A Tale of Two Cities   Having visited each city twice this trip, it would be easiest to first discuss the mechanics of train connections and hotels, and then later discuss the essence of each city individually.

From Yekaterinburg the train cut northwest, first to Saint Petersburg at 30 (59N55), where we had a long, and very thorough, day visit. It was the northernmost point of the trip, just barely staying in the forties and fifties range and not quite making 60 degrees north, which is a particularly important point at this time of year. The city is so far north that it celebrates its “White Nights” period just around the summer solstice. Even at midnight, it just looks like twilight, and you’re easily fooled to thinking it’s earlier than it is. Of course, if you go much further north beyond the Arctic Circle at about 66 degrees, you reach daylight all day long at this time of the year in the “Land of the Midnight Sun”.

Then came our eleventh and last night on the train going down southeast to Moscow at 38 (56). We therefore backtracked eight degrees, and just those few degrees further south to 56 gives Moscow a long day, but it does clearly get dark. No White Nights here in June. From the train that morning we went bus touring, as well as half the following day. The trip included one night at the Baltschug Kempenski, a very comfortable hotel in the German Kempenski chain that is directly across the Moscow river from Saint Basil’s, with the Kremlin to the left. I privately purchased online a second night, paying a bit more than I had to for a Kremlin-view room. Actually, the first night’s view was almost as good, but not as high. I could see from either room the illuminated St Basil’s and the cathedrals and palaces in the Kremlin, plus the illuminated red walls of the Kremlin. The breakfast buffet, though pricey, was worth it, with everything you could want including caviar and blinis. I tried the dinner buffet once, too, and it was equally good.

I had foreseen that the included stays in each city were not long enough, I knew I had plenty of time until the QM2 would sail, and I wanted to go back to Saint Petersburg for a couple of days. The easiest way to schedule it was to also come back to Moscow for a couple of days as well. On top of that, I wanted to travel on the famous, overnight Красная Стрела/Krasnaya Strela “Red Arrow” between the cities, especially since a recent New York Times article extoled the new deluxe sleeping car they offer. You can estimate the importance of trains by their low numbers. Just as the Canadian is # 1 and # 2, dependiing on the direction, the Krasnaya Strela was #2 northbound and #1 back to Moscow. I had made all these reservations in advance, of course, including onward connections later on all the way to Southampton.

The trains left just before midnight in either direction, so I had time to write during the day in the hotel lobby. Earlier, when I had arranged for the train tickets, an attempt was made to include transfers to each and every station on the excuse that “all our clients want them”. Furthermore, the prices of the transfers were hidden in a package price. I refused them. When I went to the concierge at the hotel as well and asked him to get me a taxi to Leningrad Station, and how much would it cost, he at first made a call and quoted me, if I recall correctly, €75, which is maybe $90. When I questioned that, he then said he’d then try for a taxi. Shortly afterward, he came over to where I was typing, said a taxi was coming, and the fare would be 600 rubles, about $17-18. The taxi was a comfortable black sedan, we had a lovely 10-15 minute ride to the station, and that was that. Perhaps one would want a transfer way out to an airport, although I question that as well. But across town to the station? Would these people who ask for transfers do so from a hotel to Union Station in Washington, or would they take a taxi? Am I the only one who sees something strange here?

Both cities have a number of railroad stations, but in Moscow, there is a cluster in the northeast part of town of three stations facing each other around a square, Kazan, Yaroslavl, and Leningrad stations. I had time to admire all three.

If you read Cyrillic, even without knowing Russian, reading the board is easy to know what track you want. I watched the beautiful, red train pull in, each car labeled Красная Стрела in big letters. As I moved to the deluxe car—could it be?—I was home again. It was exactly the same style as on the private train. The Russians know how to do Iron Road travel right. Of course, on such a short route—midnight to eight—you just have time to shower and hop into bed. A few nights later, at Moscow station in Saint Petersburg, I walked up to the same deluxe car, with the same provodnitsa, who recognized me, and had even been assigned the same compartment. In Saint Petersburg I stayed in the recently restored Grand Hotel Europe, which dates from 1824, and is rather lush. Back in Moscow again, I stayed in the Sheraton Palace, on Starwood points. Its main advantage was that it was a block from Belarus Station, that I’d be leaving from, where the metro also had a stop.

New Russia   A general comment about the New Russia. I know it has its problems, and we read about them in the papers all the time. But it is a new world. Walking down the street, you could be in any European or American city. People have cellphones (annoyingly) glued to their ears. Kids on the metro are playing games on their phones. People dress the same as anywhere else. Saint Petersburg is returning, albeit slowly, to the majestic city it once was. Façades are being refurbished as we speak. Imagine if Fifth Avenue mansions, or mansions around Place Vendôme in Paris had been taken over by revolutionaries and subdivided into apartments, and now are being restored. Imagine if Tiffany’s business went the way that Fabergé’s did. Imagine if Bloomingdale’s, or more likely, one of the department stores like Galeries Lafayette, which have a grand central atrium as was the style in the late 1800’s, was taken over to become Department Store # 1 with few, and shoddy, goods to sell. What if all this were gradually being reversed now?

On Nevskiy Prospekt, I passed what is once again Elisseiev Fine Foods. It had been one of the leading purveyors of delicacies, such as Fortnum and Mason’s in London. After the revolution it became Gastronom # 1. It is now restored. It’s in a huge barn of a gorgeous Art Nouveau building, and the inside is equivalently spectacular. You can just imagine the variety of caviars they have.

