A sweet treat at the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum in Russia

One of the things everyone recommends when you say you are about to visit Kolomna in Russia is a look around the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum. Which does not initially seem like and incentive to get on a train and travel for two hours out of Moscow.

Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum in Russia

But then you find out that pastila is a type of sweet.

Pastila is, in fact, the same sort of sweet as a (Rowntrees) fruit pastille. Name a bit of a give away there. Except pastila is a lot softer, a bit more gourmet, with more variation in the different types. And originally at least, a lot less mass produced.

In French, they call it Pate de Fruit. Immediately makes it sound even more enticing, non?

Essentially, for those who have never considered how their fruit pastilles are made, to get pastila you concoct a fruit puree and then allow it to turn into something jellylike.

Examples of Russian fruit pastille sweets at the Kolomna Pastila Museum

Apples are involved, partly because Kolomna seems to have been particularly abundant in apple orchards, and partly because they are a good source of the setting agent pectin. But other berries and soft fruits can be used too. Mama particularly likes the blackcurrant flavoured ones.

But then the makers of Kolomna pastila started to get fancy. And not just because pastila was often made with honey in Kolomna. Honey was cheap. Sugar was not. That’s it. Honeyed pastila is tasty though.

No, classic Kolomna pastila was different from the French and English versions because the addition of eggwhites to the puree and a long drying process in the traditional Russian clay oven added a certain marshmallowy quality to the sweet. Which became beloved of the Imperial court on down.

Adding eggs to the Pastila puree

Shame the original historical recipe got lost somewhere between the revolution upending everything, including, for some reason, the apple orchards. And the attempt to produce pastila as an fully industrial process did not go as well as hoped either. Still, they seem to have got it mostly worked out again now.

This doesn’t quite explain the popularity of the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum, however.

Even though everyone is careful to tell you they will serve you tea and conduct a tasting session, Mama was bemused by the extreme enthusiasm she encountered from tourists and locals alike.

I mean, every cafe in Kolmna serves tea and pastila, and the museum itself has a particularly fabulous one next door to the main building. What could possibly be so gripping about a few glass cases and some explanatory placards?

Cafe at the Kolomna Pastile Factory Museum

But it turns out that the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum tour is much more than an exhibit-ridden succession of rooms enhanced by fifteen minutes of a guide droning in front of each one.

No, it is an interactive, immersive experience in which the history of pastila making in Kolomna, the cooking process, and all the different types of pastila are demonstrated by costumed actors playing out various roles of 19th century cottage industry workers.

Demonstrating how to make traditional Russian fruit pastille sweets

And also the factory owner and his wife.

Tea party hostess at the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum Russia

Even the embedded advertisement for all the related products sold by the Pastila Factory Museum shop (fruit syrup, herbal tea, jam, and preserved fruit, in case you are wondering) is exuberantly done. And Baba Yaga herself has a cameo appearance.

Baba Yaga makes a surprise appearance

You get to make your own pastila, from washing and coring the apples, through stirring the puree, to sticking the pastille on a hook to allow it to be dipped in syrup and hardened.

You also get to visit the cellar full of apples. The smell alone was worth the price of admission.

Apple cellar in the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum

Mama and Papa seriously considered locking my Appleloving Big Brother in there and coming back in a few hours to see who had won. Particularly as he was having a bit of a sulk at the beginning of the tour over a clash between Mama’s desire to photograph all the very attractive Kolomna buildings, churches and houses, and his desire to go and slide around in the record amounts of snow that had fallen that weekend.

He had thoroughly cheered up by the end though.

We did both also score an apple to munch as we went round the rest of the tour of the Kolomna Pastila Museum though and I must say that every museum tour should consider this method of keeping their young visitors happy, as well as ending with a sweet tasting.

If you are dithering about which Kolomna pastila museum to choose (there are two, and I daresay therein lies a story), or whether to go to a pastila museum at all, we heartily recommend this one. One word of warning – the tours are all run in Russian. But you can find yourself a guide to translate without too much difficulty, if you are not able to nudge your children sharply at significant moments and demand key words. Like Mama. Ow.

Actor on the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum Tour

If you cannot make it out of Moscow to Kolomna yourself, then the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum has a shop actually in Moscow, near Smolenskaya, and is available to order goodies from online.

