We left the hotel at 10.10, heading for the space museum, which is located at the base of a big metallic monument to the Glory days of Soviet space exploration. The monument has fantastic images of heroic explorers etched into the side – ‘heroic’ people going about tasks like talking on the radio, fiddling with a radar display, hitting a satelite with a hammer – that sort of thing, along with dates celebrating the fabulous achievements of the Soviet space programme. The monument itself is supposed to resemble a massive, tapering jet blast rising into the sky, with a rocket at its tip.
Stepping into the museum was like being catapulted forward in time, but from a point sometime in the early sixties. Colored lighting illuminated spherical display cases hanging like orbs from the low ceiling. It all felt a bit like the set of 2001: a space odyssey. The exhibit was fascinating though, with several parts of real spacecraft, spacesuits, information about cosmonauts and their lives. For example, I learnt that I’m at least a foot taller than Yuri Gagarin, who incidentally was a test pilot who survived the first manned flight to space only to be killed testing a conventional fighter jet a few years later. If this exhibition is to be believed, the Russians are also achieved the first woman in space, and the first dog in space (“Laika” is thought to be the name of the dog, but it’s actually the name of the breed).
Sasha was off on one of his stories again. Apparently it sometimes takes the space agency quite a while to find capsules when they return to Earth, up to several days in fact. Recently the Americans took note of this when one particular capsule was carrying a NASA astronaut, and missed the landing zone by 200 miles. The laid back attitude that they take to this kind of thing seems characteristically Russian.
The museum also housed a small cinema, which Sasha told us used to play a film that presented the Soviet space programme as nothing less than the crowning achievement of humankind, practically deifying the cosmonauts and relegating American efforts to a mere amusing side note. To our great disappointment, the video was now simply a montage of images set to music and even included pictures of the U.S. Moon landings.
Surrounding the space museum was a local market selling CDs, mainly software rather than music or films, all at exceedingly reasonable prices. Rob bought a couple of things, then we picked up circus tickets for the evening and once Rob confirmed that we could call Sasha on his mobile, we dived into the metro system and decided to head for the biggest market in town. Several changes later, rob was claiming to have mastered Russian and we had arrived at the market. The market was tacky in the extreme, with nobody really selling anything other than fur, russian dolls, ex-army memorabilia and chess sets. We were on the hunt for a Cold War style “hotline” telephone, one of those bright red ones with no dial.
No luck on the hotline front, and we moved on to the local market next door. I tried to browse but rob was marching ahead. I bought a belt and we left.
Back on the metro we headed for Gorky Park, and robs earlier confidence at navigating the metro system turned out to be slightly premature. The route was a complicated one, with an interchange station that turned out to be two stations a short walk apart. Still, we got there in the end. Gorky Park house’s a statue collection: plenty of Lenins, but no Stalin or Marx that I could see. A lot of it was actually quite new, and towards the end of the park there were even some tents with sculptors at work. At the far end there was a huge Peter I statue by the side of the river, the biggest statue in the park. We thought this a bit bizarre but we didn’t have much time to think about it because it started to rain. It wasn’t a great deal, and it was warm, but we didn’t feel like hanging around. Rob braved a street side portaloo, giving five roubles to a woman who may or may not have been connected with the toilet’s maintenance.
Now we had to get back to the centre of town in time to catch the circus. After all, you can’t come to Moscow without seeing the Russian State circus. This time we surfed the metro system with ease, and arrived with an hour to spare – so we decided to file an Internet cafe. Having failed to find one by wandering around the block, rob consulted the map and declared
it’s straight past Lebanon and right at the cheese shop
Imagine my considerable surprise when following these directions did not result in an Internet cafe.
We come across a street seller selling nuts and rob buys two small cups. She holds up six fingers. Rob gives her six roubles. This produces a torrent of Russian and more sign language the gist of which is that she wants 60 roubles, not six. Rob apologises, and pays what amounts to £1.60, then realises what a ridiculous price he just paid for a bag of nuts.
Staggeringly we managed to arrive at the circus on time. In the foyer there is a tiger standing on a box. A real tiger, with teeth and everything. Every so often its handler would scratch it under the chin, and it would roar, instantly opening up the space around it. The only person who seemed unaffected was a toddler who appeared to have dropped some toy and wasn’t going to let the big kitty get in the way of retrieving it.
It’s been years since I went to the circus, and I had only ever seen it in a big top tent, but this was a purpose built theatre. The theatre was circular, with seats in tiers almost all the way around the outside. We had good seats, slightly to the left of centre, facing the performers, about half way up. Cost: 300 roubles (about £7.50). Other seats ranged from 50 to 500. The MC entere, wearing a tuxedo, and grandly introduced the performers, who filed into the arena and paraded round in a circle, wearing all sorts of colourful costumes. The first act was a trapese artist, and was followed by jugglers, a hula hoop dancer, a guy who performed high up on chains, and several animal acts. In between acts that required some preparation, a cleaner would rush on and start frantically sweeping everything as a sort of clown act, and she was pretty funny. At one point she grabbed a guy from the audience for an utterly ridiculous dance routine, but he seemed up for it.
Several people have asked me since, “how could you go to the circus? think of the animals”, but I don’t think there’s any point in assuming the worst until you’ve actually seen for yourself. Sure I’d have preferred the performance without the animals – I don’t think they added anything, and the juggling was my favourite act, but the animals that we saw looked well fed and cared for. They all followed the same routine – they would do what they were trained to do, then they would get a reward. Maybe I’m being naive but if the Mosocw State Cirucs mistreats their animals, they certainly cover it up very well.
The final act was a gymnastic display, and then all the performers returned to the stage for a sort of curtain call without the curtains. Overall I thought it was very entertaining and excellent value for money.
Having not completely given up on finding an Internet cafe, we consulted the map again. Lonely planet listed one less than 50 metres from our previous wandering. Fifteen minutes later we were standing in a building site being growled at by a dog, and our opinion of lonely planet was plummeting by the second. Naively we hoped that the second listing might not yet have been demolished, and another 20 minute walk brought us to the necessary address. The shop had a sign in the window, and whilst we had no idea what it said, it didn’t take a genius to work out that they had closed up shop. Having briefly considered making a ritual sacrifice of the lonely planet guide, we instead gave up and went for dinner.
The restaurant was fantastic, but the kitchen had closed by the time rob decided he wanted the same thing again. It remained closed even when a group of Spanish tourists arrived at about 11.30 PM, wanting food and starting a good natured argument in four languages involving the waitress, the restaurant owner, and most of the diners.
Eventually we went back to the hotel on one of the last metros. We wandered around the illuminated space monument, and walked back to the hotel down some worryingly dark backstreets. A stray dog rattling bin lids proved atmospheric as we arrived back at the hotel at about 1.20 AM. We discovered Sasha was slightly concerned and had been combing the local area for the last couple of hours looking for us. Oops.