It's strange to hear “La vie en rose” floating through the hotel window 3.000 kilometers from Paris in the former capital of the USSR. It's strange to walk under the chandeliers of the best-dressed subway in the world with the background music of hip hop leaving a Segway in its wake.. Initially. Little by little, Everything is falling into place and a New Kids on the Block concert in a square after admiring the aristocrat's library is well digested. café Pushkin.
Two days in Moscow they only get a small idea of ??what this city 12 million people, but they destroy many preconceived ideas.
In the absence of a face to face talk, attention to outsiders is generally dry. The smiles don't come, they tear off
They look like luxury cars, yes, but Moscow is not a city by and for petrodollars, but it offers itself as a more European capital. Streets littered with “low cost” clothing multinationals, designer establishments that serve tartar in cones, subway rides with our eyes fixed on our cell phones, parks with restaurants integrated under the lawn…all that is Moscow at a glance.
The tourist center concentrates the red square, the Kremlin complex flanked by its famous red wall and sober but grandiloquent buildings with a mansion scattered here and there. Among those buildings, the orange of the former KGB, which still concentrates the Russian secret services; the Bolshoi theater famous for its opera and ballet, which served as an escape route for many artists in Soviet times; the Pushkin museum with its impressionist wonders or the great Gum stores, where aristocrats shopped in the 19th century.
Those who choose Moscow as a host city say that its inhabitants display that facade, but once they know each other they are loyal and generous
It's in these streets, those that are mandatory if you only have 48 hours, where the visitor deals with the Muscovites. Lidia because, in the absence of a face to face talk, attention to outsiders is generally dry. The smiles don't come, they tear off, and it's hard to get rid of the feeling that you're bothered. Those who choose Moscow as a host city say that its inhabitants display that facade, but once they know each other they are loyal and generous.
In two days there is no time to go deeper, although a night scene makes me think it is possible. Eleven at night on a marching street, an alcoholic beggar screams intermittently into the air like a lost animal. After a while, two girls and a young man sit next to him, in soil, and they chat with him while they calm him down by patting him on the back. The man remains silent and they get up and leave., natural, without laughter or long faces. That's what Muscovites are too.
Moscow embraces the present, blends in with Europe, but can't forget 70 years that it was the capital of the Soviet empire
Moscow embraces the present, blends in with Europe, but can't forget 70 years that it was the capital of the Soviet empire. Perhaps where it is most palpable is in its subway., opened in 1935 and that turned the proletarians into guests at a gala ball of the tsar. In the luxurious marble halls with domes and many-armed lamps, you can still see mosaics and sculptures extolling the benefits of communism.: fruitful harvests, happy peasants, intelligent scientists, great engineers or seasoned athletes. A brave new world that forgets the millions of people deported to Siberia or directly murdered for opposing the regime. Lenin's portraits have been conveniently removed and replaced, eg, by doves of peace, but there are still four-meter statues showing Soviet power to remember how human corruption destroys the most well-intentioned idealism.
Yes if it goes up from the centre, the city opens, well organized, fan-shaped with large avenues of up to eight lanes equipped with underpasses that steal the spotlight from pedestrians. Airport road, 48 hours after having taken exactly the same outbound route, hive buildings of twenty or thirty floors appear on either side. At the airport, before continuing on the road, a Kalashnikov store awakens from the spell: This is also a city where you can buy assault rifles before taking a plane.