And if you are not planning to visit Russia at all (really???) here are two recipes Mama is planning to follow to make her own – one for the denser fruit pastille-esque stuff, which will probably be most familiar to Mama’s UK readers, and a more Russian version involving 10 hours in an oven.

My family spent two days in Kolomna, so if you want to visit Kolomna, here is a fairly comprehensive guide to what you can do.

More information

The Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum website.

The Kolomna sweet shop in Moscow.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about apple bobbing.

Address: 4 Ulitsa Polyanskaya, Kolomna, Russia, 140415

Opening: 10am to 8pm (on a tour).

Admission: Different tour packages at different times of the year cost different prices, which start at around 400 roubles for adults and 200 roubles for kids.

Getting there: Kolomna is about a tour hour journey from Moscow by train from the Komsomolskaya station. You can drive too. Kolomna is dead south from Moscow.

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Find out why everyone recommended the Kolomna Pastila Factory Museum when we said that we were visiting Kolomna, a picturesque town near Moscow, Russia.

The Moscow New Year Street Party on Tverskaya

‘What, again?’ said my Jaded Big Brother when Mama suggested going into the centre of Moscow to see what was occurring at the Moscow New Year street party at the beginning of January.

By this time we had already thoroughly investigated the winter sports theme on Tverskoi Boulevard. We had wandered down the Arbat, and across Manedzh and Red Square to admire the lights.

We had seen the fairytale arches outside the Bolshoi and walked up Nikolskaya Street to the particularly fabulous set of trees on Lubyanka. We had even been inside Detskiy Mir and GUM, and eaten the obligatory ice cream in each.

What was left?

Well, New Year being the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, a three-day street festival, starting on 31st December and ending on 2nd January. Tverskaya Street, the road leading down to Red Square, was closed off. Stages and other decorative items were erected. Interactive opportunities were dreamed up.

Kremlin and Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Party

Which of course was alongside all the existing stalls and festive lights which were part of the ongoing New Year (and Christmas) celebrations in Moscow.

Mama caught some of the preparations. This tree, and there were a number of them up and down the street, took all day to decorate. Much to Mama’s amusement, the whole operation was enacted by men, but organised by a woman shouting at them through a megaphone. She felt that this was an art installation of unsurpassed satirical accuracy.

Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Festival

And it was all free.

We arrived towards evening, as Mama feels that enjoying winter festivals and their light shows should be done in the dark, if possible.

Of course, in Russia, in winter, that means about starting at about 4pm.

Things you can expect to find at the Moscow New Year street festival?

People wandering around on stilts. Which makes a lot of sense as you can see them above the crowds.

Stilt walkers Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Party

Groups of costumed dancers. You may or may not wish to join in with them. We saw angels. Or possibly snowflakes.

Dancing angels on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Party

Candy canes (not a Russian tradition as such, but hey). Plus band.

Band on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Party

And Mama’s personal favourite, cosmonauts (definitely something Russians get as much mileage out of as possible).

Dancing cosmonauts on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Festival

There were some chill out zones and covered pop up cafes.

Grotto on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow Journey into Christmas Festival
Warming up on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Festival

And stages. Not sure if early evening on the last day meant that the programming had run through all the obvious candidates already, but it turns out that Russian rockabilly is a thing. Mama enjoyed this band, Fire Granny, immensely, and insisted on bopping along.

Incidentally, it was snowing so hard you might actually be able to see it in the photos. This winter has been particularly good value for snowfall, and there is definitely something very fabulous about doing anything at New Year and Christmas accompanied by large fluffy snowflakes.

This did not make things easier for the tightrope walkers operating high above the street about half way down. Genuinely awesome, and they had even worked out how to make falling off part of the act. Luckily.

Tightrope walker on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow Journey into Christmas Festival

We also got a chance to try out tightrope walking for ourselves. Ably assisted by assistants to keep us on the ropes.

Tightrope walking on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Party

And thus we carried on our way, until we got to the real life hockey game at the bottom, and the people swaying gently back and forth on long sticks.

Ice Hockey on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Party
Acrobats on Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Festival

Hugely entertaining way to spend a few hours during the New Year holidays, and just goes to show why, if you want to spend New Year outside of your own country, you should definitely consider Moscow.

