The Moscow Girls Make Me Sing and Shout

Having grown up during the cold war, my visions of the Kremlin were coloured by the times and the emotions that were evoked during that period. The threat of mutual nuclear destruction left me with the image of a cold and dangerous place where the evil Mother Russians planned their nefarious deeds and plotted the take over of the free world. Nothing could be further from the truth now. It is far from a cold and dangerous but a treed oasis of stunning architecture with many of the buildings having once been churches. Our visit there was the highlight of our stay in Moscow. By the way, Red Square is not actually red but black. It was named the Red Square long before the Communists ruled there.



St. Basil's Cathedral is located in the square. If Disney were designing a cathedral, they would have used St. Basil's as their model. St. Basil's is a psychedelic array of swirling colors and redbrick onion domes. Nine domes top the cathedral. It was built to celebrate Ivan the Terrible's victory over the Mongols in 1522. It was named after the "holy fool". "Basil the Blessed" was a beggar who if you believe the images, ran around naked begging for money which he donated to the church and the poor.

We found Moscow very clean and cosmopolitan filled with beautiful women having the longest legs in the world. When God was handing out legs, the Moscow girls double dipped. When he was handing out customer service, most Muscovite's were playing hooky. Everyone seemed to walk around in perpetual scowls. Not the Harbin scowl where if you offered a quick smile you immediately received one back. Tried my most beatific smile on many only to receive back looks of "I wonder what he is smoking". Even the panhandlers scowled. Having said all this, we did meet a number of friendly people along the way, although not involved with the service industry.

We spent most of our time exploring the city from the street. Lots of "lost time" The Cyrillic letters were at times difficult to read but we found if you looked at the letters quickly then looked away, then looked again, you could get a sense of what the sign said. Didn't work every time, hence the "lost time". Looking forward to getting back to a country with a real alphabet.

We leave for St. Petersberg by bus. Looking forward to the border crossing.