I got my haircut today for the first time in three months, three months after I buzzed off my long, curly locks that I had let go in Chengdu. And it was no easy task. Simply finding a place to get my haircut here in Moscow (that wasn’t an overpriced Russian beauty salon) was challenging. But yesterday, walking from the metro station back to my hostel, I noticed through the window of one of the small shops on the street a more modest salon where there was a man inside getting his haircut. I decided I would work up the nerve to return here in the morning, which I did, and figure out a way to communicate with the ladies on how to cut my hair. This was the challenging part. I typed into google translate how I wanted my hair to be cut, trim the sides and the back, leave the top alone, prazhalsta, and left it on the screen of my iphone. I woke up early to accomplish the task. I knew the salon opened up at 8. I left the hostel this morning, full of confidence, and broke out into the streets of Kitay Gorod through rush hour pedestrian traffic, and made my way to the salon. I walked in the shop where little was going on at a little past 8 in the morning and all the middle aged Russian hairdressers turned to stare at me, waiting for me to say something. I just said, “strizhka?” which means, “haircut?” pointing to me head, looking kind of dumb, and one of the Russian women came up to me and with a very serious expression said, “shest’sot rublei” (600 rubles or $20). I said, okay, and she gave me a slight sidewards head nod indicating to me that I should follow her, her expression unchanged as if she could care less whether I accepted or declined the price. I sat down, she shampooed and washed my hair, and then I relocated to the hair cut area for my haircut. I showed her my google translated directions, she studied them awhile as if they didn’t make sense, and then without words handed me back my iphone and pointed to the seat. I figured she got the idea. She wreaked heavily of middle aged women’s perfume and cigarette smoke and she got to work on my hair as I sat in silence. She was thorough and to be honest, she did a pretty good job. I’ll probably be able to let this hair cut ride for several weeks (I’m kind of holding out for one of those traditional barber shops in Italy, where men with big mustaches trim away to manly perfection and then finish with a shave by foam and knife edge - is this an Italian thing or did I just make that up?)
And then I took a self guided tour of the metro. Why, you ask? Because Moscow has the most beautiful, fanciest metro stations in the world. It was one of Stalin’s few good contributions and following the Great Patriotic War (as Russians call World War II), the city built many of the metro stations that exist today. The city today has dozens of interconnecting lines that make the metro by far the most efficient way to go about the city. I had heard that several of them were so nice that they are worth going out of your way to see and so a popular thing to do is to spend a few hours and, with one metro ticket, 28 rubles (a little less than $1), see the best ones. Each metro station feels like it is buried at least a mile underground. There are no steps in most stations, only escalators because they run so deeply below the surface. And Muscovites are good at riding escalators. With the amount of people that stream through these stations during rush hour, they have managed somehow how to be civil to one another. If you want to stand on the escalator, you stay to the right, if you want to walk, to the left. If you stand on the left, you will get run over. Muscovites are good at riding in the metro cars too. Babushkas reign supreme here. Giving up your seat to older people is nothing new and in most cities this is standard, but in Moscow, if someone doesn’t give up their seat for a babushka, whether they saw the babushka coming or not, the babushka scolds them and cackles annoyingly until they move. They are not afraid to tell you when you are talking too loud as well. And getting around is not immediately easy for non-Russian speaking foreigners because although the metro system is well designed and very efficient (trains run through each station approximately every 30 seconds), there is no English. You have to work around the cyrillic names and general signs which for transfer stations, can be kind of complex.
But as I said, the stations are remarkable. I went out of my way this morning, which took me two hours, to visit six stations carefully chosen for their unique qualities. One is famous for its mosaics, one for its statues, stained glass, chandeliers, marble, and patriotic themes. It’s incredible, like walking through the secret underground tunnels of some old mansion. My favorite one was Komsomolskaya, known for its chandeliers. The trains run back and forth from either side of the platform and the middle of the station is separated from the tracks by arching walkways and marble walls. The middle portion of the station has marble murals of various Soviet themes and from the ceiling hang these huge crystal chandeliers. It’s beautiful. And as much as I enjoyed the stations themselves, I got equal pleasure from just people watching. Moscow is full of interesting people. Some elegant women like those I saw in Siberia, some trendy students, some businessmen on their way to work, all of them interesting. I used my new lomography camera down in the metro station and if it develops like I hope it will, the shots will be good.