And for your convenience the whole festival is actually called ‘the Journey into Christmas’ because Christmas in Russia comes at the end of the winter holiday break on 7th January rather than the beginning. It’s good marketing for non-Russians, at least for those who arrive before December 25th, especially as many of the things Russians do for New Year, other countries do for Christmas.

Unicorn and Tverskaya Street for the Moscow New Year Street Party

As for the Moscow New Year street party, Mama recommends starting at the top end, near Pushkinskaya Square. No particular reason, except that it’s downhill, and you can finish up at the fair on Red Square that way. Or go ice skating.

Either way, it’s definitely something we recommend if you are in town at the right time.

More information

This is the Moscow city government’s festival page (in English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about constructing the perfect playlist for a party.

Getting there: Pushkinskaya (purple line), Chekovskaya (grey line) or Tverskaya (green line) stations will drop you at the top of Tverskaya Street, and Okhotniy Ryad (red line), Ploshard Revolutsiy (dark blue line) and Teatralnaya (green line) stations will see you at the bottom.

Opening: The street party generally runs from 31st December to 2nd January, and the Journey into Christmas festival starts mid December and goes on until the second week in January.

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Queuing for Arkhip Kuindzhi at the Tretyakov Gallery

What should you wear outside in Moscow in winter? One of those niggling questions you might be asking yourself if you are planning to visit Russia in the months of December through February.

Elbus Arkhip Kuindzhi

Surprisingly, the answer is usually less than you expect.

Mama’s approach to cold in the UK is to layer up.

But Russians by and large do not layer up.

This is because inside is always very (very very very) warm, and so you would be continually putting on and taking off all of these extra jumpers and vests and the second pairs of tights.

What you actually need here is a large, thick overcoat, a hat, some gloves, a scarf and one fairly sturdy pair of boots with as non slip soles as you can find. That’s it. And then you are generally good, as long as you are wearing a little bit less than you would indoors in the winter in the UK underneath. Mama’s cardigan collection is sorely underused in Moscow. I am not joking about how hot it is inside.

Generally, that is, as long as mostly what you are doing is trotting briskly from your preferred mode of transport to the safety of an overheated building.

Every now and again, however, you might find yourself standing statically in a queue for an art exhibition for which you failed to buy tickets online before they sold out. At this point you will realise that this approach to dressing up is inadequate for forty five minutes in minus 10.

Or rather, you might not, but Mama did when she went to the Arkhip Kuindzhi exhibition at the Old Tretyakov Gallery recently. And forty five minutes was the absolute minimum wait, she calculates, as she got there 30 minutes before opening, and was one of the last people through the door for the first batch, after they had let in all the ticketed people who got their act together earlier than Mama.

Arkhip Kuindzhi exhibition Tretyakov Gallery

So, who is Arkhip Kuindzhi, you may be wondering, and is he worth all of this fuss?

Kuidzhi was born in was then called Mariupol in Ukraine in 1840. Or possibly 1842. Or 1841. Or even 1843. Nobody, including Arkhip, seems quite sure. There was a very large community of people with a Greek heritage in Mariupol, and Kuindzhi was not exception, although the name ‘Kuindzhi’ is nothing to do with this. It’s the equivalent to ignoring the fact that someone Welsh is called ‘Jones’ and using ‘thePost’ as an actual surname. It means ‘goldsmith’, which was the profession of his grandfather, but is from the Tartar language – also a big influence on the cultural make up of the area. Interestingly, Arkhip’s brother was also called ‘goldsmith’ but in a different language – Russian.

Multiculturalism is not a new invention. Mama says, pointedly. And neither is rocking it.

Arkhip Kuindzhi’s father was a not-at-all-well-off cobbler, and in any case died when Arkhip was very young. Which meant that Kuindzhi’s formal schooling was pretty minimal, and he did all sorts of jobs like animal herder, construction worker, domestic servant, artist’s paint mixer and photograph retoucher, before finally being accepted into a painting academy in Saint Petersburg in 1868.

He’s associated with the Wandering Artists, which also included friends he had met while studying and boarding in cheap lodgings like (the very fabulous) Ilya Repin. The Wanderers used their art to make biting social commentary and bring about social change through the medium of travelling round the country showing people paintings.

But Kuindzhi didn’t really do people, favouring landscapes instead. And he wasn’t a realist.