Old hotels are coming back. Saint Petersburg is regaining its gold and white buildings, or green and white, or blue and white. All the old coins with hammer-and-sickle are gone. All coins now have the two-headed imperial Russian eagle. The changes were also evident in most of the provincial cities we visited.

On the other hand, there is a certain confusion about turning about the past. In Yekaterinburg, the railroad station and main boulevard still maintain the name Sverdlovsk, which was the name used for the city during Soviet times. The fact that Sverdlov was the person who arranged the murder of the Romanovs doesn’t seem to make a difference. Lots of Lenin statues have been removed, but lots stay in place. In Ulan Ude, the main feature on the main square is the world’s largest head of Lenin. They’re not in a hurry to get rid of that. Yet, the street in Moscow where my second hotel in Northwest Moscow was, which had been renamed in Soviet times Gorki Street, has reverted to its original, historic name of Tverskaya Yamskaya Ulitsa, which is the rather romantic name Tver’ Coach Road (leading to the city of Tver’ outside of Moscow).

Saint Petersburg   Let’s start with Санкт-Петербург/Sankt-Peterburg “Saint Petersburg”. Peter the Great famously founded this city in 1703 on the Gulf of Finland, at the end of the Baltic, to be his Window on the West. The city was to have nothing of the traditional Russian style. All men were to shave their beards and moustaches or pay a stiff tax. Clothes were to be like those of Western Europe. This was to be the point where Russia reached the sea under easy conditions, and at the center of the city is the Admiralty building, the center for Peter’s new navy. Peter also famously went incognito for six months (but with an entourage) to go to the Netherlands, a major center of shipbuilding and sailing in the late 1600’s to personally learn shipbuilding. (He also learned many other crafts. I saw a pair of boots he had personally crafted for himself. He was tall; the boots were high.)

Well, if Peter brought back so much from the Netherlands, you may have guessed already the answer to the recent puzzle. He brought back a Dutch name for his New Russian city, Sankt-Peterburg. That’s what it was for over two centuries, until Lenin died in 1924, and it was renamed Leningrad. To illustrate the mixed feelings about where Russia is headed, when there was a vote in the early 1990’s to bring back the original name, it passed in the city by only 51%. It didn’t pass at all in the surrounding district, so curiously, the city of Sankt-Peterburg is located in the Leningrad region. You may have also noticed that I mentioned that trains headed there still leave from Moscow’s Leningrad station, whose name also has not been changed.

Since recently discussing the Dutch (half) island of Sint Maarten, I wonder about the difference between Sankt and Sint. I can only assume that this word has been altered in Dutch since the 17th century.

You may be aware of a seeming hole in my story, saying the city has had only two names. You may have heard of the name Petrograd. This is my take on that event. During the First World War, when feeling was so incredibly high in Russia against the Germans, people felt that having a German name for what was then their capital city was unconscionable. The nicety that it was actually a Dutch name was lost in the argument (actually, the German name was, and is, the same as the Dutch name). The solution was to Russify the name. Sankt was dropped (as it often still is) and Germanic Peterburg was changed to Russified Petrograd, the ending –grad deriving from the Russian word for “city”, and corresponding to things like –ville and –polis. My argument here is that, was it really a third name, or just a variation of the first name? Obviously, I lean toward the latter, in the same way that I lean towards Cyrillic being a variation and extension of the Greek alphabet.

As to dropping the word “Sankt”, that’s still done in everyday conversation in Russian, since the name is so long. You also hear it that was occasionally in German. English doesn’t usually drop it, but be careful there. We all know of Saint Petersburg in Florida, but how about Peterburg in Virginia, the site of the famous Civil War battle? You’ll also notice that that S in the middle of the name tends to be fleeting. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not, depending on the language. Come to think of it, English might be the only language that uses that S there.

It’s a beautiful city, and the layout was carefully planned. Picture it this way. The Neva flows east-west. On the south bank, the Адмиралтейство/Admiralteystvo “Admiralty Building” stands at the center of things, but you hardly can see the building itself behind the trees, what you see is the destinctive gold spire rising above it, a symbol of the city, visible from all directions. To the left of the Admiralty is the already mentioned Decembrists’ Square with its famous statue of Peter the Great on horseback, and across from it is St Isaac’s cathedral, about as classical and Italianate style a building as you can imagine. From the Admiralty, three streets radiate geometrically, one roughly southwest, one south, and one southeast. The southeast one is the world-famous boulevard Невский Проспект/Nevskiy Prospekt “Neva Boulevard”, but everyone—everyone—calls it Nevskiy Prospekt. No one tries to translate it any more than they would translate Champs-Élysées in Paris or Unter den Linden in Berlin.

Although the Admiralty lies in the center of things, it’s what’s to the right of it that catches and pleases the eye. It’s a huge open space, Дворцовная Площадь/Dvortsovnaya Ploshchad’, “Palace Square”. It has to be the most impressive city square anywhere, and I’m mentally reviewing some major cities as I say that. It’s vast, and virtually free from traffic. On the north side is the blue-and-white Зимний Дворец/Zimniy Dvoryets “Winter Palace”, which houses the Эрмитаж/Ermitazh “Hermitage”. Peter the Great had so many things designed by Italian architects, to get the Western look. An architect named Rastrelli did the Palace, but the name you hear of most is Carlo Rossi, who did so much work in Saint Petersburg. He designed the south side of the square, which is even more impressive than the Palace. It’s the huge arc of the gold-and-white General Staff building, now also used for the Hermitage collection. In the center of the huge square is the column commemorating the victory in the War of 1812.

