Sunday, February 21, 2010
From Russia, with love!
Minus 27- I can feel my nostrils freezing as I take my first steps outside. The sky is bright, as are the pale, blue-eyed faces rushing by me on their way to work. Thursday 28th January and I am back in Moscow.
To visit friends I brave the underground in spite of my lack of Cyrillic reading skills. A few tricks are key for survival: a/ when two lines cross, stop of line A and stop of line B have different names; b/ Gorod means town and thus points to the exit c/ pushing is essential so as not to get run over. An seemingly endless wooden escalator takes you down to the bowels of the city- you could swear Gimli the Dwarf had been at work here- and once you arrive you find yourself in something more resembling the foyer of an opera than the platform of Arbatskaya Station. Marble, chandeliers, friezes, all Stalin-period pieces.
I have to wait for my friend, so I join twenty to thirty people all leaning against the wall on the look-out for their appointment. Three police-men patrol the station, making a Westerner feel safe; as a matter of fact a recent poll of Moscovites showed that in their “hierarchy of fear” policemen took pride of place. I also get a chance during my wait to admire a vast array of headgear: from traditional “Red Baron with earflaps” to Anna Karenina’s fur hat you have absolutely everything, sometimes making you wonder whether birds are nesting in those contraptions.
The city continues to be full of contrasts: old smelly apartment blocks side by side with glitzy high-rises; begging mothers waiting in freezing temperatures while young twenty-somethings shop in the Armani outlet, where you won’t get much change from a $500 bill, whatever you buy. My host lives in a centrally located apartment complex, and his driver gets harassed for only driving a Ford: I counted fifteen Mercedes S-class and two Porsche Cayenne in the parking lot.
Today I went to Tretyakov gallery, seemingly together with half of Moscow. You are required to slip on plastic shoe covers (like in some hospitals) before you are allowed to enter. Russia from 0 to 2000 AD, so the art is a mixed bag like in most national museums. But the collection of icons is the finest in the world, most notably Rublev’s Trinity and Our Lady of Novgorod. Heavenly! I am brought back to earth by the bill in a nearby café: Caesar salad, sparkling water, latte= £30.00. No wonder the average Russian never goes out. This must be my tenth visit to Russia, and I am always puzzled by the mix of culture and beauty, socialist ugliness and poverty, financial disparity and corruption, great resourcefulness of my friends, widespread depression, vibrant faith and violent atheism. Give me another ten years and I will have it figured out!
