Military music festival

Last week the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival was held over seven evenings in Red Square. We bought tickets for Friday night's performance.

Now military music really isn't to my taste. All that brass, drums and marching around. I prefer to chill out on the balcony with a glass of wine and some Cafe del Mar playing in the background.

Opening performance of the festival. Spasskaya (Saviour) Tower, after which the festival is named, is the big tower with the clock on the right. By the way, I am now taking the precaution of adding a watermark to my photos. If people want watermarkless copies, email me at the address on the watermark.

Anyway, it was great. Red Square is a magnificent setting for a performance of anything, especially as the sun sets and the lights are turned on St Basil's. Yes, there was lots of marching, but I couldn't help but be impressed with the precision and there was some pretty imaginative choreography, too, both of the soldiers and the accompanying dancers.

So I suspended my prejudice against big brass bands for the night and thoroughly enjoyed the music. Being the bicentennial of Napoleon's invasion of Moscow, the 1812 Overture got a good workout.

Tell you what, though, it got darned cold when the sun set. I was shivering when we were walking home, and I had a warm jacket on. Autumn has moved in. I'm noticing the sun is quite close to the horizon now at 7am, and it won't be too long before it's dark when we get up in the morning.

I've added a link to a video I also made on the evening - click here  

Notice the guy in the foreground with the bucket and broom cleaning up after the horses.

Bagpipes and kilts always ensure the Scots a distinctive performance.  

With the Singapore show it was all about the dancing

The Chinese didn't seem to have a military band at all, just dragons and green umbrellas. 

Ending, of course, with fireworks

Stalin towers: Moscow University

Irked by the fact that New York was building lots of skyscrapers and Moscow didn't have any, Stalin embarked on a tall building construction program. A design competition was held and the result today is seven buildings which are referred to as the Stalin towers, or the Seven Sisters.

The Seven Sisters are scattered across Moscow. I can see the towers of four of them from our balcony, in different directions.

The style of architecture is a sort of ornate Stalinesque, covered-with-statues, Baroquey, pseudo-Gothic - often succinctly referred to as 'wedding cake'. I quite like the buildings, they complement the character of Moscow rather well. New York style skyscrapers would have looked completely out of place, as do the glass towers currently under construction at Moscow City.

The Seven Sisters were solidly engineered. So much concrete and steel was used that they could never have been as tall as New York's buildings.

 This didn't stop the Moscow University tower, which I consider the most attractive, from being the tallest building in Europe from when it was completed in 1953 until 1990.

The Moscow University tower, for many years the tallest building in Europe

Gulag workers were employed in its construction, some of whom were German prisoners-of-war. For a time they were housed in the building on the 24th and 25th levels.

The Seven Sisters have provided the design inspiration for several more recent tower constructions, such as the Pekin Hotel near Mayakovskaya (close to where I live) and a new apartment tower at Sokol. It can be difficult for the passing tourist to work out what isn't an original Seven Sister.

Moscow University tower

Moscow University tower entrance

Inspiration for female students is provided near the building's entrance...

...and for the guys (he's actually got last week's 'footy record' hidden in that book)

GUM

Sorry I haven't written recently. We've just changed apartments, which kept me pretty busy. Now we have a view, which is great, as we no longer have to take the lift and then walk outside to find out what the weather is doing. Speaking of which, it's become noticeably cooler the past week or so. Jackets are being worn.

A couple of posts ago I covered shopping malls. There was one notable mall missing - GUM.

I suppose you could buy glue here, but you’d more likely be seeking fashion accessories. 

GUM stands for Gosudarstvenny Universalny Magazin, which means Government Department Store. This lovely three story building defines the eastern side of Red Square. It was constructed in 1893 and at the time was one of the world’s most modern commercial areas.

GUM - last Christmas

During the Soviet years it was allowed to run down, maintenance of free-enterprise shopping centres not really being a part of the communist manifesto. When Wendy saw it in 1991 it was very shabby and there wasn’t much on offer other than the odd spud.

However, this is just the sort of place (location, location, location) that makes a free market economist’s eyes light up and it has undergone a complete renovation. It is now full of trendy boutiques, cafes and dazed tourists. 

GUM Christmas display, December 2011

Spring display 2012

Also part of the 2012 spring display

 

GUM - backdrop to the temporary winter skating rink in Red Square (add to your list of one hundred things to do before you die - skating at dusk in Red Square - it's a surreal experience)

Kolomenskoe sand sculptures

 
A number of excellent sand sculptures depicting historic characters and events have been created in Kolomenskoe Park. Tickets are only 100 rubles, about $3 - they are worth a visit (price quoted does not include airfares)

St Basil's in sand

Napoleon. This is a thoughtful sculpture, with his Russian adversaries on the far side and a broken chessboard in between.

Looking far less relaxed than Napoleon are these French soldiers, no doubt wishing they were sipping wine in Provence rather than dragging this cannon through the mud (sorry, sand).

Tolstoy, writer of that epic novel of Napoleon's invasion of Russia 'War & Peace'. Despite its size, the book is quite readable. Give it a go sometime.

View of the sculpture park. They will be removed in September 2012. The face on the left belongs to Maxim Gorky, about whom you can read in an earlier post.

Tchaikovsky

And of course, it wouldn't be complete without good old Peter the Great.

Shopping malls

We did some shopping today. 

Afterwards we took a stroll in Sokolniki Park and came across these characters. They were enthusiastically playing that 1970s Deep Purple classic ‘Smoke on the Water’. 