Crossing the bridge between the Admiralty and the Winter Palace you arrive at a large island where the Neva splits to go around. The point of land where it river divides is called the Стрелька/Strel’ka, which means “little arrow”, since it points out into the river. From there you get views of both sides of the river, including the Peter-and-Paul Fortress on the north side, also with its distinctive cathedral spire.

Threre are three waterways in an arc around the city center: first, not too far from Palace Square comes the Мойка/Moika river, which means “Laundry”, implying what it was used for in the old days. Then comes a canal, then the Фонтанка/Fontanka, which was originally used to supply water to fountains. All these waterways have beautiful buildings along them in the style of Amsterdam or Venice, and so many are being, or have been, restored.

That’s the layout. Here’s the full day that the tour did on my first visit. First, a rushed, crowded group visit of the Hermitage, which was a mistake. I corrected this situation later. Second, we went out of town, which requires further explanation. There are several palaces around the city, all of which were destroyed or seriously damaged during the war. Riding outbound, you pass the monument to where the front line was during the 900-day Siege of Leningrad. Two of these palaces are worth mentioning.

To the west lies Peterhof-Petergof-Petrodvorets, where most of the children of the executed royal family had been born. Beverly and I had visited the restored hillside gardens with the wonderful fountain displays on our visit years ago, and had seen the outside of the palace. The variation in the name shows its original German form, the shift from H to G in the transliterated form, and finally the Russianized version of the name. All forms are used. I saw no need to revisit this palace on this trip.

We had also driven south of the city years ago, but this was worth seeing again, and that’s where the group tour went anyway. The town was originally called Царское Село/Tsarskoye Selo “Tsar’s Village”. It was renamed Пушкин/Pushkin during Soviet times, since he had lived there. This is one case where the change hadn’t been made to some Soviet leader, so the rush back to the original name isn’t so strong. The town now goes pretty much by both names. We first went to eat at a new, but very traditional, Russian restaurant, with all one’s favorite Russian foods, plus musical entertainment. Then we went to the almost-completely-restored Екатерининский Дворец/Yekaterininskiy Dvorets “Catherine’s Palace”. It was even more breathtaking than the first time I had seen the restoration, since so much more had been done, but there was one additional treat. One of the wonders of the world was the Amber Room. It was a meticulously handicrafted palace room with thousands of beautifully inlaid amber pieces on three of the walls, all except the window side. As the war was nearing, the amber couldn’t be easily removed for safekeeping. It was eventually pillaged, and disappeared. In recent years dozens of craftsmen have finally replaced the amber in this room, and it’s hard to describe it. Most of the walls have sixteen different shades of golden amber pieces, and some are formed into picture frames. Some of the pieces, including carvings in the picture frames, are bright red. This is done by boiling pieces of amber—in honey. It’s a wonderful relief to know there are still expert craftsmen (and restorers) in this world.

On this very full tour day, we then went back into town and had a boat ride on the Moika, Fontanka, and Neva for a Venice-like view of the city. The next stop was to the Hermitage Theater, which was the palace theater originally built as part of the complex. Here the Mariinsky Theater troupe (formerly Kirov) presented the ballet Giselle. I love classical music, including ballet music, but ballet itself is not my cup of tea, and never has been. I enjoyed having been there, but that’s the best I can say. By the time the show was out, it was time for a late dinner in a restaurant built into the General Staff building called, appropriately, the Hermitage Restaurant. We had the most pleasant experience in the very late hours of the evening of walking across a deserted Palace Square during the White Nights, and at a still light midnight, going back to the buses to return to the train to proceed to Moscow.

On my return visit, I needed to fill in some blanks and see some things more leisurely. As nice as the group tour was, I was happy doing a number of things on my own. The Grand Hotel Europe was on a side street at the corner of Nevskiy Prospekt. The hotel had originally been designed by none other than Rossi. Across this side street was a concert hall, and the street let up to Площадь Искусств/Ploshchad’ Iskusstv, which means Square of the Arts, since it has the concert hall, museums, and theaters around it, but I think the name they were aiming for sounds better in French: Place des Arts. There’s a statue of Pushkin in the center, and the whole garden and building complex was designed by Rossi. Just behind this area, right on the canal, is the only Russian-looking building in Saint Petersburg. It’s a cathedral in the colorful onion-domed style of St Basil’s, put up by a tsar at the spot where his father had been assasinated. It’s referred to in English as the Spilled-Blood Cathedral.

Further down Nevskiy Prospekt is another nice garden square designed by Rossi, with a statue of Catherine the Great. Behind it is the Pushkin Theater, and behind that is a street Rossi designed that is in perfect proportions, with one side the mirror image of the other. Appropriately, this street has been named Architect Rossi Street.

Closer to the hotel was Kazan Cathedral. This is another very Italianate building in classical style. As a matter of fact it looks like St Peter’s in Rome, with a dome and two colonades reaching around its square. This is the building the Soviets had made into the Museum of Religion and Atheism. That museum is now the Museum of Religion, and has moved elsewhere. The cathedral is a working church again. As I was walking around inside, I noticed an altar with a painting behind it of a full-length figure with a very familiar face. I’m quite sure it was a picture of Tsar Nicholas II, now a saint. I suppose what goes around, comes around.