I met up with Yana outside the Tretyakov State Gallery, the most famous art museum in Russian and one of the most famous in the world, for lunch. We were planning on seeing some art today. We would first hit the Tretyakov and then move on to see Garage, Roman Abramovich’s girlfriend’s gallery for the promotion of youth and contemporary culture. We went to a Russian, cafeteria style restaurant where I ate some red cabbage and potato salad, mushroom soup, and breaded chicken, and then we made our way to the museum.
This gallery is no joke. It is huge and features an incredible collection of classical works of paintings all by Russian painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. There is exhibit after exhibit of excellent pieces. It is the kind of place that you could easily spend an entire day, musing about the works as they make you contemplate on how it is possible that people can create such amazing things. Yana showed me a room filled with paintings of her favorite painter, Shushkin, who is famous for his landscapes of Siberian wilderness. His most famous painting is a close up of the taiga where three little brown bears are clambering over some downed trees.
We walked out of the museum feeling fresh and intelligent and then hopped the metro back to Gurky Park where Garage had been relocated. I first read about the gallery and became instantly intrigued for two reasons. First, because the New York Times put it this way in their article “36 Hours in Moscow” published in September, 2010, “Luckily for artsy Muscovites, it has become fashionable for Russia’s billionaires to set up their daughters, wives, girlfriends or mistresses with galleries to keep them occupied. Garage is one of the few devoted to modern art, and arguably the coolest. Housed in a former bus depot, it is run by Dasha Zhukova, girlfriend of the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, and the editor of Pop magazine, the British fashion glossy.” I’m apparently an Abramovich fan now, so I wanted to see this. And second, simply because galleries in old factory buildings are good galleries. But I was slightly disappointed because the gallery had recently been relocated to Gurky Park to a newer, more dedicated building. It’s a nice building and a nice, classy gallery, but its no factory, anymore. We sat down to a drink of German glu-wine at the gallery cafe, and then paid for our tickets.
The gallery, for this month only, is featuring a film made by a young, contemporary artist that highlights the last moments of Marilyn Monroe before she overdosed and died in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. The exhibit is located in a huge warehouse with wooden planks for floors, fake snow piled on either end, cut in half by an IMAX-sized, transparent screen where the film was projected. The film takes about 15 minutes and runs on repeat and shows the various shots of the hotel room, emphasizing through various sounds and still shots of items about the room, the tumultuous last moments of Marilyn Monroe’s life. She can be heard reciting the last things she wrote in her diary, describing the simple surroundings of the room, sort of crazed. She writes and recites them over and over. At first, we thought we had been gypped out of 200 rubles when presented with a simple video, but the film was pretty powerful. It was a neat exhibit.
Afterwards we found a pub nearby to grab some food and few beers before departing. Tomorrow is my last day in Moscow, I’ve just booked a ticket to St. Petersburg that leaves the city tomorrow night around 11 in the evening. For my last day, Yana and I intend to go see the Pushkin Museum, another art gallery named after the famous Russian poet, then get a big Russian dinner at Yana’s grandparents’ house, and walk around Arbat Street, a famous pedestrian walking street in the city, before I hop the train. But tonight, well in a few minutes, I’ll be watching the great Manchester United, Real Madrid champions league matchup - one of the better match ups in the famous tournament. I’ve been waiting for this game for awhile.
