liked it a lot and would have liked to spend more time there. With its ubiquitous markets, ethnic mix, people living from what they can rummage, street dogs, and a combination of Soviet and Russian architecture, Moscow has something really special that no other European city has.

My next destination is a city called Vladimir, where I’ll spend a few nights and stop this frantic travel rhythm.