Although I did stroll up to the Admiralty Gardens, St Isaac’s, and Decembrists Square, the most impressive was the special entry to Palace Square. As I said, Nevskiy Prospect goes right up to the Admiralty, and Palace Square is to the right of that, but there is a little curved street that cuts off of Nevskiy Prospect at the last minute and leads directly into the square under a beautiful arch. The street twists, so you go most of the way down the block to where there is a preliminary arch, sort of in an elbow shape, wider on the right than on the left, and then as you turn, and you see Palace Square and the column in the middle framed under the principal arch. You enter the square under the arch with the quadriga on top of it in the center of the huge curve of the General Staff building. It is the most spectacular way to enter the most spectacular square in the world.

Before continuing, let’s have a digression for an intellectual language exercise. As I said, opposite the Grand Hotel Europe was a principal concert hall, outside of which was a poster listing upcoming events. The listing was of course in Cyrillic, and, in all honesty, there was indeed a second listing to the right with the same information in Roman. However, I know the worthy reader would like to review both his/her knowledge of famous composers and knowledge of Cyrillic. These were the composers literally copied of that poster. Answers will not be given.

And, before we get back to the discussion at hand, I can’t resist a second musical digression on the back of the first. Back while we were on the private train, I was listening to the pianist at the bar one evening, and then saw him take out a book of music with the title:

Now work with me a bit on this, and you’ll have as much fun with it as I did. The last two words are the name of an American composer, but they’re in the genitive case, which means “of”. Take them out of the genitive case by taking the “-a” off the end of each word and figure out the first and last name of the composer.

The first word is in the plural, since these were a selection of this type of music. Take off the plural “-ы” and figure out the style of early 20C music.

You will have gotten “Regtahym”. Figure it out.

This was a collection of “Regtahyms of Scott Joplin”, which we would call “Scott Joplin Rags”. The pianist played one or two, then I pointed to the “Maple Leaf Rag” for him to play (you’d know it if you heard it), and he also played the most famous one, of course, “The Entertainer”, re-popularized in the movie “The Sting”.

So we rolled across Siberia to ragtime music. How very, very small the world is.

The second of my solo three days in Saint Petersburg was meant to fill in three holes. I first took the metro (more on that later) first to the nearest station to the Петропавловская Крепость/Petropavlovskaya Krepost’ the Peter-and-Paul Fortress. It’s virtually on the north shore of the Neva, but technically on an island. It was one of the earliest defenses established, but never used. From across the river, or from the Strel’ka, you see the wall around it with tiny beaches (that are actually used by sunbathers), and rising high above, the tower of the cathedral. Entering the compound, there are all sorts of fortress-type buildings and other buildings. One of them was the boathouse that Michelin still said “used to” store the boat that Peter the Great learned to sail on, but it’s now in the naval museum. On my visit, the actual boat had returned to where it was supposed to be, so progress is being made step by step. When you consider the importance of sailing to Peter the Great, and therefore the naval importance of Saint Petersburg (think of the Admiralty), you realize the significance of this little boat.

But one goes for the cathedral. Once again, it’s a building in classical style, not in Russian style. All aound are above-ground tombs of the tsars. Peter the Great is in the back on the right, and still has flowers put on it. Catherine the Great is near him, two rows back. This Beverly and I had seen on our earlier visit.

But of course, now, there’s the new ones. As you enter and turn right, on the right is a little chapel. Unfortunately, you can’t go in it, but have to try to read from a distance the names of Nicholas II, Alexandra, the tsarevich and the four grand duchesses. This is the Romanov re-burial site. This where I could make out that most of the children had been born at Peterhof, but one in Tsarskoye Selo. Alexandra had been born in Дармштадт/Darmstadt, in the west of Germany. I had forgotten she was German. Of course, it said that each one had died in Yekaterinburg.

Secondly, it wasn’t too far a walk to see the Крейсер Аврора/Cruiser Aurora, which is docked in a side river. It’s the ship that fired the shot that started the October Revolution, and you can board it and see what a naval ship from the early 20C looks like. Right across this side river had been the Leningrad Hotel, where Intourist had put us up on our first visit. I remember the name, and also that we could see the Aurora from the hotel. I didn’t remember that we were this distance from the center, and by the way, the same hotel is now the Saint Petersburg Hotel. I walked a little further over to the Finland Station, famous for Lenin’s return and addressing the revolutionaries. His statue is still in front of the station. When I went in, I was amazed to find out that trains went all around the north, but not to Finland. International trains to Finland now leave from another station.

Finally, another metro ride took me to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, which lay at the far end of Nevskiy Prospekt. I saw again the cathedral where Beverly and I had heard that wonderful five-part harmony, and I really wanted to re-see the cemetery where all the composers are buried. Those of us who had seen it before had even been discussing it on the private train earlier. The cemetery is small, and you can really find what you want with little consultation to the posted map (in Cyrillic). When you reach the important ones here, there’s a little extra sign to the side in English. First you come to Dostoyevsky. Then, at a bend, in a row (with a couple of lesser-known ones in between) are Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Facing them are Glinka and Rubinstein.

But on this trip I wanted to find a new hero that I was less aware of the first time around. If Carlo Rossi had done so much for the looks of the city, including the hotel I was staying in, then I wanted to find his grave. I had to follow the posted map more carefully and go back and forth a couple of times, but then I found it, off to the side. One thing that made it difficult was that his wife had died three years earlier, and her name was prominently listed first. The other surprise, but which oddly made it harder to spot, was that the inscription was all in French, and he was listed as Charles Rossy!