And then I took a self guided tour of the metro. Why, you ask? Because Moscow has the most beautiful, fanciest metro stations in the world. It was one of Stalin’s few good contributions and following the Great Patriotic War (as Russians call World War II), the city built many of the metro stations that exist today. The city today has dozens of interconnecting lines that make the metro by far the most efficient way to go about the city. I had heard that several of them were so nice that they are worth going out of your way to see and so a popular thing to do is to spend a few hours and, with one metro ticket, 28 rubles (a little less than $1), see the best ones. Each metro station feels like it is buried at least a mile underground. There are no steps in most stations, only escalators because they run so deeply below the surface. And Muscovites are good at riding escalators. With the amount of people that stream through these stations during rush hour, they have managed somehow how to be civil to one another. If you want to stand on the escalator, you stay to the right, if you want to walk, to the left. If you stand on the left, you will get run over. Muscovites are good at riding in the metro cars too. Babushkas reign supreme here. Giving up your seat to older people is nothing new and in most cities this is standard, but in Moscow, if someone doesn’t give up their seat for a babushka, whether they saw the babushka coming or not, the babushka scolds them and cackles annoyingly until they move. They are not afraid to tell you when you are talking too loud as well. And getting around is not immediately easy for non-Russian speaking foreigners because although the metro system is well designed and very efficient (trains run through each station approximately every 30 seconds), there is no English. You have to work around the cyrillic names and general signs which for transfer stations, can be kind of complex.
But as I said, the stations are remarkable. I went out of my way this morning, which took me two hours, to visit six stations carefully chosen for their unique qualities. One is famous for its mosaics, one for its statues, stained glass, chandeliers, marble, and patriotic themes. It’s incredible, like walking through the secret underground tunnels of some old mansion. My favorite one was Komsomolskaya, known for its chandeliers. The trains run back and forth from either side of the platform and the middle of the station is separated from the tracks by arching walkways and marble walls. The middle portion of the station has marble murals of various Soviet themes and from the ceiling hang these huge crystal chandeliers. It’s beautiful. And as much as I enjoyed the stations themselves, I got equal pleasure from just people watching. Moscow is full of interesting people. Some elegant women like those I saw in Siberia, some trendy students, some businessmen on their way to work, all of them interesting. I used my new lomography camera down in the metro station and if it develops like I hope it will, the shots will be good.
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| Komsomoloskaya Metro Station, known for its chandeliers |
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| Stained glass is featured in the Novoslobodskaya Metro Station |
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| My favorite station, Komsomolskaya |
This gallery is no joke. It is huge and features an incredible collection of classical works of paintings all by Russian painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. There is exhibit after exhibit of excellent pieces. It is the kind of place that you could easily spend an entire day, musing about the works as they make you contemplate on how it is possible that people can create such amazing things. Yana showed me a room filled with paintings of her favorite painter, Shushkin, who is famous for his landscapes of Siberian wilderness. His most famous painting is a close up of the taiga where three little brown bears are clambering over some downed trees.
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| A portrait of Pushkin, one of the more famous in the gallery |
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| A large painting of Christ on a hill - it took the painter 10 years to complete |
The gallery, for this month only, is featuring a film made by a young, contemporary artist that highlights the last moments of Marilyn Monroe before she overdosed and died in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. The exhibit is located in a huge warehouse with wooden planks for floors, fake snow piled on either end, cut in half by an IMAX-sized, transparent screen where the film was projected. The film takes about 15 minutes and runs on repeat and shows the various shots of the hotel room, emphasizing through various sounds and still shots of items about the room, the tumultuous last moments of Marilyn Monroe’s life. She can be heard reciting the last things she wrote in her diary, describing the simple surroundings of the room, sort of crazed. She writes and recites them over and over. At first, we thought we had been gypped out of 200 rubles when presented with a simple video, but the film was pretty powerful. It was a neat exhibit.
Afterwards we found a pub nearby to grab some food and few beers before departing. Tomorrow is my last day in Moscow, I’ve just booked a ticket to St. Petersburg that leaves the city tomorrow night around 11 in the evening. For my last day, Yana and I intend to go see the Pushkin Museum, another art gallery named after the famous Russian poet, then get a big Russian dinner at Yana’s grandparents’ house, and walk around Arbat Street, a famous pedestrian walking street in the city, before I hop the train. But tonight, well in a few minutes, I’ll be watching the great Manchester United, Real Madrid champions league matchup - one of the better match ups in the famous tournament. I’ve been waiting for this game for awhile.
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