Waylaid in Moscow
Loading ...How we handle the unpredictability of traveling is what separates adventure from disaster. We missed the final leg of our flight to Kamchatka by five minutes as a result of a very slow customs line and a few bags that showed up three hours after the rest of our gear. With no flight till the next afternoon and limited time to learn about lodging options, we wound up setting up a bivy in a downtown luxury suite for the night.
After 30 hours of traveling we had no reason to sleep, so we set off to explore. As a social studies teacher, I have shown my students pictures of the former Soviet Empire countless numbers of times and could not have been more excited at the opportunity to see this place first-hand. Moscow boasts the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, and its streets are filled with BMW’s, fashionable stores and huge billboards—signs of capitalism that have only been a feature of this city for the past twenty years. Signs of the old communist rule seem few and far between downtown, and while I was initially grabbed by the history of the place, it was a little tough to concentrate on landmarks and statues with the literally hundreds of gorgeous women clad in mini-skirts and sundresses enjoying the summer evening.
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loAfter an hour of eating tapas and gawking at women, we made our way to Red Square to film and take pictures. The history of the area is almost hard to grasp; our jovial experience standing on the black cobble stones of Red Square along with other tourists and locals stood in stark contrast to the pictures I have shown my students of thousands Soviets soldiers high stepping through the square backed by huge tanks and missiles glorifying the decaying empire. The Kremlin, which frames one side of Red Square, is massive: huge red brick walls tower 40 feet above the square creating a fortress of impenetrability that has to be witnessed to understand the true magnitude of the Cold War.
Around 1am we headed back up the streets away from the former square marveling at how the streets were still packed with people making their way to and from night clubs which would have been non-existent twenty years ago. As with so many places in the world, until you have seen it for yourself, words and pictures cannot do justice to the scope of a place, and as we prepare to leave Moscow I have a whole new set of pictures to add to my history lessons, and a new perspective of the history of this place. Next stop Kamchatka.