No, Kuindzhi’s style is best summed up by a comment from another great contemporary, the portraitist Ivan Kramskoi. Who is a bit of a fan boy or at least features prominently on the audio guide for the exhibition. This quote goes ‘I could spend hours boggling at the way the quality of light is absolutely perfect in this picture, my god, the light the light. But what the fuck is with the flat houses/ trees/ cows?’
Mama paraphrases.

Evening in Ukraine Arkhip Kuindzhi landscape painting

And also, it turns out, lacks the photography skills to really do this crucial aspect of Kuindzhi’s genius justice. Use your imagination a bit here, eh?

Anyway. Remember this is before the height of Art Nouveau, well before the Constructivists, and although he travelled in Europe and would have come across the Impressionists, Kuindzhi clearly had his own take on how to go about it. Came as a hell of a shock to his audience, it seems.

Cloud Arkhip Kuindzhi

Kuindzhi himself doesn’t have much to say about what he was up to, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that because he didn’t spend much time writing letters or diaries, it’s hard for current researchers to be sure. But he seems to have considered himself to be capturing the transcendental nature of existence.

And trees.

Tree sketches Arkhip Kuindzhi

Which explains why he wasn’t particularly interested in painting from life, but did pay a lot of attention to depicting the giant echoing horizons which contribute to the deep Slavic soul (sort of thing).

Steppe Arkhip Kuindzhi landscape painting

You may also have noticed Mama’s Chekov’s gun comment about his involvement in photography. Now Mama may be reaching a bit here (you may have noticed that Mama doesn’t actually know about art), but she does wonder how much all of that had to do with some of the effects he was going for.

She was struck by this sketch in particular, in which you may or may not be able to see that the foreground is very sharply painted and the background is completely defocused.

Arkhip Kuindzhi sketch

Kuindzhi, Mama thinks, would have liked Instagram and is a frustrated non owner of a DLSR and a whole bunch of lenses large and small. And what he could have done with filters and photoshop is probably the subject of some really colourful dreams.

And, yes, definitely, he was all about the light. This is absolutely one of Mama’s favourite paintings. Look at what he has done with the colours and guess what it’s called.

After the Rain Arkhip Kuindzhi landscape painting

After the Rain. And! It’s even better than this in real life! Isn’t that just perfect?

Which is more or less what everyone else thought at the time.

It is a source of great satisfaction to Mama that Arkhip Kuindzhi did not die poor. In fact, Arkhip Kuindzhi, in defiance of the usual starving artist too good for this world to pay attention to mundane things such as proper marketing, not doing drugs, or remembering that the bills need paying trope, died extremely rich. He made a fortune, in fact, not just from selling his extremely popular landscapes at very high prices, but also doing some adroit property speculation. Although it turns out that this may have been somewhat accidental. Initially.

His exhibitions were among the best attended ever (hahahahaha, say Mama’s cold feet. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha). People spent hours in front of his distillations of summer alone.

Birch Grove Arkhip Kuindzhi landscape painting

Which is not to say that he also went around having his bathroom taps coated in gold paint or whatever it is that people do when they end up a millionaire after humble beginnings. No, he mostly lived very modestly, and even after having reached the height of his fame, took a job as a painting teacher, at which he was very good, or at least well liked.

Until he got sacked for taking part in a student’s strike, just to remind everyone of the incipient revolutionary rumblings of the time.

He also left most of his money to a charity set up before his death devoted to helping struggling artists.

Of course, he had a wife at this point. Mama wonders what she thought about being disinherited, but since she had gone along with this sort of behaviour for many years previously, Mama is going with ‘as eccentric on this issue as he was’, because Mama, as you can probably tell, rather likes Kuindzhi, and is definitely resisting the idea that he wasn’t as cool in his treatment of his wife is he was in other respects.

Vera Kuindzhi, just to give her more background than an appendage, translated a few of the famous chemist Dmitri Mendeleev’s works into French. And Mama likes to think that this may also be significant because some of what helped Arkhip achieve his striking lighting effects was being experimental with paint, not just the application of it, but its chemical composition.

The most famous example of this is the Moon over the Dnipper River. And variations on this theme, which the Kuindzhi exhibition has a reasonably large number of.

Moonlit Night on the Dneiper Arkhip Kuindzhi landscape painting

Luminous paint, anyone?

