VDNH, Moscow: the biggest open air ice skating rink in the WORLD

Not last winter but the winter before, we had our first ice skating experience on the open air ice rinks in Moscow, and we picked what Mama is certain is the very best, the one at VDNH. This weekend we set foot on the ice for the first time since then. VDNH was great but it turns out that falling awkwardly when you are an adult can be a lot more damaging than you might think.

Still, all better now, and Mama has decided that this is the year we will all find out ice legs properly. We are starting less ambitiously this time on one of the small local rinks. Mama managed to stay upright for a whole hour! Mainly because she shouted ‘don’t touch me!’ every time we got close. My Optimistic Big Brother fell over a lot, but remained undaunted! I insisted on a penguin, and so I got on the best of all of them. Me and my cold friend were whizzing all over the ice by the end. But if you continue reading you can find out how this differed the first time round, and why we still totally recommend this ice rink.

Mama has been putting off going ice skating on one of the open air rinks in Moscow.

She says it is because this winter has been unsatisfactory. Outdoor ice skating in Russia’s capital, she says, should be undertaken when the temperature is determinedly at minus 10 or lower, and with huge piles of snow surrounding you on all sides and, preferably, falling from above too.

We had about three weeks of that just after New Year. It was great.

Since then the thermometer has barely got below zero and while it has snowed, sometimes energetically, it has also rained quite a bit, and in Mama’s stated opinion, one should NOT have to wade through slush and one SHOULD have to put on skates to take a slide past some of the iconic sights on Red Square, VDNH, Gorky Park or similar.

This, however, is nonsense.

Mama’s real reason for not taking us ice skating was fear.

I attribute this to her twice breaking her arm aged seven due to the terribly dangerous activity of falling over a bit awkwardly while running around outside and then falling over a bit awkwardly having just recovered from the first fracture. Since then, anything that might involve falling over has not really struck her as something fun.

It’s not the anticipation of pain, it’s the anticipation of sitting staring moodily at your friends playing outside for half a year while you scratch under your plaster with a knitting needle.

Foremost among Mama’s most mistrusted sports, then, are roller skating, rollerblading, downhill skiing and ice skating. Under normal circumstances she cannot be doing with any of them.

But here we are in Moscow, Russia for the foreseeable future and outdoor ice skating is one of the things you have to do when it’s too cold to go to outdoor yoga classes. And Mama decided that the sooner we get started, the sooner we might actually get good enough to enjoy ourselves a little bit. She doesn’t want us to end up being forced to stand at the edge holding everybody else’s coats pretending we are too cool for that sort of thing because of the deficiencies of our English heritage.

So there we were at the end of the ice skating season, biting the bullet and heading off towards Mama’s first choice for an ice skating venue, VDNH, which has for two years now held the title of most extensive outdoor ice skating complex in the WORLD, and has an array of striking buildings to distract you from the wobbling.

UPDATE: Still the biggest, two years later, apparently. Come on Canada, surely you can take the Russians?

Anticipation was high (me and my Optimistic Big Brother), trepidation was rampant (Mama) and it was business for usual for the man who regards outdoor winter sports as something to be endured as part of the PE programme at school (Papa).

It has to be said that for the first half of the experience, Mama was really not enjoying it, and my Increasingly Less Optimistic Big Brother and I were not far behind her.

There is a children’s rink where you can pilot some penguins around and get your ice legs, and there is also an option to hire a tutor for an hour to help you take your first steps. We, of course, did neither of these, just blithely hired the skates and flung ourselves onto the main expanse of ice, where we promptly fell over. Except Papa, who was annoyingly good.

We then spent a long long looooooooooong time, making our way round the edges of the skating track, clutching desperately at the barriers in order to stay on our feet and hating every minute of it. By the time we got to the farthest end, we were ready to go home. At which point we realised that going to the most extensive outdoor ice skating rink in the WORLD has its drawbacks and one of those is that there is a considerable way to go before you can get back to the place where you left your shoes.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are exits and entrances all around, and we could probably have flagged down one of the skaters in VDNH jackets who are obviously there to make sure that all is ok with the ice and its inhabitants, but there is a not unreasonable expectation that you will at least be able to complete one circuit and so the builders of the rink do not provide you with walkways around the sides so you can stagger back overland.

There are, however, places to sit down, as well as a wealth of cafes and even toilets that you can access from the ice. And after a brief pause to loll about on one of the on-ice benches and eat oranges, things started to get better. My Suddenly More Optimistic Again Big Brother developed a style of running on ice which made him happy if not much more upright, and Mama put on her big girl pants and let go of the side rails, which meant that she and Papa could now tow me along at a glide between them, which was almost (almost) fun.

To celebrate reaching the half way point we stopped and had hot chocolate, a drink which is usually inexplicably rarer than you might expect in a country which a) is cold in winter b) likes children and c) thinks that children consuming cold drinks in anything less than 30 degrees centigrade above freezing will addle their insides.

Fortified by my favourite beverage, we managed to complete the final circle in style, and then Mama decided to throw caution to the winds and go round again all by herself.

And there, on the ice, sailing reasonably eptly along in the open air in a location she thinks of as one of the coolest in Moscow, Mama decided that the whole moving countries project was TOTALLY worth it. She has completed a bucket list she never new she had and the rest of her life will be downhill from here on in. Sort of thing.

At which point she fell over, naturally.

And then she fell over again, because she found my By Now Positively Giddy With Optimism Big Brother half way round, insisted they held hands while gliding incautiously fast, and got taken down by my Actually Protesting This Quite Loudly Big Brother and nearly wrenched her left shoulder out of its socket.

Ow.

Luckily it only took a week (actually, it was a year in the end) for her to be able to lift her arm above her head again, so it does not seem to have put her off (it totally put her off. For, you know, a bit).

The open air ice skating at VDNH has just reopened for the 2017/2018 season, and ignoring the somewhat dull weather in these photos, Mama guarantees it will be fabulous as long as you do NOT try to hold your children’s hands once they have reached a certain age and weight category until they are actually able to skate reasonably competently. Or you are.

More Information

VDNH’s website (in English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about why we slip on ice.

Address: 119, Prospect Mira, Moscow, 129223

Opening: From December to Mid March.

Price: 450 roubles to 650 roubles for adults and 200 roubles to 400 roubles for kids in 2017/2018.

By public transport: For the Metro, you want the orange line, station ‘VDNH’. If you are on the first wagon from the centre, head for the nearest exit. There are a huge number of buses, trams and trolleybuses which also stop here, and the monorail too.

By car: Actually, I reckon there is parking. Somewhere.