Museum of Contemporary History

After very heavy snowfall last Monday, the daytime temperature has been hovering around zero. While the city is pretty efficient at clearing snow from the streets, what happens on the footpaths is a bit hit-and-miss and often seems to depend on what the adjacent building owner feels like doing. These temperatures mean that snow partially melts and then refreezes overnight, becoming icy and dangerous. It’s not much fun walking around at the moment.

Snow and ice on roofs is also a hazard to passers-by and there has been plenty of activity clearing it off. Unfortunately this often means blocking off sections of the footpath, temporarily rerouting long-suffering Moscow pedestrians on to the roads to take their chances with the cars. The following photo I took today of some guys clearing snow off the roof of a 6-storey building. I noticed a couple of them were wearing harnesses, but they weren’t actually connected to anything. I guess they rely on that flimsy looking fence if they start sliding down the roof. Most buildings have them. There can be a fairly casual approach to workplace safety in Moscow. Workers using jackhammers, for example, often use no ear protection.  

Clearing snow off a 6 story building. I'm not sure I'd like to rely on that little fence in an emergency

 Anyway, I’ve gone off the track, because today I really intended writing about the Contemporary History Museum in Tverskaya Ulitsa.

This museum covers the period from the mid-19^th century to the end of the Soviet Union. It contains a remarkable collection of original documents and artifacts. If you have any interest in revolutionary Russia, this museum is a must-see. The presentation is logical, with numerous rooms of displays guiding the visitor chronologically through the tumultuous events that have made modern Russia.

Each room has a well-written interpretive plate in both Russian and English. I think these must be fairly new, as I don’t recall seeing them on my previous visit nearly 12 months ago. In addition, the rooms also have an English language A4 sheet which explains, in more detail, many of the displays, though these sheets are becoming a bit tatty. 

If I have any misgivings about the museum, it is that some of the more unpalatable aspects of recent Russian history tend to be smoothed over. Stalin’s brutal reign, for example, is given a fairly light touch. One could easily come away from the display of contemporary propaganda posters and other paraphernalia with the impression he was a kindly and benevolent ruler. His execution of large numbers of army officers prior to the Great Patriotic War/Second World War is described as a reorganisation of the army. The department that employed me for many years in Australia was also recently restructured - thankfully I survived the experience.

Stalin taking time out from the dull routine of purges

 That aside, this museum contains some amazing stuff and if you think you’d enjoy seeing such things as actual banners that were waved around during revolutionary demonstrations, you won’t begrudge the 250 rouble/$7.50 entry fee (plus an extra 100 roubles if you want to take photos).

This museum is easy to get to, it’s on Tverskaya Ulitsa, almost opposite Tverskaya metro station (just up the road a bit towards Mayakovskaya). You can’t miss it, it’s the grand red building with crouching lion statues and a little armoured car in the courtyard. 

The building is also worth visiting in its own right. It was built around 1800, damaged in Napoleon’s 1812 fire, renovated and extended, then sold to the English Club in 1831 by the owner, Count Razumovsky. The English Club, which was formed in 1772 as an expats social club, was disbanded after the 1917 revolution and the building taken over by the Bolshevik government.

Parts of the museum, once used as the English Club, are quite grand

A great collection of revolutionary artifacts.

What the well-dressed Russian geologist was wearing before the revolution. All I used to wear was a pair of old shorts and a tatty teeshirt. At least the hammers haven't changed much.

Sigh...reminds me of the good old Cold War days

Hermitage Garden

Supporters of the Geelong Australian Rules football club may be amused by this Moscow milk carton. This link will help those sadly deprived people who do not follow Australian Rules football understand what I mean - http://www.geelongcats.com.au/

It’s quite a sunny afternoon, nice after an extended period of gloom. It doesn’t help that Moscow is in a permanent state of daylight saving, which means it still doesn’t get light until around 9.30am. Nice in the afternoons, but 5 months of getting up in the dark is difficult.

Last Sunday was also fairly pleasant, so we took a walk to the Hermitage Garden which is located on Ulitsa Karetnyy Ryad, close to where it joins the Garden Ring (which is actually a multi-laned traffic snarl of a ring road).

This small, manicured park, opened in 1894, surrounds the Hermitage Theatre. In summer the gardens are popular with wedding groups, people quietly sitting and reading, and kids running around the playground. In winter, there is a skating rink, but otherwise not much to do other than take a short stroll along the snowy paths. 