More epic queues resulted and it was sold for 5,000 roubles, which was a phenomenal amount of money for a painting at the time.

And yet what we are seeing is a poor version of what it originally looked like. The chemical composition of the paint did not hold – apparently the whole canvas glowed and was a lot lot brighter.

At this point Arkhip Kuindzhi exited the artistic stage for thirty years, for reasons no-one seems definitively sure about.

What he seems to have decided is that he could absolutely not top nailing the very essence of a shimmering moonlit night in paint, so he wouldn’t even try.

He still worked on his art quite a lot though. The theme of this era, apart from ‘pastel’, is looking down from above. Arkhip Kuindzhi was obsessed by flying. He was famous trying to get up high – he got into the property owning business because he wanted a particular studio on top of a building in Saint Petersburg, but the only way to get it was to buy the two buildings next door as well – and spent a lot of time perched in trees on his estate in the Crimea. Or swimming out to a rock and observing the natural world from there.

Thus you have paintings like Fog on the Sea.

 Arkhip Kuindzhi fog waves seascape painting

Although Mama’s favourite in this style is the one with the thistles.

Morning on the Dneiper Arkhip Kuindzhi landscape painting

All in all, if you are in Moscow before mid-February, Mama highly recommends taking part in the historical recreation of Arkhip Kuindzhi’s successful career and getting in the queue to see this very comprehensive showing of Arkhip Kuindzhi’s works.

If you cannot, luckily you can find the best known paintings hanging in the permanent collections in either the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, or the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg, so you’ll mostly only (only!) be missing out on seeing all the sketches, the different variations of the paintings all together, and the opportunity to stand in a room surrounded by glorious sunsets.

Sunset paintings Arkhip Kuindzhi

If all else fails, you can go to the Metropolitan Museum in the USA and see the one (1) painting of Kuindzhi’s there, the Red Sunset on the Dneiper.

And you should, you really should, do some (or all) of these things, because photos on the Internet really do not do justice to how very radiant the landscapes are.

Arkhip Kuindzhi, ladies and gentlemen. Marvellous hair. Excellent beard. Wonderful paintings.

And just to prove just how great he is, here is a video of someone stealing one of the paintings from this very exhibition, a mere week after Mama visited.

They’ve got it back now, but the painting is not going on display in this exhibition again, so here it is. Mama is pleased it has returned – it’s a good one. You can catch it at its home in the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.

Stolen Kuindzhi painting

More information

The Tretyakov Gallery’s website (in English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about Dmitri Mendeleev.

Address: Engineering Building (just to the left of the main building),
Lavrushinsky Lane 12, Moscow 119017

Opening: 10am to 9pm, closed Mondays, and the exhibition closes on February 17th. After that, the paintings go back to the Tretyakov Gallery Moscow and the Russian Museum St Petersburg.

Admission: 500 roubles for adults, and 250 roubles for kids and concessions, free for the under 7s, assuming you want to encourage your kids and elderly relatives to stand in the freezing cold for hours. That said, Mama notices that the Tretyakov seems to have released some more online tickets since she went, so you might be lucky.

It’s an extra 350 roubles for the audio guide. Get the audio guide. Queuing for that long? You deserve it. But you’ll have to leave a 2000 rouble deposit or your ID.

By Metro: Tretyakovskaya metro station (orange and yellow lines). Once you are out, you’ll be turning left and following the signs (in English and Russian). The very distinctive Old Tretyakov Gallery building is across a road and right round a corner. Try not to end up leaving by the connected green line station exit of Novuskusnetskaya as it’ll be a bit of a trek back. But on the upside, you’ll get to enjoy the newly nearly pedestrianised Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa.

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Arkhip Kuindzhi was a landscape artist in Ukraine and Russia who also had a knack for painting light.

Have Spacesuit Will Travel to the Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

When we first visited the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow, devoted to the Soviet and Russian space programme, Mama thought that space, its vastness, its inhospitable nature and the problems of how to stay there successfully went a bit over my and my Cosmic Big Brother’s head.

Inside a spacesuit Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

At that point we were only visiting Moscow, we were both six and under, and I was quite concerned about some of my toys. They were not where I was. I kept asking Mama if they were in my far far away home. She said yes. I was reassured for another ten minutes, while Mama was delighted. Not, I hasten to explain, because I was undergoing angst. But because she thought I had understood something important about the abstract concept of place.

