Moscow

Day One

After a lovely breakfast, a wonderful buffet with everything imaginable, in a beautiful, large atrium, with classical music playing in the background, we headed out on our first excursion to Tretyakov gallery.  

This gallery houses one of the world’s largest Russian Art collections with works from the 12^th to the 20^th century.  It was amassed by two brothers, who donated the collection to the city.  The museum is in their mansion.  It also contains the largest (I believe) collection of icons in Russia.  It took more than 30 years to amass the collection.  The patron also commissioned several portraits of great contemporary figures of Russian art and literature, which formed the basis of the museum’s portrait collection.  After Tretyakov’s death, the building was reconstructed with the addition of the “Russian style” façade designed by Victor Basnetsov.  This has become the emblem of the gallery.  Going through the museum was a lesson in Russian History.  

On the way back to the bus, we walked over a bridge that the husband carries his wife over after they are married.  There are little trees with locks that each couple leaves. They put the padlock on the tree and throw the key off the bridge into the water.

After lunch at a small café, we began a tour of the subways. The Moscow Subway is like a whole underground city that holds the world’s largest collection of Stalinist Art.  Each station is decorated differently with breath-taking frescoes, marble columns, and ornate chandeliers.  The first had paintings.  One had sculptures on each column.  The next two had mosaics of scenes and people from the Ukraine; the next had scenes from Belarus; the last was bright and airy and had scenes in the ceiling commemorating the Russian Revolution.  The subways are so clean.  

We went back to the hotel for some time to reflect before dinner.  

Day Two

This morning we ventured down to the Red Square and wandered around, looked at gardens, etc.  It started pouring just after we left the hotel.   It continued to rain off and on.  On the way back we took a “shorter” route and got lost.  We went by the library with a statue of Dostoyevsky in front, tried to go in, but didn’t get past the door.  

Wandering down one of the streets in the direction of the hotel, we passed a Starbucks.  That redeemed Bob and his “shorter” route. I got my Russia mug and a big cup of good coffee.  When I ordered, I asked for drip coffee.  The girl did not understand, so I pointed to the coffee pot and said the name.  Oh, we call it fresh brewed coffee.  Then we did find our way back to the hotel to pack up.  Tonight we board the boat.  

For lunch we went to a sausage stand that we had been told about.  We asked for 2 sausages, but the guy didn’t understand us, nor we him.  A waiter directed us inside to a restaurant downstairs, but we didn’t want that.  Then we decided we needed to sit at a table outside, so we did that.  The waiter finally brought us a menu in English and one in Russian.  We pointed to what we wanted on English one, pointing over to the Russian one.  Soon he brought two glasses of liquor.  We said what is this and he shrugged.  We thought it was just something to drink while we waited for our sausages to come.  Others were getting their food, so finally we asked where is ours?  He pointed to the glasses, we said no, and pointed to the sausages on the menu.  That’s not what we ordered.  Apparently on the back of the menu was a list of drinks and that was the side he was looking at when we pointed to sausage.  So we had to order two more sausages, which we ate.  We had been drinking straight rum for our lunch!!!  

After lunch, we found the Gulag Museum.  Founded in 2001 by political activist and historian Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, The Gulag Museum presented an academic narrative of the bloody history of Russian labor caps under Stalin’s regime. 

Then our trip continued to the baroque styled 16^th and 17^th century Novodevichy (New Maiden) Convent.  The Convent territory is enclosed within walls and surrounded by a park, which forms the buffer zone.  The oldest structure in the convent is the six-pillared five-domed Smolensky Cathedral, dedicated to the icon Our Lady of Smolensk. Grand Prince Vasily III founded the convent in 1524 to commemorate the capture of Smolensk from Lithuania.    It served mainly as a religious retreat for noble women.  Peter the Great banished his half-sister Sophia and his first wife to the convent. She used it as a second residence when she ruled Russia as a regent in the 1680’s.

Boris Godunov was crowned here.  It has many churches, was turned into a museum after the Bolshevik Revolution, but has since been restored as a working convent. In 2004, the Novodevichy Convent was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as the most outstanding example of the “Moscow Baroque”. 

At the convent is a row of ducklings: The mother duck is called Mrs. Mallard, and she came to the Moscow Park from the USA.  In 1990, Mrs. George H.W. Bush and Mrs. Gorbachev visited the sculpture in Boston’s Central Par.   Mrs. Gorbachev liked the sculpture.  Mrs. Bush arranged for the sculpture to be duplicated and given to Mrs. Gorbachov.  The Ducklings were finally installed near Novodevichy Convent in conjunction with a US Soviet summit. Mrs. Mallard, her eight ducklings (Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack) along with 35 feet of Boston cobblestones now live in both Boston and Moscow.

There are two cemeteries in the convent—one inside and one outside the walls.  We walked through the latter looking at graves of famous people, e.g. Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Khrushchev, Stalin’s wife, etc.  

From the cemetery, we got on the bus and went to the boat, the Volga Dream.  Our cabin is on the Promenade Deck, one deck above the Main deck.  We are at the front of the boat—the “owners cabin” covers he whole front, ours is the first on the starboard side.  We have two large windows, a big bed and a bathroom.  At the aft end of our deck is the library where you can sit and work.  The dining room is one deck down and the lounge where the meetings and lectures are is one deck up.  There are 58 cabins.  We unpacked and got ready for dinner.

Dinner tonight was by association, so we sat with one of the two Mills College tables.  Dinner was nice, but I was tired.  We did not go to the lounge for music, just went back to the cabin to crash.