Molly in Moscow: Tourguiding, travelling and Victory

The end of April and beginning of May has been a busy busy time, and I know I won't be able to recount all of it here, but I'll try for the highlights. I've had family visit and we've toured around Moscow and briefly Saint Petersburg. It was great to get the opportunity to be a tourist in Moscow, and I ended up going to several places I hadn't been yet, and managed to check most of the things off of my Moscow bucket list. St. Petersburg was really cool. In a lot of ways, that city, along with the history and literature surrounding it make up what drew me to Russia in the first place. It was really cool to see all the landmarks, and beautiful architecture (of course made all the more obvious since I was traveling with an architect), and having a long weekend off of work was pretty great too. After returning to Moscow for a quiet week of work (the week between May Day and Victory day is considered a holiday for some and many people were traveling), I rounded out the last 3 weeks by celebrating Victory Day (the end of WWII) at Victory Park and Red Square. Here's the details:

April 19th-26th

Made an early morning trek across the city to meet my sister at the airport on the other side of the city. Went to the Space Museum:

Took some pictures of some of the designs for the first space ships before we were yelled at for taking pictures without buying a picture ticket, even though that opportunity had never been offered to us

My favorite part of the museum was definitely the women in Space room (all nationalities, not just Russian) and when Sarah unknowingly translated the Russian caption on a Hubble telescope picture because she already knew what it was.

Then we headed over to Gorky Park, which was majorly crowded because it was a beautiful day, and we waited in this long line for ice cream.

We spent a lot of time outside over the week because the weather has finally gotten nice in Moscow. I also bought a Rubik's cube that has different pictures of Moscow and a Russian bro tank (my dream purchase since before I moved to Moscow).

On to week two, I said goodbye to my sister and hello to my parents. Although they didn't have a long time in Moscow, they did manage to brave a walk, train, metro and reverse alone while I was at work, which I was very proud of. Again, the weather was lovely, so we walked around outside a lot, and saw this lifesize angry birds game, which sadly we did not play.

Then, after a comfortable 6 hour train ride, we were in Saint Petersburg. Since I usually spend my days speaking English, it was definitely a test of my Russian, but I was actually pretty shocked at how well I was able to communicate/understand my surroundings. I definitely had a period during my stay here where I felt that my Russian had gotten worse than when I was studying it every day in a university setting, but after this trip I don't feel that way anymore.

In Saint Petersburg we saw:

St. Issac's Cathedral, an absolutely beautiful church

The view from the inside

We climbed 200+ stairs to get up to the dome and see the city from above!


This super cool building is now a bookstore, formerly owned by the Singer family of Singer sewing machines

One of the coolest things for me to see was the statue of the Bronze Horseman, a tribute to Peter the Great from Catherine the Great, and symbolic of his triumph over nature, also the subject of a poem by the same name by Pushkin, part of which I memorized in Russian for a class.

A city built on a swamp and transected by canals, one of the best ways to see Saint Petersburg is from the water, so we took a boat tour.

They timed the audio headsets (in English!) to match the speed of our boat

The bridges are quite low, thankfully we had this graphic hint to remind us to duck!

Across the Neva river

Along one of the canals


The canals at night (after 10, because SPB is so far north, this time of year the sunset is quite late)

On day 2, we discovered the Hermitage, Catherine the Great's project to make Russia seem more European, the Hermitage houses some of the most amazing pieces of art from around the world, especially Europe, plus it is an absolutely magnificent palace.

Outside the Hermitage, Alexander's Monument, plus the general staff building

The Grand staircase was hard to capture in just a photograph, but it was pretty spectacular

I didn't notice the floors on first pass in some of these rooms because I was so focused on the art on the walls and the intricate ceilings. Fortunately we had to retrace our steps a few times, and then I noticed the beautiful woodwork in the floors

The General Staff Building archway


View of the Hermitage through the archway

From the Hermitage, we checked out Peter's response to Moscow's St. Basil's, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, so named because it was built on the place where Alexander II was assassinated.

You might think looking at so many churches would get boring, but with insides like this, how could it?

We also walked through this park next to the Church of Spilled Blood

In the mood for something different, we then scoped out the theater district, and decided to go to a musical called "Mister X". I could follow maybe 75% of the dialogue, but got totally lost every time they sang, which is perhaps not unique to Russian opera, as I can't remember ever actually understanding opera in English either. For a taste, here's a clip from the Soviet film that the play was based on:

Finally, on our last day, we checked out some Russian history at a museum that was built in the home of prima ballerina/mistress of Nicolas II, who fled to France before the Revolution, and then her house was host to Lenin's first public speech from the balcony.

Glass window inside the museum

Nearby was the northernmost Mosque in the world, which was also pretty neat!

Here's a couple of other things that were cool/funny:

The door to the metro says "Please hold the door". This is not a thing in Moscow.

Beautiful purses for cat ladies? Or lady cats?


This street performer was blowing bubbles for the crowd, but I mostly like this picture because of the wonder on the little girl's face

I know you're probably all sick of reading by now, and I probably should have split this into a couple of different posts, but I don't have a lot to say about Victory Day and I already mentioned it in my intro, so I'm just going to keep going.

Back in Moscow for Victory Day, and I have literally never been in a more crowded space than the Victory Park metro stop. I had to wait for 4 trains to fill up before I could even manage my way onto the metro for the 1 stop I needed to travel. Fortunately once we made it outside (like an hour later) the park was large, and although there were so many people around, it was still manageable.