Childrens' slippery dip (slide) sculpted from ice. Photographed in the Hermitage Garden last Sunday (20 Jan)

 What I particularly like about this park is the Art Nouveau fence and entrance. Still, being currently ranked 547 out of 592 things to do in Moscow by the Lonely Planet, I doubt too many tourists will be seeing it. 

The rest of these photos I took last summer - the gardens are at their best in the summer and I need to remind myself occasionally that there is such a thing.

The wonderful Art Nouveau garden entrance and fence.

The Hermitage Theatre

One of the grand garden pergolas

Not too surprising that this park is popular with wedding groups.

Museum of Palaeontology

Happy New Year and I hope you all had a great Christmas. We spent ours in Germany, love their Christmas markets. Same grey skies as Moscow, though 10 degrees warmer (zero instead of minus 10). 

Like most young boys, as a kid I was interested in dinosaurs. Unlike most young boys my hero was not Batman or Superman, but a real guy – a palaeontologist named Roy Chapman Andrews. There is a suggestion that this chap may have provided some inspiration for the creation of Indiana Jones. Look him up. 

I let this interest influence my direction in life to an extent and ended up doing a Ph.D in geology. During my studies I realised that the fate of most palaeontologists was not digging up dinosaur bones (which is, itself, actually quite tedious), but rather to peer into a microscope looking at foraminifera for oil companies. Ho hum. So I eventually ended up spending 25 years with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. Much more exciting. 

The point to this ramble is that I never lost my interest in dinosaurs and things fossilised. If I have time I usually seek the natural history museum in the city I am visiting and check out its collection. I’ve seen a lot of them - and Moscow has the best. Even the famed American Museum of Natural History in New York doesn’t quite match it. 

An entire building is devoted to displaying this wonderful collection. It’s a little out of town – take the yellow line (6) south to Teply Stan, then walk north east about 400 metres along Profsoyuznaya until you see the building depicted in the photo below.

My only complaint is that almost all the information is in Russian. Hardly surprising, though, as I can’t imagine this museum is a must-see for the average tourist with a couple of days in Moscow. But if you are here for longer, this museum is worth a look - especially if you are stuck for something to do with the kids one snowy afternoon. 

Part of the magnificent foyer diorama

 A Tarbosaurus (an Asian tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur) checking out whether the bones on the Saurolophus (a duckbill dinosaur) are worth a gnaw

A marine reptile - Plesiosaurus (you are supposed to imagine it is swimming, not flying!)

There are several statues of various extinct critters (such as this snow-encased Mammoth) in the courtyard, which is closed for winter. 

They really do have some great stuff, including this Indricotherium, an Oligocene mammal that more than matches the dinosaurs for height

Red Square by night

A couple of posts ago I wrote an item about the hazards of pedestrian crossings in Moscow and the doubtful competence of some drivers here. If that item interested you, have a look at this link: http://youtu.be/AXz4P6EpX3s

We took a walk in and around Red Square the other evening.

North western access to Red Square.

Resurrection Gate. The entry into Red Square from the north east. The original 1680 gate was demolished in 1931 to allow access for military displays. It was rebuilt in 1996.

Nikolskaya tower. The original tower was built in 1491, rebuilt in 1806. The top of the tower was blown off by Napoleon's troops in 1812. A Red Star was first placed on top of the tower in 1935.

St Basil's Cathedral (or the 'Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat' if you'd prefer) and Spasskaya Tower (1491)

The Bolshoi Theatre. The building to the right is TSUM, a fashionable department store.

Eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexander Garden, under the Kremlin walls

Dostoevskaya metro station

I haven't done a post about a metro station for a while.

I have chosen one of the newest - only opened in 2010 - Dostoevskaya. It is on the northern lime green line (number 10).

This is a beautiful station.

Dostoevskaya Station is decorated to celebrate the writings of that famous 19th century author, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Most often recognised as the producer of several enormous Russian novels that everyone feels they ought to read...some day...maybe...when I'm retired...

Smile...Fyodor is watching

I have read 'Crime and Punishment'. Airing that achievement, along with the conquest of 'War and Peace', is sure to impress at parties. Any other academic achievements become quite incidental. I don't mention that 'The Idiot' defeated me after 300 pages.

When the station opened there were some complaints that it was too brooding and gloomy. Not surprising considering Dostoevsky's novels are brooding and gloomy. As the designer, Ivan Nikolayev reportedly said, "What did you want? Scenes of dancing?"