 

  

 Back to the shopping. 

I wrote a post some time ago about supermarkets, and have been meaning to follow it up with an item about shopping malls.

There is no shortage of large shopping malls in Moscow. They cover the spectrum from busy, workaday places centred around large supermarkets to glitzy palaces with expensive brand-name boutiques and few visible customers. 

Muscovites seem to love spending Saturdays shopping and hanging out in malls. 

The Soviet Union lasted about 3,900 weekends. That’s a lot of Saturdays with no shopping malls. I wonder what they did with themselves? 

Entrance to the Metropolis shopping mall at Voykovskaya, just before Christmas last year, where I usually do my shopping.

Inside the Metropolis mall. The guys looking towards me are security guards and they told me not to take photos. I'm not sure what State secrets this photo contains. I now use a discrete little point-and-shoot in malls.

Looking down the elevator shafts in the Kievskaya mall. Above the clock is a cafe. I know its not immediately obvious, but if you look for a while, you'll work it out.

The mall associated with the large Ashan supermarket at Marina Rosha.

I don't know the name of this mall. It's very close to Red Square, beside Manezh Square.

This is perhaps the most exclusive mall. It's at Crocus City and is populated entirely by expensive boutiques. There are usually more security staff than customers. Though the coffee is expensive and its a bit of a way out, it is pleasant to sit in mid-winter amidst the greenery.

Another view of the Crocus City Mall

There is one notable shopping mall I have not covered here - GUM. This mall flanks Red Square and is a significant historic building. I'll cover it in my next post.

St Petersburg

Having last written a post about Peter the Great, It is perhaps timely to mention the city he founded – St Petersburg (known during the Soviet years as Leningrad). 

The fast train service between Moscow and St P. covers the 800 kilometres in 4 hours 30 minutes. This includes several stops. The speed is displayed in the carriage and reaches 220kph at times. At this speed it is such a smooth ride that Wendy had thought we were doing about 120.

While it is a far more entertaining way to travel than by aircraft, there really isn’t all that much to see along the way. Flat terrain, forests, some fields, a few lakes and the occasional rundown village or town. After the first half hour, a soporific sameness.

To tell the truth, I’m not really in the mood to write much today and what is there to say? Everyone who has been to St Petersburg will tell you how drop dead beautiful it is and you can read its history and economy on Wikipedia if you have a mind to.

I think every tourist takes this same picture. It's the Church of Our Saviour on Spilled Blood - a reference to it having been built on the spot where Tsar Alexander III was assasinated in 1881.

One thing though, Wendy’s work took her into the outer suburbs of St P. and I came along for a look. Not so nice. The same bleak apartment towers I have seen on the fringes of many European cities. 

Meanwhile, back in the Disneyworld of the historic centre, the characters dress the part.

Peter the Great statue. Period costumes - adding atmosphere or simply banal (or just me getting older and cynical)?

And oh yes - they don’t park cars on the footpath! You have no idea the difference this makes (though if you live in Moscow, perhaps you do). Unlike Tverskaya Used Car Ulitsa in Moscow (actually a used car yard would be better, at least the cars would be clean), the main boulevard, Nevskiy Prospect (Avenue) is a delight to stroll along. 

Nevskiy Prospect. Good car parking space going to waste.

Some places are just so darned lovely, even the most cynical of folks can't help but be impressed.

Peter the Great statue

Walk west of the Kremlin along the Moscow River and it won’t be long before you encounter the 98 metre tall statue of Peter the Great. This chap was Tsar of Russia from 1682 to 1725 and spent quite a bit of time in Western Europe, where he liked to hang around shipyards. Until Peter's time, Russia, with its capital at Moscow, was very inward-looking. This seems to be a feature of Russian history - swinging from, on the one hand, engaging with and being a part of Europe to, on the other hand, becoming quite parochial, paranoid and self-absorbed.

Popular legend has it that an earlier incarnation of this statue depicted Christopher Columbus and was to be a gift to the people of the USA, who didn’t want it. Perhaps the fact that it is twice the size of the Statue of Liberty had something to do with that. After the rejection, Christopher Columbus’ head was supposed to have been replaced with that of Peter the Great. I am sceptical of this yarn, but tall tale or true, the statue has nevertheless had something of a history of rejection.  

The statue was designed by Zurab Tsereteli and erected in 1997 with the blessing of the Moscow Mayor at the time, Yury Luzhkov. It was immediately controversial, there reportedly being plots to blow it up. Hence the base is fenced off and guarded.

There is no access to the base of the statue. Can't have people blowing it up - especially as it might land on the Chocolate Factory nearby.

 After Luzhkov’s term as Mayor expired, the statue was offered to the city of St Petersburg, who also didn’t want it (St Petersburg Times, 8 Oct 2010). 

Peter the Great didn’t particularly like Moscow and moved the capital to St Petersburg. This may, in part, explain the statue's unpopularity with many Muscovites. In St Petersburg, Peter the Great had Russia’s first navy built - the statue is actually called ‘300 years of the Russian Fleet’ and was built to commemorate this event.

Ironic. A huge statue of a guy erected in a city he didn’t like rejected when offered to the city he founded.

I wouldn’t like to see a statue like this in Sydney Harbour. The design is a bit wacky for my taste, as are the odd proportions, with a huge Peter standing on a pile of ships. Still, it is striking and a good conversation piece.