russia: moscow in December

The second weekend of the month was the first time I did something in Moscow in December. Since my school holidays started with the last week of the month, the time I spent in the city was actually quite short. A month or two later I saw several news articles noting something that (didn't) happen in Moscow in December: sun. All the articles were about the nearly total lack of sunlight during December 2017 in Moscow. There was a record low amount of direct sunlight on the city, just six minutes. According to the articles, the sunlight didn't even come at the same time, so for all intents and purposes, it felt as if the month had had no sun at all. Ugh. We had daylight, (though not much,) we just didn't have sunlight.

I met Claire at Oktyabrskaya metro station one day, we wanted to take a photo with a big statue of Lenin. After all, are you really in a Russian city on a weekend if you haven't seen Lenin, at least once? There was sign with the upcoming year just in front of Lenin, so it looked as if we were taking the photo in 2018. Obviously, the weather wasn't great.

We walked from the statue to nearby Gorky Park, which is supposed to be one of the most visited places in all of Russia. We walked all over, but never saw or felt why people are so attached to this park. 

Since it was winter, there was a skating rink set up in the middle, which meant a lot of space was used. There were cafes and such nearby, they held no appeal for us.

We walked along the river on one side of the park, but it didn't seem so great to us either. In my head I had this vision of a really big park, but it didn't feel that way during this visit. Did we miss something?

After leaving the park we walked in the other direction along the river: toward a huge church. I think I've mentioned this church in a previous post, it is Christ the Saviour Cathedral. 

We entered through a set of doors near the bottom, but it turned out that wasn't the way into the church.

We accidentally crashed some sort of performance or ceremony, whoops. We laughed at ourselves, as we weren't dressed in a way that belonged in a fancy ceremony, but somehow we were still let in. I wonder what other people thought when they saw us. Needless to say, we got out of there after just a minute or so.

We walked around the church and found another entrance, this one led us into the place we actually wanted to go. Well, sortof. 

It was a lower level of the church, a place I hadn't seen previously. This area had an iconostasis and fresco paintings, which were quite nice. They weren't as nice as the upper level, but that wasn't surprising.

After the lower level, we went in the upper level as well. I wish I knew enough Russian to figure out the difference between the two levels. You're not supposed to take photos inside this church, and there are enough employees/volunteers to keep a close eye on nearly everyone who comes in, you can't sneak photos. The lighting was not so great, so even if I had taken photos they wouldn't have looked good.

Another day Claire and I met at Kurskaya metro station, then figured out how to get to UMAM museum. Ultra Modern Art Museum. It was quite new, but I'd seen an advert somewhere mentioning an exhibit called Super Putin.

This exhibit is one of those designed with Instagram at least a little bit in mind. Every single exhibit was displayed in a way that photos would look good on social media. Every single exhibit was of Putin, in some way. There were paintings, sculptures, etc... We saw a painting of Putin playing hockey, another of him holding a portrait of himself. 

We saw multi coloured busts of Putin, and a "Christmas card" with season's greetings from the man.

We loved them all. Each time we came to a new one we thought 'this is awesome.' I'm pretty sure you could never have such an exhibit in the states, but who knows. Totally awesome.

Another weekend Claire and I met up and went to an event called the Doll Ball. It wasn't a dance in any way, who knows why they chose that name. It was a gathering of vendors and hobbyists, showing dolls. And dolls and dolls and dolls. 

A giant room was full of people with displays of dolls. We didn't spend long at any of the displays, mostly because it got a little creepy after a while with all those eyes looking every which way.

From there we walked to a place in Moscow called Pushkin Square, it's just outside a metro station called Pushkinskaya. Not surprisingly, there is a statue of the man, right in the middle. We came to the square because we wanted to see holiday lights. There was a tunnel of lights set up there, very pretty. It was busy, there was no way to take a photo with just us, so we went for a selfie instead.

After the tunnel of lights we walked down Tverskaya street to the platz in front of Red Square. It was decorated with holiday lights as well. Moscow really gets into holiday decorations, for many holidays throughout the year.

The next day brought another meet up with Claire. We were again in the area near Kurskaya station, but this time went to a district/area called ArtPlay. I don't know for sure, but it looked like a warehouse/factory district that had been redeveloped. 

We had seen a list of Christmas festivals around the city, and one of them was supposed to be in this district.The festival turned out to be rather lame, just a bunch of vendors selling things that could be gifts. We didn't stay long. We went to another festival next, it also turned out ot be rather lame. The second 'festival' was vendors selling 'Italian" things.

It was still pretty early in the day, so we went to see a few more metro stations. We rode to the northern end of the gray line, then hopped off at every station on the way back into the city. None of the stations were spectacular, but each station had at least one thing worth noting.

The following Thursday was my last day of school for the calendar year. School had a special breakfast for all of us, including eclairs with the school logo on the frosting. I might have eaten 3 of them. Yum. That was a nice way to end my first semester in Moscow.