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Here I also liked the subway. The stations are well decorated with marble, statues and huge lamps. The escalators are not so big and deep as the ones in St. Petersburg.
My first day I went straight to see the Red Square. It shouldn’t be called red square, its name comes from a word from old Russian that means beautiful. Nowadays this word also means red, it is why the square started to be called red.
I stopped I few subway stations away and I went walking. As much as I walked more I was surprised by the amount of shops. I can’t think of a clothing or sport brand that there is no a shop in Moscow. Streets, trains, underground passages are loaded with advertising. I really didn’t expect that much. I believe they are a lot more capitalists than we are. The scary part is that they stared not so long ago. It is sad to see it…
Next day I visited the Kremlin. I had problems to get in with photographic equipment. They didn’t let me go in with my equipment backpack. I put all the lenses and film I needed in my vest pockets and they let me go through. Tripod, not even think of it, they won’t let you in.
Inside there is police all over the place. They don’t let you walk where you want, you can only go where they marked so. If a tourist cross the empty street in a place where it is not marked, they start whistling. I didn’t liked, it looked like cattle when have to be marked, they all go squeezed in lines. The difference is that here there were tourists and their guides. I stopped to see the official car go in and out. One of the policeman came to check what I was looking at. He couldn’t tell me to go away because I was in a area permitted to tourists. I couldn’t feel comfortable in there. I always got this feeling of power and submission. A place full of religious symbols and police scares me.
I visited 5 churches. They had their walls all painted with saints. Some had tombs inside. The Russian seemed to like them, they all stopped and spend some time looking at them. For me they were only boxes but I believe they have some sort of meaning for the Russians.
In one of this churches I met Valeria, a Russian girl who studies English in the university. She was happy to be able to practice the language with me. She is from an island on east, it take 7 hours by plane to come to Moscow.
We went together to visit the State Tretyakov Gallery, a place for Russian art. Valeria knew all the painters, she had told me before she liked classic painting. Every room we walked in she would tell me stories about the picture. She spoke with so much enthusiasm that was impossible not like it also. Valeria told me she had been there a few time. When we arrived she highlighted that this was a good thing of her country: museums were free for students. It would be good if the other European museums copied the rule…
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