This time our guard had shown up. He literally stood guard outside our door the whole time. He sat with us for a short time trying to communicate using Rhonda's hand held translator, but decided that was too hard pretty quickly. Mostly he stood by the window looking out or walked to other passengers standing at the window. Whenever we stopped at a station, he asked permission to step out for a smoke. Finally about 11:30 when we decided to go to sleep, he agreed to leave his post only if we would lock to the door to our car. (In general, we preferred to keep it open, to see what was happening outside.) He helped "Rhonda up to her bed by making a ladder with his hands-her ladder was missing) and then we secured the door.
We had a picnic dinner on the train using all of the wonderful food Galena had packed for us-bead cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes and fruits. She had even remembered to include a plastic knife, but hadn't sent any plates to cut against. We ripped open some empty box of peanut butter tubes (or rather we dumped the tubes out of the box to empty it) and used it as our cutting board. It was a veritable feast.
They woke us up about 3:15 a.m. Moscow was the last station (as Kineshma had been the end of the line in the other direction). We let most of the other passengers exit first as they were traveling relative "light" and we had our big suitcases (even though we had each left one suitcase at the JOINT office, our bags were still much larger than the average Russian's). After about 10 minutes the driver arrived with the infamous "JOINT" sign; and we were off to the hotel. The driver was quite chipper for 5:00 a.m. and tried to point out the sites as we drove into Moscow (although he had very minimal English). The roads were empty and smooth (not like the rutted dirt roads of Kineshma). We passed the statue of Uri Gagarin, the first Russian cosmonaut and then arrived at our hotel, appropriately name Hotel Sputnik.
We awoke at 10:30 , checked to see that Susie had arrived safely from Ykaterinasberg, dressed and headed down to meet our guide. Her name was Ina, and the driver who had met us at the train was to be our Moscow driver. His name was Anatoly.
Ina informed us that even though we had registered in Kineshma, we hadn't done it correctly, so we needed to go to the police station to correct it. She said it would only take 10 minutes, but it actually took about an hour and a visit to three different stations before we found one that was open and could do it. It only cost us 500 rubles each at this end, and then another 20 rubles each when the hotel actually stamped our passports. This is Russian bureaucracy for you.
Our paperwork finally taken care of, we headed for the Kremlin. Again the time warp from Kineshma to Moscow was almost equal to that of Pushkine to the Moscow Mall. The streets are wide and clean and real pavement. The buildings seem to be in relatively good shape There are many grand old buildings as well as lots of modern ones sprouting up everywhere. The difference was just mind boggling. You don't see contrasts that extreme in America-we seem to be in another country, if not another planet.
The wall around the Kremlin marked out the huge area outside for the government buildings. I particularly liked the shape of the top border of the wall. We began by walking through Trinity Tower and then visited a few of the cathedrals. From the outside I loved all of the gold on the cupolas and other trim. Inside there were an amazing number of paintings, frescoes and icons.
We wanted to see Red Square and Lenin's tomb. We walked through the Alexander Gardens which are totally manicured, rather a far cry from the weedy and wild lawns of Kineshma. which were only cleared by means of a scythe. The flora seemed to be quite similar to what we have in Chicago. Almost all of the flowers I saw are growing in my garden as well.
As we walked towards Red Square, you could see Moscow University off to the left. It is the largest University in Russia with 50,000 students. To our right was a series of markers for the various locations of major engagements during World War II. Susie was looking for names of Yadlyad towns and I was trying to find the names of places where my ancestors lived.
At the end of the row was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was unveiled in l968. The solders flanking the grave change every hour and certainly demonstrated a high degree of discipline and concentration as we watched.
Around the corner was Red Square. The name comes from the 17th century and is derived from the Russian word beauty Krasivy ( a word we had just learned in Kineshma) that later came to denote the color red. Oddly enough the association between the color red and communism is totally coincidental.
At one end of the square is a small round platform used for executions. To the right is the memorial for Lenin, where his body is still embalmed. Ellen was very disappointed that the Mausoleum was closed for the day-she had really wanted to SEE Lenin and it was not likely that we would be able to return.
It is rather amazing to me how many cathedrals both immediately surround the Kremlin and are included with its walls. My association with the Kremlin has always been Khrushchev and communism and the belief that religions should be abolished. Some of these cathedrals had been allowed to remain and others were being fully reconstructed The Kazan Cathedral was demolished in l936 and reconstructed from 1990-1993 based on original plans preserved by the architect.
At the far end is perhaps the most famous cathedral in Moscow, St. Basil's Cathedral. In contrast to the gold cupolas of most of the other Cathedrals, St. Basil's has a much more folksy appearance. it is brightly painted in a variety of colors and rather a smooth roof, each cupola is marked by texture either in swirls or angles. It is really a sight to behold.
