Visiting the Economist's website for the previous post, I noticed a strange headline:
CITIES GUIDE: Moscow
Letter from Talinn
Where the future is wired
This heading was strange for two reasons: 1) Tallinn has less to do with Moscow nowadays than it does to do with, for instance, Helsinki; and 2) the misspelling of the city's name shook my faith in the Economist's usually sterling copy.
Regardless of the odd header, the brief guide to the city looks useful for those planning a visit of a couple days or more.
We spent only about 5 hours in the Estonian capital, so even if I'd had the Economist's list of recommended spots to visit at my disposal during our trip, it's doubtful we would have managed to hit any of them. We spent our time wandering the streets of the old city, amazed at its beauty and at the exorbitant, tourist-trap-like prices for souvenir refrigerator magnets. I tried Lorina's patience by tarrying in the chilly weather to take lots of photos. The fact is that Tallinn's old town is prettier, in addition to being bigger, than Riga's. We spent January 2 through 6 in Riga, and the trip to Tallinn was a day-trip taken (in a zippy Hyundai Getz rented from local firm BalticLines) on Jan 4. The trip involved a four-hour drive each way over slushy, mostly unlit roads, so it was exhausting for the driver (me), although the snow-laden trees along the way were visually stunning and almost made the trip worthwhile all by themselves.
In general, after this trip, I highly recommend these two Baltic capitals as destinations for trips of a few days from Moscow or Western Europe. There are cheap flights to Riga from points west, apparently popular among boys intent on behaving badly, if one can judge from the town's thriving night-club scene and the numerous ads for "escorts" in the free English-language events magazines. We made the journey by train from Moscow and found the Latvian-operated Express to be quite comfortable and convenient. It was the first time in Riga for both me and Lorina, and I had been to Tallinn long ago in the 1980's (my most powerful memory of that trip is getting stuck - briefly but unpleasantly - in a crowded elevator in the Hotel Olympia) and only very briefly in 1996. Both towns are tourist-friendly, and reports of hostility toward Russian-speaking visitorsare greatly exaggerated.
All of the photos above are of Tallinn - I may have some items to post from Riga, but this will probably be it for tonight - I have to do quite a few things to get back into the swing of things in my DC life. One last bit of Christmas cheer (after all, Russian Orthodox Christmas was just two days ago) - the photo below was taken at a Lukoil gas station along the road on our way back to Riga from Tallinn.
As I winged my way home to DC, having spent winter break in blissful ignorance of world affairs, I read articles in the Economist and the International Herald Tribune discussing the unfolding US congressional corruption scandal. The Frankfurt airport's departure board had several typos - "Veroqa," "Mamburg," and "Tdinburgh," for example, but only one - "Cashington" - which appeared to be laden with meaning in light of current events.
At least three religions are represented in this photo from Christmas Day. The lot selling pine trees (a pagan tradition now associated with Christian holiday celebrations) near Gorkovskoe metro station in St. Petersburg is right across from the town's main mosque. The billboard in the background advertising a promotional new-year's cell phone rate adds the presence of a religion that one sees more and more here around the holiday season - commercialism.
A view of Moscow after midnight on December 31 from the site of our New Year's Eve eve outing (note the big "2006" in lights at lower right), the Red Bar. Highly recommended, if a bit pricey.
Per Russian tradition, the new year's celebration (in the form of new-year's-themed posts) continues...
There was a lot of talk in 2005 about migrant workers and the "problem" of immigration in Russia in general. Much of the talk was stirred up by politicians practicing thinly veiled racism.
Meanwhile, as Moscow prepared to greet 2006, and Muscovites rushed around buying their last presents and final items for the holiday table, or stumbled around already in a holiday stupor, holiday flags were being raised downtown by a couple of the non-Russians who keep the city functioning.
Tverskaya, near the Museum of Contemporary History, December 31, 3:02pm.
Pushkin Square, the corner of Tverskaya and Bolshaya Bronnaya, December 31, 2:52pm.
Poor Yuri Dolgoruky - no one asked him if he wanted to be dressed up as Santa Claus this year. Mayor Luzhkov said it was to be so, and it was so. Note that he's dressed as Santa, not in the traditional blue of Ded Moroz.
How could I resist a scene containing a barbershop sign, peeling paint, obscene graffiti, a sneering old woman (who, admittedly, entered the shot unexpectedly), and discarded ladies' boots? You'll have to take my word that I didn't position the boots - their previous owner must have wanted them to find a good home, and they were in fact no longer there when we walked by the same spot later on in the day (Dec 23).
More abandoned footwear - this time of the children's variety - near Turgenev Square, at 9am on the morning of December 26. I do realize that after my previous post singing the virtues of SPB as a city that's photogenic even without its inhabitants, I'm posting two pictures which prominently feature those inhabitants. What can I say, Russia is full of contradictions, and I'm just trying to follow suit.