On my third and last day, I went back on my own to the Hermitage. I quickly re-saw the State Rooms that the tour had shown us, the throne room, and ballroom and such, but this time I sought out the famous Malachite Room, which has panels, vases, and tabletops made out of this green stone. There were some vases the height of a person. Nearby were some huge blue vases made out of lapis lazuli. It said (if you could read the Cyrillic inscriptions) that all this stone work had been done in Tsarskoye Selo. I re-saw the couple of Old Masters we had seen on the tour, but then saw all the Impressionists we had skipped. In a few hours I felt I had seen everything I had wanted to see at the Эрмитаж.

I was having about as much fun reading the names in Cyrillic as I was having seeing the paintings. Here’s another little digression of names I actually copied down of the walls of the Hermitage. Again, to provide full disclosure, the Hermitage also had the names in English nearby:

These three were literally the only ones we were shown on the group tour, because of the time pressure (and the crowds). On my own visit, I also saw:

And other French painters, with the alphabetized answers below:

Ренуар, Дега, Коро, Руссо, Матисс, Писсарро, Сезанн, Курбе, Гоген, Сёра

Cézanne, Corot, Courbet, Degas, Gaugain, Matisse, Pissarro, Renoir, Rousseau, Seurat

The metros in Saint Petersburg and Moscow have certain curious things in common with other metros. Like in London, they are for the most part tunneled deep, deep below the surface, so you often have long, long escalator rides till you’re at subway level. If you estimate that riding an escalator between floors in a department store takes maybe twenty seconds, I would estimate that I’ve taken some escalator rides in Russia of maybe up to a couple of minutes deep into the ground.

In common with Washington DC is that the metro services neighborhoods and does not just stop every few blocks. In New York, if you wanted to go from 34th Street to 42nd Street, you’d very likely walk than take the subway just one stop. But one subway stop in Russia is not odd, since it’ll take you well across town. Or look at it this way: in Saint Petersburg I had about a hefty 20-minute walk from my hotel to the Hermitage, yet the metro stop on the corner of my hotel was listed in Hermitage literature as the one closest to it.

The Moscow metro claims to be the world’s deepest and fastest, fastest because trains are able to gain considerable speed, since the stations are far enough apart to do so.

In Saint Petersburg you use tokens at the metro turnstiles at ten rubles each, about 28 cents, with no discount for bulk purchase of tokens. In Moscow you buy a ticket that the turnstile swallows, reads, then spits out of another slot. The price is about the same, but multiple-use discounts are given, so I bought a 10-ride ticket, of which I used 9, but it was worth not bothering with the hassle of repeated ticket purchases.

Maybe only a travelanguist would notice this, but since the word for “station” is feminine, many stations have names ending in –skaya, maybe as many as 2/3, and those names would just go flowing beautifully off the tongue. In Moscow (on visit two) I was near Belorus Railroad Station, with Pushkin and Mayakovski Squares down the route, and it was a matter of going from Belorusskaya to Pushkinskaya, to Mayakovskaya, and so on. It was just fun to hear them announce the stations on the train as you approached the next station.

And approach they did. I’ve never seen such frequent subway service. Never. There was maybe a one-minute headway between trains. In Moscow there was a second-counter on the platform wall at the beginning of the train. One would pull out, and within a minute another would pull in, each evacuating a sea of humanity. I suppose if you keep the fares low enough, people will use the metro extensively.

Moscow stations in particular are often (not always) highly decorated. The stop near Kiev Railway Station, of course named Kievskaya, is the well-known one with chandeliers. Others have other kinds of fanciful lighting, beautiful tile work, and some, a lot of propaganda built into the artwork from Soviet days. Just about every station was unique.

Usually, there would either be heavy, arched columns down the middle of the platform with trains on either side, or sometimes a large central corridor, then a row of columns on each side then the trains. In Saint Petersburg I saw something on one line I’d never seen before. You entered the platform and there was a wall down the left side and a wall down the right. Then you noticed periodic doors in the walls. You wouldn’t see the train pull in, but when it did, the platform doors would open corresponding to the train doors. I suppose this is a safety feature keeping people from falling (or being pushed) off platforms. In a way, it’s similar to elevator doors opening on the floor and in the car simultaneously. After discovering this novelty, I came across a newly-built metro line in Paris that works the same way, except the walls and doors are plexiglass, and then found another new line in London that has the same thing.

A few more digressions before discussing Moscow: Most languages use their verb meaning to push or to pull as instructions as to what to do when you come to a door. In this case, Russian is indeed different. On a door will be written either от себя/ot syebya or на себя/na syebya, which mean literally “from yourself” or “to yourself”. Phrased a little more nicely, let’s say it’s “away from yourself” or “toward yourself”. I think that’s a wonderful way to say it.

A number of the Kiwis who had been working with me on the Cyrillic were really having fun as we’d walk around or drive around and came across signs of interest, which they could now figure out. Seeing a Japanese Суши Бар was of interest, or seeing all the traffic signs that simply said Стоп. A lady pointed out on a large banner at a concert hall the name of the Italian composer Верди and that they were going to be playing his Реквием. Many restaurants offered a special price for a noontime Бизнес Ланч. One restaurant used the French expression Дежа Вю as its name. There were many signs saying Супермаркет, and in Moscow I saw, for those thirsty for a pint, a Джон Булл Паб. I could also see that these people’s travel experience was greatly enhanced by their discovery of new things made possible by their budding knowledge of Cyrillic, and mine was enhanced by their enjoyment. Once a teacher, always a teacher, I suppose.

