Transsibirskaya Magistral - Part III

Part I  -  Part II  -  Part III

Six days and 9,289 kilometers later – YOU HAVE ARRIVED.  Moscow, Moskva, Moscú, or if you’re from Vietnam, MAT-XCO-VA!!!!

 

The Moscow Metro... one of the highlights of this city (the stations are spectacular).  Below, Krasnopresnenskaya.

Novokuznetskaya – opened in 1943, while the Soviets were fighting off the Nazis, and decorated with heroes from Russian history.

Mayakovskaya, with its shiny chrome columns

Ploschad Revolutsi – built in 1938, and near the Red Square. The highlight here are the bronze statues.  Below, the Soviet Jock.

The Scholar. Decades later, he’s still trying to finish reading War & Peace.

The Mother & Child.

 

The Students. “Where the hell is Guatemala?!”

The Kids, playing with a 1/84 replica of the shot-down U-2 spy plane (American pilot action-figure not included)

ART, at the Tretyakov Gallery.

The (new) Cathedral of Christ our Savior. The original was torn down during Soviet times and in its place some huge palace was going to be constructed. That never happened, so they built a huge swimming pool there instead. Then sometime in the 90’s they built this copy of the original cathedral.

I’m walking around and turn a corner and BAM! see this ridiculously massive statue in the middle of the river (can’t even fit the whole thing in the picture). Immediately I recognize it as Christopher Columbus standing atop a Spanish caravel, but that makes absolutely no sense. What the hell is he doing in Moscow? So I check out the guidebook and actually it’s Peter the Great. Alright, my mistake.

Later on I learned there’s this artist that is always getting commissioned by the city to make sculptures… not because he has any talent or anything, but simply because he always delivers on time. Anyway, this giant statue actually WAS once upon a time Christopher Columbus.  Someone else had commissioned the sculpture, but backed out last minute. The artist had already finished it and wanted to get it off his hands, so he ended up selling it to Moscow and just swapped the head.

The transubstantiation of Christopher Columbus into Peter the Great. You can see the lighter bronze used for the new head and details on his chest.

The rest of my Moscow visit became primarily nocturnal and thus undocumented, so we’re getting to that moment when I have to say,

THE END.

Part I  -  Part II  -  Part III