I've been up to a lot in the past few days. I've been making friends with all the Math guys and we've been on a number of excursions.
Yesterday we visited парк горьково (the Gorkava Park) right next to the река москва (River Moscow) and had a wander. We discovered and experienced some fun things. Firstly it's the 864th birthday of Moscow on Sunday and so there have been fireworks every night since I got here. First time I heard it I thought I was in the midst of gunfire - not a fun welcome, but I soon realized it was fireworks. There are posters up all over town advertising the день pождения москба.
It started raining whilst we were in the park and we saw a TRIPLE rainbow! Yes 3 rainbows. And no we weren't stoned - see the youtube video for the reference. Also one of the rainbows was inverted which made it even more amazing. We continued with our wander and found 2 beautiful fountains and a space shuttle (which looked american and stolen...if Atlantis is missing we know where it is) randomly positioned at the edge of the park by the river. Strange location. We took lots of lovely pictures because it was sunset time and so everything looked lovely. We did a big loop and walked past lots of buildings which obviously had been commissioned by Stalin (noting the date of construction, style and emblazoned CCCP & Hammer and Sickle). We ended our evening in a jazz cafe with extortionately expensive drinks and lots of fun conversation.
Today we took a walking tour of Moscow. Also in the rain. Our guide, a math professor from HSE said that we'd had bad luck in Moscow and were experiencing Petersburg weather which he grumbled about. We saw lots of lovely churches which during the Soviet period were used for a number of other things like a bakery or library. History lesson #1: the Soviets (i.e. сталин/Stalin) were NOT fans of religion and the only place religion survived minorly during the period 1930-1990 was in Poland.
We saw the Kremlin buildings all with the Kremlin star atop and many large and ornate buildings in a very French style (cudos to Catherine the Great who brought the French Enlightenment style to Russia with her marriage). After an exhausting few hours trudging about in grizzly weather we split up at the metro station and some of us went to an Art Gallery and I went to the supermarket & big mall at киевская (Kievskaya) station with some of my friends. It's a super big mall and the supermarket was a large hypermarket style so we had lots of choice. Good news is I picked up a plate for 50 roubles (approx £1) and I've "borrowed" a small bowl from the kitchen which no-one was claiming, perhaps due to it's unique shape and cat decoration. Altogether a fun and interesting day but very tiring too! Looking forward to celebrating Moscow's birthday tomorrow and maybe having a lie-in. Went to bed at 2.30am and was up at 9.30 today for our tour!!
Peace out y'all xxx