I had more than a little fun myself. Whenever I needed to sign a restaurant check to go on my hotel bill, or a credit card receipt, I usually signed my signature in Cyrillic, and if they wanted you to print your name first, I did that in Cyrillic, too. I usually never saw what effect this had until the very last night in Russia, when the waitress in the otherwise very American Sheraton Palace hotel brought my signed dinner check back to her station and I could see her showing it to another waitress. My name, printed in Cyrillic, looks like this:

Agatha Christie was clever enough to use Cyrillic in one of her plots. In “Murder on the Orient Express” (2002 Series 2) a lady’s handkerchief is found on the train with the initial H on it. Could it belong to Mrs Hubbard or one of the several other ladies whose first or last name starts with H? Mais non, Hercule Poirot is too clever for that. He turns to Russian Princess Dragomiroff, played in the film by Wendy Hiller, confirms that her first name is Nataliya, states that Cyrillic H is the equivalent of Roman N, and suggests that the found handkerchief is hers, n’est-ce pas? Mais oui. Ah, that clever Belgian.

Moscow   On to Москва/Moskva “Moscow”. The most interesting and historical part is really quite compact. The Moscow River flows east-west, and on the north bank is the Кремль/Kreml’ “Kremlin”. It’s essentially a fortress, and other Russian cities have kremlins. The walls are red brick, with many towers. The Kremlin is triangular, with the south side along the river, the northwest side abutting the park known as the Alexander Gardens, dating I believe from about the 1820’s, and the northeast side abutting Красная Площадь/Krasnaya Ploshchad’ “Red Square” (more on that later), which is essentially a large rectangle at a steep angle to the river, since it runs along this northeast Kremlin wall. A bridge crosses the river at either end of the Kremlin. Crossing the bridge at the east (Red Square) end you come to the Baltschug Kempenski (from visit one), which explains the excellent view I had.

Again, let me start with the group tour we had right off the train from Saint Petersburg. After a quick stop at Red Square and lunch at a rather pleasant traditional-style restaurant with traditional food, we went to the Sparrow Hills for a view down at Moscow. This is the site of the Moscow State University, one of the several wedding-cake type Stalinist buildings in the city.

We stopped at the hotel, then had a special treat at Saint Basil’s, which was opened after-hours for our early-evening visit. As gorgeous and eye-popping as the colorful domes are from the outside (all beautifully restored), the church has little to see inside, which I do remember from our visit years ago. There are very steep steps to climb inside, and apparently some fourteen chapels around a surprisingly small central church. The contrast from outside to inside is striking. Then we converged on an anteroom at the foot of two converging flights of stairs, where a group in traditional costume was singing Russian traditional songs, which crackers with caviar and small glasses of vodka were handed out. The glasses were to be kept as souvenirs.

It was then evening, and the whole group very pleasantly had a nice stroll from Saint Basil’s at the southern end of Red Square out the northern end for dinner in another traditional restaurant with music.

Our last half-day with the group continued to be special. We had a tour of the Kremlin, starting with the (misnamed) Armoury, which had thrones, carriages, robes, crowns, formal gowns and the like on view. This is where I saw the pair of boots Peter the Great had made for himself. At the end was a few Fabergé Easter eggs. One that was not prettier than the others, but still a lot of fun, showed the egg given at the time of the opening of the TSRR. Next to the opened egg was what had been removed from the inside—a six-inch long train with the engine and about five cars. It looked like all the little wheels worked, and the last car was—a church car.

We walked past the Kremlin Palace to Cathedral Square, around which there are three Kremlin cathedrals, as well as the two famous giant objects, the Tsar-Pushka and Tsar-Kolokol. The first is a huge cannon (that never was fired) and the second a huge bell on the ground, with a piece broken off in a fire, so the bell was never rung. An extra treat, since it was a Saturday, was a military review in the Cathedral Square. Don’t picture anything Soviet—it was all on horseback and with traditional drill teams.

It was done nicely, but it was also nice to explore on one’s own. For the rest of that half-day, when I was out of my hotel room waiting to take the Red Arrow that night, I did one of the first major walks of the summer. I will interject that I’ve walked for several miles each this summer in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris, long, long walks. Beverly and I used to do extensive walking in the cities we visited. In recent years there was quite a bit of wheelchair pushing, otherwise driving around the cities. Driving also has huge advantages, being able to see larger areas, and suburban areas, but it was nice again to be able to get back to look into courtyards, step into a church, read plaques on walls.

What I ended up doing was to walk totally around the Kremlin, but that isn’t how it started. Now remember that Red Square is at an angle to the river, since its west side runs the length of one side of the wall around the triangular Kremlin. Saint Basil’s closes in the south, GUM runs along the entire east side, and the red-brick Historical Museum closes in the north side. No one pays much attention to Lenin’s tomb anymore. It’s only open a couple hours a day around noon, and the famous lines have disappeared. Also, there is a large amount of misunderstanding about the name of the square. It’s always had that name and the name has no Soviet connotations, but most outsiders, and probably most Russians still think it does. The root kras- originally meant both “beautiful” and “red”. That alone is an interesting concept. When you ask a child, and possibly many adults, what their favorite color is, red will be a common answer, since that color tends to be associated with beauty. Anyway, in modern Russian, kras- has developed a variation, the root krasiv-, which takes over the meaning of “beautiful” so that the original form means only “red”. However, place names don’t tend to change. The bottom line is, the intended meaning is “Beautiful Square”, although it actually says “Red Square”. All this happened long before the Soviets, but probably many people will still believe it got its name from the Soviets.