You might expect a space ship, but all you'll get is a rattly old train.

Scenes from Crime & Punishment. No dancing, just Raskolnikov and his axe.

Pedestrian crossings

In 2009 the first global conference on road safety was held in Moscow. This is a little ironic considering Russia has the worst road accident statistics in Europe. Figures from the World Health Organisation show that Russia has 55.3 deaths per 100,000 vehicles per year. For comparison, Australia has 8 and Iceland 5. Even the excitable Italian drivers can only manage 12. 

Pedestrians often fall victim to this motorised bedlam. Crossing the road is particularly hazardous (see the 16 Sept entry 'our lives in our hands' at http://diaryinvisible.wordpress.com/ for a tragic eye witness account). Major multi-lane roads in Moscow will generally have pedestrian underpasses (perehods). The only way to cross most roads, though, is by pedestrian crossing.

Moscow drivers will not stop if they see you waiting on the side of the road. You actually have to take the plunge and start the crossing, ensuring you are not so committed that you can’t retreat in a hurry. Most drivers will then stop - reluctantly. The problem is, you can’t be sure they are going to stop – some will deliberately swerve around you; be absorbed in a mobile phone conversation; are drunk; or may simply be incompetent behind the wheel (it is not uncommon for people bribe their way to a licence or obtain forgeries - http://rt.com/news/corrupted-driving-education-accidents/). 

Matters are not helped by the chaotic parking, with many drivers blocking the pedestrian crossings with their vehicles. I don’t know if it is illegal to park on pedestrian crossings in Moscow – after all, they park all over the footpath. I get the impression it’s OK to park anywhere that isn’t blocked off by bollards. 

Park wherever you like, even on pedestrian crossings, along Moscow's main commercial boulevard, Tverskaya Ulitsa. If it wasn't for the bollards, they'd be on the footpath, too.

 I doubt the traffic police would have the time to do anything about this madness even if they had the inclination. People involved in any accident are required to wait with their vehicle and not move anything until the traffic police inspect the scene. I spoke to someone whose husband was rear-ended going to work and he had to wait 4 hours. There have been two accidents at intersections in our street over the past few weeks, and those vehicles were there for hours, blocking the intersection so that cars had to mount the footpath to get around them. 

Given the high accident rate in Russia, I’m therefore not surprised that giving out parking tickets (if such things exist) is a low priority. 

Pedestrian crossings in Moscow are hazardous enough already without having to negotiate this.

Who gives a rats, I'll just park where I want.

Moscow City

It has been snowing, though rain last night cleared much of it. Last year we didn't have snow until well into December. It seems to have been snowing over much of Europe, so it may just be an autumn cold snap. 

There is a cluster of glass towers on the north bank of the Moscow River, about 4 kilometres west of the Kremlin, called the Moscow International Business Centre, or Moscow City.  It was conceived in 1992 and much construction activity has been going on there since, though not without hiccup. The world's tallest tower, to be named Russia Tower, was planned for the site. Construction began in 2007 but the project was scrapped after the global economic crisis.

That hasn't stopped Mercury City Tower, which is still under construction, from becoming Europe's tallest building at 339 metres and Federation Tower will be even higher at 506 metres.

The cluster of glass towers that comprises Moscow City. Mercury City Tower, currently Europe's tallest, is the gold building on the right

I don't mind glass towers, depending on their context. A city like New York is defined by its towers - take them away and there is no New York.

I am, however, less keen about artificial little clusters of skyscrapers that look as if they were dropped into a city from outer space. Even though they are only 4 kilometres from the Kremlin, these buildings feel kind of isolated and there is nothing worth mentioning at street level - just cold canyons. Stalin's towers were at least congruous with the other ponderously grandiose central Moscow buildings.

A Metro spur line has been constructed to the development, notable for being the only underground line on which one has to wait ten minutes for a train. There are two stations, one of which emerges at the ultra-modern AFIMALL shopping complex. This is a good place for coffee on a cold winter's day - there is a Starbucks right next to the fountain (say what you like - I don't mind Starbucks coffee - and they are one of the few cafes in Moscow that don't permit smoking).

Fountain in the AFIMALL shopping centre within Moscow City.

Most fascinating is the collection of giant matryoshka dolls on the top level of the mall, under a glass dome through which the towers can be seen.

Giant matryoshka dolls in the shopping mall. And you thought you'd seen all that Moscow has to offer.