By this point we were all fainting from hunger as we had never had breakfast or lunch and it was almost 4:00. We told Inna that we had to stop and she agreed, taking us to our pre-determined restaurant stop. "Yelky Pelky" turned out to be a perfect choice for this meal. It had a huge salad bar. We also ordered some hot appetizers-pancakes and sour cream or lox and mushroom pies and coffee. Augustina, our favorite translator, came to meet us at the restaurant.. When she arrived, we told her about our time in Kineshma, our day in Moscow and our frustrated desire to see a ballet or concert. She helped us to secure tickets to a ballet through the Moscow version of hot tix, we dismissed Ina telling her we wanted a night on our own and at last we were "free".
First we walked for awhile just looking at the streets, sites and sounds of Moscow. It turns out that we were in a rather pricey area, so it was mostly window shopping with things we could never afford, but it was fun to be free. We told Augustina what types of souvenirs we were looking for and she set out to meet the challenge. First stop was a Russian bookstore ( a la Borders, but no coffee bar) We though we were going to just browse because we all love book stores-we saw Harry Potter in Russian, but ended up with some good finds.
We continued our walk, pretty much making a huge circle and coming back to where we started. There we found the artists shop that Augustina had been seeking. It had amber, birch bark, shawls and much more. It was almost a maze of little shots with a cashier at the bend of every corner. We were enamored with the birch and the amber.
We power walked to the ballet which was around the proverbial corner and arrived just in time. The hall was huge, right next to the official Bolshoi which is undergoing renovation. The troupe was a sort of training group for the Bolshoi, relatively young dancers, nice costumes and painted/tapestry type curtain backdrop. The production was Prokofiev's Rome and Juliet which I had never seen before. My impression of the Montegues vs. the Capulets was that Juliet's family was portrayed almost as royalty with the men in the gang being a bit boorish, while Romeo's "clan" was seen more as the peasants. I especially loved the characterization of the nurse. I have a personal fondness for her (having read that part in high school) and for Juliet's dancing. A few differences from Shakespeare were the lack of a balcony scene and the continuation of the courting scenes even after Juliet's cousin's death. The death scenes were a bit melodramatic, but still fun. Not have a familiarity with the music I could still recognize a Prokofiev style in the repetition of certain musical phrases for specific characters. It was so much fun and just the piece of culture that we had wanted.
Afterwards we found a chocolate coffee bar that served decaffeinated lattes, ice cream, cheese cake and chocolate crepes. What a decadent finale to a wonderful evening.
But the day was not over yet...we had to get home on our own. Augstina decided to accompany us on the metro because our hotel was not in the best of neighborhoods. We got to see three stations-beautiful marble clean and very steep staircases/escalators, but unfortunately we didn't get to see the prettiest stations. Anne and I were happy though, another item on our list could be checked off.
As we walked to the station we ran into some street musicians, a string quartet playing Vivaldi's four Seasons. This was quite a few steps up from the street musicians we see in Chicago.
After a quick breakfast at the hotel, again started out the day by changing money. Then we went to an overlook of Moscow-nice Panoramic view much like the Tayelet in Jerusalem-good view, but probably won't come out that well in our pictures.
Next we were going to the Great Patriotic Museum of World War II in Victory Park. The museum was located on a campus of muses all newly built since 1995 on a big plaza. In the middle of the plaza was an extremely tall obelisk memorial out of black stone (granite) engraved with images and names from World War II. The sky was bright blue and this was a very impressive monument.
We went inside the museum which was supposed to have painted panoramic views of battle scenes. It was probably the very last museum we wanted to see in Moscow. We sat there while Ina tried to pick up our tickets. There were several calls back and forth to Vikka and Inna finally understood that we were not to visit this museum, (thank goodness!), but a new Jewish Holocaust museum/synagogue somewhere else in the complex.
We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the synagogue. It was a square building with a pyramidal shape coming out of the roof and a small gold star coming up from the pyramid. First we visited the synagogue which was a large and tastefully decorated with a lot of works by Frank Meisler. The synagogue is only open on Shabbat and holidays for services. It doesn't belong to any one congregation, but rather is used by guests and other Jewish groups visiting Moscow. It is called the Museum of the Jewish Heritage and the Holocaust and was built by the Russian Jewish Congress.
Upstairs is a Jewish Museum featuring many beautiful displays of both ritual objects and object reflecting life of everyday Jews. Some of my favorites included the Jewish embroidery, especially tefillin and tallitot bags, wimple ribbons made out of silver ( a technique lost in the Holocaust) besamim holders in the shape of a fish, etrog box in the shape of pear and a pair of candlesticks made by a man using railroad spikes and bolts based on the fact that his grandmother always lit candles on Friday-he didn't even know he was Jewish, just that he should light candles.