Actually, the only thing I still wanted to see around the square was GUM and the neighborhood behind it, which has been extensively restored, not only the buildings but many churches along some charming streets. Also the names of the old streets have been restored. Knowing that GUM was a block away and around a corner, I was admiring a side street, when the inevitible happened. Beverly and I have always joked that we must have signs printed on our foreheads saying “Information”, because we’re the ones inevitably asked directions. A woman came up to me and asked in Russian “(mumble) (garble) GUM?” I had to smile as I pointed her the way, and she trotted off.

GUM probably needs explanation, because most people have probably heard only fragmented stories about it. First, it rhymes with “room”, just to get that right. It was presumably a major department store in pre-revolutionary times. It’s a huge, beautiful, beaux-arts stone palace (or it could be mistaken for a museum) that takes up most of the eastern side of Red Square. This is what I was referring to when I said, what if Bloomingdale’s or Galeries Lafayette in Paris (which also has a grand-style building) had been taken over by revolutionaries? When we were there years ago, there were bare shelves, and what shelves were filled had little of interest.

Now, it’s returned to “real life”. It’s been refurbished and is bursting with commerce with clothing, jewelry, porcellain, all the names you’d find on Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive. This is not your grandfather’s GUM.

The building is three stories tall, and has what is most easily described as three open malls, all parallel to Red Square, everything covered by glass roofs. Escalators have been added between levels, and there are cafés and people everywhere. It’s a new world.

American-style malls were founded in the fifties in the suburbs with large parking lots. They always have several large department stores as anchors, plus many small shops. GUM and others were founded at least a half-century earlier, in urban areas, as malls of just small shops, no department stores. As a matter of fact, GUM is referred to as a department store by itself, even though I’m sure all its units are independent. In Soviet times the name stood for the Russian words for “Government Department Store”; it now stands for “General Department Store”. I don’t know what the original pre-revolutionary name was, but it was very possibly the latter. There seems to be little cleverness in naming here. A few blocks to the north is TSUM, which stands for “Central Department Store”, an equally uninspired name.

In the northeast corner of Red Square, between GUM and the Historical Museum, are two structures of particular interest. On the right is Kazanskiy Sobor, a little church called Kazan Cathedral. It was built in 1636. In 1936 Stalin ordered it torn down, presumably to make entry for tanks into Red Square easier. It has now been rebuilt, and I visited it. To its left is a beautiful city gate. I had trouble reading the sign, but I’m rather sure it said the gate was rebuilt in 1995-6. I presume it had been torn down for similar reasons. Red Square was, and once again is, a Beautiful Square in the historic center of a city. It’s incredible that everyone’s image has been for decades the parading of tanks and artillery through it, so that the square itself has developed in people’s minds a military image of some sort. The misunderstanding of the name hasn’t helped, either.

Just to the north I took a look at the Bolshoi Theater, then decided to return by going down the west side of the Kremlin through the Alexander Gardens. I crossed the other bridge to the south bank to walk back to the hotel with views of the Kremlin across the river. The street here was Sofiyskaya Naberezhnaya, or (Saint) Sophie’s Embankment. This was already interesting, since my mother’s name is Sophie. Almost back to my hotel I found out where the street got its name. Through an archway and into a courtyard was the tiny restored church with several tiny onion domes dedicated to София/Sofiya. The building didn’t seem open, but a service was being held in sort of a temporary church hall. I enjoyed listening to the (male) choir singing.

On my second trip to Moscow I made three stops I enjoyed very much, and I used the metro to zip around to see them. The first again involved a reconstruction after destruction. In 1883 a huge cathedral had been built along the river a few blocks west of the Kremlin, the Храм Христа Спасителя/Khram Khrista Spasitelya, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. In 1934 Stalin ordered it torn down to put up some Soviet building, which never happened because the ground didn’t turn out to be suitable. Instead, a large swimming pool occupied the site for many years. Between 1995 and 1999, $360 million were spent to rebuild it, a project urged on by the mayor of Moscow. I had been following the story, and was glad to visit the building, located on a large terrace along the river. You can see its large golden domes from many locations.

Beverly and I have always been cemetery visitors. I suppose it’s a matter of being near fame, but also visiting a quiet park-like area. In some cases, it’s interesting to note the neglect of time, sometimes for the tombs you’re seeking out, sometimes for nearby ones. We managed to see well more than half of the graves of US presidents before giving up that project. Some are easy, others more obscure, but interesting to seek out. I mentioned last year in Buenos Aires I went to Eva Perón’s grave. In Vienna we had earlier visited the main cemetery that includes the graves of Beethoven and many other musicians, but couldn’t do it again last year because of wheelchair logistics. I’ve already mentioned the cemetery in Saint Petersburg, where we had been before.

But this trip I had the Michelin, which suggested something new for me, the Novodevichiy Monastyr’ (Convent). It was a couple of metro stops out in the semi-suburbs, which also seemed reasonably affluent. The walled complex itself dates from 1524 and is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The walls, cathedral and other buildings are being restored. But this was not the prime point of interest.