What I say is that you would have had to be very dim indeed, or y’know, two or something not to grasp the distances involved when you have got on a train for ages, a plane for ages and ages and ages, a train for ages, an underground train for ages, and then still had short bus ride to go.

But space, I’m told, is even further away. And I did spend quite some time thinking that Moscow was a magical fairyland up in the clouds, because I tended to be asleep for the down bit of the journey. You can see Mama’s concern. Particularly as there are also actual adult people living today who think that the world is flat. 

On top of this, modern life being in many ways indistinguishable from magic, the sheer effort involved in chucking a big tin tube into outer space past the gravity sucking forces and cosy atmosphere bubble is easy to dismiss. Even when it comes back more or less intact. I mean, it’s alright, but it’s no carrying a talking super computer connected to the collected wisdom of humanity (plus cat pictures and Bejeweled Gem Swap Invasion 7) around in your pocket, is it? Surely there’s an app for that?

Satellite Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

However, the good news is that you cannot spend three years living in Russia without gaining a bit (ok, a lot) more appreciation of the whole undertaking. Or the idea that being first to *cough* almost *cough* everything to do with the cosmos is a thing to aspire to and be proud of.

MIR space station Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

So Mama now has to lean somewhat less hard on her not considerable knowledge of physics and engineering to engage us on our visit to the Space Museum, and can rely somewhat more on that of my Cosmic Big Brother. Who has been on school visits. And has internalized a number of factoids he finds interesting about the exhibits. Which he is more than happy to share.

Naturally, as it involves animals, chief among those is the life story of the space dogs, Belka and Strelka, the first two living beings to make it to space and come back alive (give or take a few mice and fruit flies). Did you know that after they landed they were never fed conventional dog food again, but only the very choicest of meaty morsels? You do now. And when they died, they were stuffed and put on display in the Moscow Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in the opening gallery devoted to some of the famous first flights. Now that’s fame.

Belka at the Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

Luckily for her, Valentina Tereshkova is still alive and unavailable. Mama wonders how close Yuri Gagarin was to sharing the same fate. But Sputnik is there, and that’s pretty cool, as are the first satellites to orbit various heavenly bodies, significant space suits and a film loop of footage surrounding the most significant space race milestones. Clips of take offs, engineers fiddling with equipment, the great dog/human cosmonauts themselves waving, and shots of ordinary people’s reactions to the news of what had happened.

Sputnik Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

The great engineering brains behind the endeavour are not forgotten either, but they too are given a human touch. Not just their medals or items from their professional lives are on display, but photos of them relaxing at the datcha alongside their personal chess board and so on too.

Also in this section are some of the spaceorific souvenirs created to commemorate all of this worthy activity. Which, this being the Soviet Union, were mostly in the form of lovingly hand crafted porcelain items rather than mass-produced plastic tat. This is Mama’s personal favourite, although she would like to point you in the direction of the very (very very) obviously female cosmonauts in the other display case.

Space flight souvenir Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

The engagement of children and adults alike is also enhanced by the fact that the Cosmonautics Museum is visually stunning too. The sputniks, rockets, landing crafts, satellites and probes which litter the place are objects d’art in their own right. The first room you enter has lighting designed to simulate a particularly impressive starry starry night, which makes all the shiny metal things twinkle and the marble floor gleam. The main exhibition hall has a space mural painted over the ceiling. Something which I was particularly delighted to point out to Mama.

Space Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

And it is surrounded by aluminum walkways, almost giving Mama the impression that she would at any moment be ushered into a space craft and countdown will commence.

Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

If you are in any way photography minded, this means you will want to invest in the special pass. You can take pictures with your phone for free, but for an actual camera you need to pay extra. Mama made the mistake of not realising the first time she visited how very photogenic the Moscow Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics would be. By the time she noticed, she was too far in to go back. Mama’s photography skills are not improved by having to hide behind Papa to snap shots very quickly, so this time we went she ponied up the 230 roubles immediately we arrived.

Totally. Worth. It.

Of course, you can see inside the rockets too, and actually tour a mock-up of the original space station, MIR. Where we were delighted by the computer stuck to the ceiling, the space toilet, and the fish tank.