Next we went downstairs to the Holocaust memorial room. We began by seeing a film on pre-revolutionary Russia through the creation of the State of Israel. It was made of spliced images from original documentary film taken at the time. There were no words, only music.. It was extremely well done.
Our museum guide -who was non-Jewish-took us around the exhibit explaining the stories of the personal artifacts represented with Ina translating. The docent clearly cared a lot about the museum artifacts and was anxious for us to share her appreciation of them. Clearly Ina had never heard much of this information before and it was a wonderful education for her, too.
There were many wonderful stories, but here are my favorites:
Clearly donating objects to such a museum is important to Jews who have been nurturing this hidden identity. The museum is for tourists, Russian Jews and Russian school groups t help them learn role Jews played in Russian history and dispel myths about Jews.
By now it was 3:00 and we were hungry. Rhonda (much like Sam and me) loves to just visit local grocery stores and purchase food for a picnic. We convinced Ina to abandon her usual fixed itinerary with pre-scheduled meals in designated restaurants and allow us to picnic in Gorky Park (Anne's dream to see the site of the novel). I think Ina finally gave up and decided to let us just take charge.
She took us to a local indoor fruit market and we shopped for cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, bread fruit , salad and baked goods. W used empty salad containers for plates and were able to get forks and napkins and even plastic cups donated to our cause. Ina and I made a tour of the outdoor market stalls in search of a metal knife to cut the bread.
There are two big iron gates amidst granite posts opening onto the park. Admission is 50 rubles. Inside is an amusement park, lots of parkland, a lake with paddle boats, food, kiosks, and many tables under parasols. It reminded me a lot of Lincoln Park Zoo.
It was a beautiful day and we felt free and delighted to be making our own picnic. I think even Ina enjoyed herself. It was her first picnic with a group of tourists in 30 years.
Gorky Park is across the street from the Artist's House, so we were finally got to get our wish of going to this museum. (It had been recommended by Victor) However, by the time we got there, it was after 5:00, we still had a little souvenir shopping to do, we wanted to see one of Moscow's old synagogues and we were meeting people from the JOINT for dinner at the JCC at 7:30. We decided to forego admission to the museum and just look at the sculpture garden outside. It was pretty amazing to see the variety of sculpture-as we were leaving we actually saw two sculptors working on new pieces. Apparently they make them on site in little tent like huts and they are unveiled when finished.
Squeezed in a little more souvenir shopping then headed to the JCC. It turned out that there was no one actually meeting us for dinner, and since we were coming off a late lunch we decided just to have a tour of the JCC. The center is basically a cultural center with classes in music a art, and theater. Only about 40% of their members are Jewish, but basically they are trying to encourage Jews to socialize together. They do have some holiday celebrations there. There are an average 17 concerts per month at the center. They have a new theater program called" Laboratorah" a play on words-which sounded like a version of Bibliodrama.
But what made the visit worthwhile was our visit upstairs to the library. The library opened 3 years ago and so far has collected 10,000 books in Hebrew, Russian, Yiddish and English from all over countries of the Former Soviet Union. They have their own publishing house where they are publishing books on Jewish history , theater, religion and ritual. I tried to explain to the director a little about our project and get his e-mail address so that I can put him in touch with Lerner Publishing Group-perhaps we can set u some sort of cooperative venture. This connection alone made it worth the stop.
Yanna, the staff of the JCC gave us a CD of her choral group-it is great to see that young Jews are creating and promoting new Jewish culture.
We left he center about 9:00 and headed back to the hotel to unload our purchases and repack for tomorrow. It took a long time and a lot of patience with the long distance telephone operator who spoke no language other than Russian, but we were able to put in a call to Lucy and Victor to say good bye.
Went downstairs to the cafe and had ice cream for dinner. We're down to one major balanced meal a day! We say and talked and reviewed the past 10 days. It is still hard to believe that it happened.
We had to be up by 3:30 this morning as we were being picked up by 4:00. I couldn't sleep, so I cam down to the lobby and spent my last 60 rubles on a cup of coffee and wrote in my journal.
Got to the airport in plenty of time. They tried to rent us a luggage cart outside for 200 rubles per suitcase and luckily we turned them down only t discover the carts were free inside. Had another cup of coffee and checked out all the duty free shops. Anne and Ellen bought matrushka shaped bottles of Vodka for us to bring to the minyan.
Spent the day flying, napping, writing in our journals, picnicking in the Paris airport with yesterday's leftovers and just winding down. We have four hours to go. What an experience and what a team-both the Americans and the Russians-unforgettable!