Leaving the complex and walking around it to its south side, there is an entrance to Novodevichiy Cemetery. Michelin compares this to Père Lachaise in Paris, and it’s right. It’s an attractive, well-maintained area, and “everybody” is there. At the gate I bought a map and (long) list of names. The guard warned the list is “po-russki”. I told him that’s OK. To check a list of names, you don’t even need to know Russian, just be able to read Cyrillic. I found the names on the list Michelin suggested, then went through for a few more that interested me, and off I went. Beyond the names I prepared, I found a few surprises quite serendipitously.

The grave of Chekhov had flowers on it. Also, someone had written him a letter and wrapped it in a baggie to protect it. It made you wonder what they had to say. I found Gogol, and the poet Mayakovsky. As for musicians, there was Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Some of the graves were tombstones, others were full-sized tombs and crypts. Some had statues or busts. I came across my first surprise when I saw a full-sized statue of a man leaning back with crossed legs. It turned out to be the tomb of Shalyapin, the great opera singer. I sought out Eisenstein, who made the famous silent films, and also found Stanislavski, known for developing “The Method” of acting.

Yes, the politicians were there, all names from the Cold War. I had Gromyko and Molotov (famous for his “cocktail”) on my list, and bumped into Mikoyan back-to-back with Molotov. I had to walk way over to another section to find the stone with the bust of the fat smiling bald head of Nikita Khrushchev.

I walked in circles looking for a relatively recent grave, and kept on going around this statue of a young woman, with lots of fresh flowers around it, until I realized that was the one I was looking for. It was the grave of Raisa Gorbacheva, wife of Mikhail Gorbachev. She died in 1999.

You may remember a number of years ago, Svetlana Alliluyeva, “Stalin’s daughter”, came to the United States to live. By chance I came across the grave of her mother Nadyezhda Alliluyeva-Stalina, who died in 1932 at age 31.

Finally, another one I came across by serendipity was very memorable. Between the tomb of an entertainer, with a statue of him in top hat, and the tomb of a ballarina, with a drawing in stone of her dancing, there was the grave of a clown. It was an oversized bronze statue of a sitting clown with beanie hat and oversized shoes. He was resting with his elbows on his knees. There was a very large separate statue of a dog lying on the ground at his feet. There were dozens of bouquets of fresh flowers everywhere, some flowers were placed in the statue’s hands, some hanging from the arms. Yuri Nikulin had died in 1997, and people were still bringing flowers. Russians take their circuses, and its clowns, very seriously.

My last interesting solo adventure was to finally go see Улица Арбат/Ulitsa Arbat “Arbat Street”. I’d heard of the Arbat over the years and didn’t quite know what I expected to find. Even Michelin gave it only one star, which shows that, even with good advice, you’ve really got to go with your gut, because I enjoyed the Arbat a lot.

With experience you can read history from a map and interpret the street layout. Western edge of downtown Moscow, major north-south boulevard with a square, the Arbat leaving the square to the southwest. The boulevard has to have been the city wall, the square has to have been the square outside a city gate, the Arbat has to have been a country road running off at an angle. Now, of course, it all is part of the urban fabric.

Fortunately, the Arbat has been totally pedestrianized its whole length, which I walked. A slight drizzle didn’t phase the enjoyment, and might have added to it. Yes, there were a number of souvenir stands, and lots of restaurants and cafés, but the street was all spiffed up and it was a pleasant walk. Toward the end is a museum in the bright, sparkling aqua town house where Pushkin lived in 1831. Trying to interpret the wall plaque, I figured he lived in that building only for about three months once, but then, Russians also take their Pushkin very seriously. Of course, Americans take their “George Washington slept here” very seriously as well, even if he was there only for one night.

At the end of the Arbat was a супермаркет, and this time I decided to go in and see what it was all about. You would want this store in your neighborhood. The shelves were overflowing, any sort of canned goods, all sorts of fruits, breads, chocolates, wines and champagnes. I know Moscow doesn’t represent the whole country, but we saw this sort of prosperity all across Siberia as well. In the magazine section, kids could read about Микки Маус. So many items were imported or were international brands, and one thing made me curious. I saw a bright red bottle labelled clearly in Cyrillic “Кетчуп”, but above all the Cyrillic writing was the word in Roman “Heinz”. This sort of thing was also often the case on large billboards. It would seem to me that the average Russian reader of labels and billboards, one that presumably knew no language other than Russian, would have to have some reasonable comprehension of the Roman alphabet to be certain it was the brand he or she wanted. Picture the situation in reverse to better understand my point.

Two more adventures on the Arbat, and both are really language related. I saw an establishment with a big sign with the famous “I Want You” picture of Uncle Sam and the American flag painted on it. It was labeled Американское Кафе Дяди Сэма. I found the first two words pretty clear, as you probably do (if you’ve been doing your Cyrillic homework), but it took a moment before the light went on about the last two. Like in the Scott Joplin situation, they’re in the genitive case, so let me change that to Дядя Сэм. Dyadya Sem is of course Uncle Sam, and it was Uncle Sam’s American Cafe. In the middle of the Arbat.

Finally, I felt I had to give in to fate. Near the end of the Arbat was one of the many, many Макдоналдс I’d been seeing. We hadn’t been to one in years, and would never do so in Western Europe, but here, with the Cyrillic, and all the big changes that had come about, I felt it was appropriate. So I stood in one of the several lines watching the burger flippers in the background, passed up the Макчикен and the Филе-о-фиш, also the Кока-Кола and Пепси-Кола, and took my Биг Мак and lemony Спрайт outside to the sidewalk tables under the awning on the Arbat. Small world indeed.