Fish tank Mir Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

And then you can roam around in the section about how cosmonauts live, when they are preparing for space, when they are in space, and when they land. Check out the space fridge!

Space fridge Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

And the very natty training uniforms.

Cosmonauts uniforms Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

And lots of pictures of smiley people clearly having a whale of a time while whizzing round and round the Earth, pondering the insignificance of humanity’s place in the universe.

Life on MIR Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

And this, which my Cosmic Big Brother somehow still managed to make all about animals. It’s the emergency kit for cosmonauts who have landed to help them survive until help arrives. Note the gun? That’s for shooting wolves, apparently. Aaaaaaaaaaah, Russia.

Cosmonauts survival kit Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

Just underneath MIR, you can see a re-entry capsule that actually was in space, which you can tell because of its impressively incinerated look. Look out for this mottling elsewhere to reassure you they have not just emptied out the space programme’s cupboards of all the spare, unused space-going, possibly a bit substandard machinery.

Reentry Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

The last area is when international co-operation in this great undertaking is celebrated, specially in detailing the work of the International Space Station. We were terribly excited to see the UK flag up there. Hurrah for all two of our astronauts!

Cosmonauts and astronauts Cosmonautics Museum Moscow

It is sobering, though, to note by looking at the wall of Soviet/ Russian cosmonauts, just how few people of any nationality have been up on the cosmos in the last 70-odd years.

If all of this attention to the pinnacle of human ingenuity has made you hungry, there is now a cafe open on the premises, in which you can buy some very reasonable pizzas, and souvenir space food.

Mama was rather upset not to be able to get dehydrated space ice cream and recreate the thrill of when Grandad brought her some on his business trip to the US space centres when she was a child. However, with careful consideration, we got some chicken-and-potato-in-a-tube to take home. After much delighted faffing about with the nifty self-heating pouch, it was a bit of a let down to discover that what was inside was perfectly palatable. But then none of us is all that far removed from the pureed baby food era of family life, so this judgement is perhaps not representative of the reaction of the population at large.

They have also set up a proper souvenir shop in the Moscow Space Museum foyer, although Mama thinks they need more interesting mugs, and also wonders why they do not sell the space food there. We just wanted the Belka and Strelka toys. And magnets. And, I dunno, pencil sharpeners. Whatever there are the cute space dogs on really. Although I was also impressed by the professional looking telescopes.

What they have taken away since our last visit are the very blue, very plush, very strokable rope barriers. Noooooooooooooo! But probably sensible, given that you were not supposed to touch them. Mama likes to think the decision was made after she helpfully pointed out this problem in our original post about the Cosmonautics Museum in Moscow.

The museum does still have the best entrance marker of any museum evah. A sliver rocket soaring on a silver smoke trail elegantly high into the sky. At its base are two very Soviet murals, whose supermen (and dogs) marching gloriously forward into the heavens does not, in this instance, look at all overdone. Mama had been admiring it for years before she ever made it into the museum.

The rocket sculpture above the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics

Do not dither in the same way yourself and do not let the shiny distraction of the new Cosmos Pavillion in VDNKh, or the fact that you can go on a tour to Star City, the actual current cosmonaut/ astronaut training area outside of Moscow, distract you – the Memorial Museum of Cosmonauitics is still very very worth visiting. It’s important, it’s interesting, it’s beautiful and it’s really really well air-conditioned.

This post has been considerably revised from the original 2014 version after a recent visit.

More information

The Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics website (in English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about the first manned space flight.

Address: 129515, Москва, пр. Мира, д.111

Opening: 11am to 7pm every day except Monday, when is is closed, and Thursday, when it is open until 9pm.

Price: Adults – 250 rubles, Children over seven (and other concessions) – 100 rubles, Children under seven – free. The photography pass (which you MUST get if you have a camera) is 230 rubles.

By Metro: The nearest station is ВДНХ (VDNKh) on the orange line. It is about 100m to the museum entrance past a couple of cruise missiles if you come out of the exit near the front of the train (assuming you are travelling out from the centre), but if you choose the exit past the rear carriages, you can walk up a pedestrian-only avenue lined with cosmonaut-planted trees, busts of famous space-programme-related people, stars commemorating important cosmic milestones, and a damn big solar system sculpture-come-sundial. Luckily, whatever exit you choose, you can’t miss the museum. Head for the rocket.

