Moscow

Finally I've got time to post my first travel entries on my blog. The time before my departure was quite turbulent and all my free time was filled with last travel preparations, visits to family and friends as well as preparations for the farewell party. Meanwhile I've been travelling for 4 weeks and also here I've been quite busy.

The journey from Berlin to Moscow was quite. The train departed from Berlin on 16.06. at 9 p.m. I was sharing a compartment with a women and her 5-year-old daughter. My seat was at the top in the third row.
 

The woman is originally from Orel and was on the way to her parents. Nowadays she lives in Cologne and is married to a German man. Her daughter Jana is grewing up bilingually, visiting a Russian-German kindergarten and is very bright. She spoke and played with everybody in the train, drew pictures for me and gave a ring to me.

We arrived at Moscow with a delay of 1 hour, on 18.06. at 1.30 a.m. The metro in Moscow closes at 1 a.m. so I had to take a taxi.

When I arrived at my couchsurfing hosts Zhamal and Alexander, they told me that they actually expected me 1 day later. I wrote them that I would arrive on 18.06. at 12.30 p.m. and they thought it would be in the night frrom 18. to 19.06. But it was not a Problem and they received my very friendly. The showed me the kitchen, the bathroom and the bed and then we all went to sleep. In the next morning we then had time to talk quitely, ate breakfast and they gave me a lot of advices about what I could do in Moscow.

On the first day, on the 18.06., I began with a walk via Arbat to the Kremlin.

 

I visited the Kremlin territory and the churches within the Kremlin walls.

Thereafter I had a walk along the Mosva river.
 

On the second day I was at the the Red Square, entered the Mausoleum and visited Lenin.

Thereafter I had a walk in the Kitaj Gorod. Then I went to to a monastery (Novodevichij Monastyr). This one I liked very much. It was very quite within the monastery walls and there are some museums and churches to visit.
 

After this I went to Park Kultury and there I visited Gorki Park. I was so stoked! There you have roads for bicycles, in-line skates and skateboards. You can rent bicycles. Besides that there is table tennis, beach volleyball, dance places and a scene for speeches, seat benches and sun loungers, cafés, ice cream and corn booths and a lot more. And this all directly at the river bank. There I spent several hours.
 

On the last day first I visited the house of the writer Leo Tolstoy and afterwards the Tretyakov Gallery, where I spent about 3 hours. To a certain extent to me it was a journey into the past because there, amongst others I saw some of the pictures I grew up with: Trojka, Bogytiri, Morning in a pine forest etc. Everybody who grew up in Russia or Soviet Union knows these pictures.

After that I walked along the Moskva river to Park of Arts Museon, that includes a high amount of scupltures, placed on lawns and between trees. The sculptures are older ones from the Soviet times including Lening, Brezhnev etc. as well as contemporary ones - in total about 700 sculptures.

Also there, same as in the Gorki Park (that is very close), there are a lot of seating possibilites, a scene, a road for in-line skates etc. After a walk I sat down on a seating bench and was observing the goings-on for more than 1 hours. It was a warm and sunny day so that, despite it was late in the evening I didn't want to go home.

When I left and just arrived at the bridge, that I had to cross to get to the metro station, I saw djembe drummers downstairs. I stopped and watched them from the bridge. Shortly after that a group of approx. 15 young, sexy dressed women arrived who apparently wanted to dance on the scene. More and more people stopped to watch them, downstairs around the drummers and the scene as well as on the bridge.

Concluding I can say that Moscow positively surprised me. I arrived there expecting a dirty, grey, unfriendly city. But I found a modern, clean and peaceful city. In fact the people in the metro are stressed and woe betide someone who stops just for a second - you will be overrun and pushed forward. The streets are full with cars and very loud. But the metro trains are much cleaner than those in Hamburg and the streets are being washed every night. And there is a high amount of leisure activities, like those parks.

And here a few general impressions from Moscow:

 

Vegetarian restaurant