We were up in St. Petersburg over the Christmas weekend and had a wonderful time. I woke up early nearly every morning we were there (the remnants of jet lag) and wandered around in the snow, taking pictures of the streets. Somehow St. Petersburg is beautiful all by itself, with or without its inhabitants creating more interesting photographs. Moscow, on the other hand, is not so photogenic - I find that the Moscow photos I'm happiest with generally involve people or their ephemeral traces - graffiti, litter, construction scaffolding - rather than permanent-seeming, stately buildings.
Be that as it may, I wanted to briefly mention a few things I didn't photograph while I was in SPB:
1) A lovely, two-storey-tall Christmas tree, in the garden of what I think is the Yusupov Palace right next to the sledding hill which I remember from 20 years ago and which is still in intensive use. This emblem of holiday cheer left no doubt as to its sponsor - the large, four-pointed star on its top bore the Gazprom logo and was colored in the company's signature blue.
2) The venerable Bukinist store on Liteiny Prospekt, which is now sadly shut down, the door padlocked and the shelves empty. One feature of the interior which I never fully appreciated before is the kitschy "Staraya Kniga" mural on one of the walls. No doubt that will be lost to history when the prime retail space is turned over to a more profitable tenant.
3) An anti-G-8 stencil identical to the one in the photo above but on the wall of a building located at the busy intersection of Nevsky and Liteiny. The shot would have included a Nevsky Prospekt address placard, the stencil, and a traffic policeman using one of those built-in control boxes to regulate the stoplights. As you might imagine, it was the presence of the cop that gave me second thoughts about taking the picture.
Moscow greeted me yesterday with a slightly renovated passport control area at Sheremetyevo and a snow flurry.
Right away, I noticed some things which have changed since I was last here in August. For one thing, there seems to be a new license plate designation for Moscow. In Russia, the region of a car's registration is indicated by a 2-digit number set off to the side from the license number - Moscow's had been 99, 77, and 97, but yesterday I saw a new one - 177. So they're breaking the rules by adding a digit; I guess there are just too many cars in this town to stick with the old numbers. This comes on the heels of the change to Moscow's area code - from 095 to 495.
The new hotel being built on the site of the old Inturist at the foot of Tverskaya is going up quickly, and across the street sushi restaurant Gin-no Taki has opened a new third-floor dining room, alleviating the lines which always used to make it difficult to dine there. The prime real estate near Pushkin Square from which Trinity Motors was unceremoniously ejected earlier this year has now become - what else - a mobile phone store, done up in a hideous shade of pink, no less. All along Tverskaya between Mayakovskaya and Belorusskaya there seem to be new banks and other businesses, although that's an area that's always had a lot of turnover. Downtown I noticed street advertising for the new televised version of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita - the new Russia taking the protest literature (though M&M is, of course, much more than just protest literature) of the old and making it commercially viable.
And this morning we woke up to see that yesterday's snow flurry had been but a precursor to an all-night snowfall. The streetlights reflecting off the new-fallen snow created a pre-dawn light that's beautiful to the city-dweller in the same way as moonlight is to denizens of more rural areas. I heard from a cabbie yesterday that a metel' (a blizzard with drifting snow) was forecast for today, and I'm glad to see that it looks like the forecasters were right for once.The photo shows the early stages of morning traffic (around 8 am) on a snowy - but never snowbound - Leningradsky Prospekt. Moscow maintains its ability to operate regardless of the elements thanks to convoys of snowplows and salt trucks like the one in the photo at bottom right. In the background you can see the illuminated spire of the gargantuan Triumph-Palace apartment building, shining through the snow.If you're looking for a few things to read, I recommend Sean Guillory's recent bit on the Moscow metro - one of my favorite parts of this city - and this Moscow Times article which Sean mentions; also worth checking out is the homepage of one of our favorite sources of Christmas presents; and, for those of you who are more financially inclined, the Russian Stock Market Blog.I'm sure I'll notice lots of other changes in the coming days in Moscow. I'm hoping that it keeps snowing - it feels like the city's putting on its best winter face. It's good to be back.
We spent only about 5 hours in the Estonian capital, so even if I'd had the Economist's list of recommended spots to visit at my disposal during our trip, it's doubtful we would have managed to hit any of them. We spent our time wandering the streets of the old city, amazed at its beauty and at the exorbitant, tourist-trap-like prices for souvenir refrigerator magnets. I tried Lorina's patience by tarrying in the chilly weather to take lots of photos. The fact is that Tallinn's old town is prettier, in addition to being bigger, than Riga's. We spent January 2 through 6 in Riga, and the trip to Tallinn was a day-trip taken (in a zippy Hyundai Getz rented from local firm BalticLines) on Jan 4. The trip involved a four-hour drive each way over slushy, mostly unlit roads, so it was exhausting for the driver (me), although the snow-laden trees along the way were visually stunning and almost made the trip worthwhile all by themselves.