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Go to the Cosmonautics Museum Moscow and experience the highlights of the Soviet and Russian space programme including sputnik, MIR and Belka and Strelka in person

“hilarystyle"

Banksy in Moscow: genius, vandal or what the hell?

‘Ooooh, is Banksy in Moscow?’ asked Mama on seeing a friend’s Facebook post a month or two back.

Banksy at the Central House of Artists Moscow exhibition

As it turned out, it wasn’t the British graffiti artist Banksy himself on display in Moscow but a number of his works in an exhibition subtitled ‘Genius or Vandal? You decide.’

Mama was relieved. The man’s identity may be something of an open secret these days, but Mama has a lot of sympathy with someone who sticks stubbornly to their pseudonymity regardless.

This being cleared up, Mama had no feelings of conflict when she set off, alone, to admire the exhibition. We were out of town, and Papa airily declared that, unlike Mama, he had been to Bristol and seen a number of Banksies in the original. Whatever was in Moscow would not be the same.

Mama, by contrast, had hitherto only seen one of Banksy’s artworks in person.

Banksy near Regents Park

Which brings us to the dilemma of holding an exhibition of street art.

Quite apart from the issue of transposing the pieces from the raw urban environment they were designed to challenge into a respectable art gallery, how do you overcome the logistical difficulties of transporting whole walls, sometimes quite sizable walls, and frequently holding up actual buildings across a continent and into a room or two, albeit rooms in the very large Central House of Artists, opposite Gorky Park and within the grounds of the sculpture park Muzeon?

The answer may surprise you.

You. Do. Not. Even. Attempt. It!

I know!

Luckily, many of Banksy’s better known works have been reproduced in (Mama understands) fairly limited, carefully authenticated prints. Which is the advantage of frequently working with stencils. So the exhibition consists of a number of these, borrowed back from their owners, and one or two sketches and similar, of the back of an envelope type.

Banksy Note Central House of Artists Moscow

There are also nice big photos of the original works in situ.

Which were usually of typical British street scenes, frequently in London. Mama, overdue a visit back to the motherland, was feeling quite homesick by the end of the show. At one point she actually forgot she was supposed to be looking for the (quite subtle) bit of graffiti and instead gazed at the buildings, the trees, the shops, the road signs, and the people, in undisguised longing for a few minutes.

London street with Banksy Moscow exhibition

Other expats be warned.

Also be warned that you are not the target audience for this show.

The thing is, Mama would not have called herself an avid Banksy follower. But what with the fact that she and Banksy are somewhat of an age, a number of his works here seemed focused on her yoof, cycling as they do though the same topics any 20 something anarcho middle class leftie would have had an eye on back in the 90s.

In fact, the themes – the iniquities of the British royal family, the rise of surveillance society and an obsession with the works of Quentin Tarantino – seemed so linked to their time and the culture that produced them, Mama wondered if they would speak to anyone younger, not British, and not currently upset by the death of Princess Diana, the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, and the ear sawing off scene in Reservoir Dogs being set to such an irresistibly catchy song.

The Royal Family Banksy Moscow exhibition

It also seemed perhaps a bit trivial compared to some of today’s concerns.

Mama concluded that maybe that’s what everyone thinks looking back on their youthful outrage from their 40s, except, perhaps, the bit about the UK having one CCTV camera for every 11 people or so.

Thug for Life Banksy Moscow exhibition

And to be fair, the feedback from Muscovites younger than herself is that they had no trouble relating to the more general points being made by these sections.

Of course, the last thing Mama remembers hearing about from Banksy was the Dismaland installation (pun entirely intended), which was really quite recent, about the same time we left for Moscow in fact.

Banksy took over a large area in a run down seaside resort town on the south coast for a month and together with over 40 other artists created a nightmarish theme park attraction. It featured not only social commentary via the medium of subverted fairground rides and a derelict fairytale castle, but also real life docents who acted like grumpy disaffected employees of the unhappiest place on earth.

Dismaland Banksy Moscow

Mama followed with interest the fuss that it caused, with some commentators noting that the sarcasm was all rather broad, while at the same time, 150 000 people braved the difficulties of booking a ticket via a sketchy website or queued for hours to get the walk in tickets released each day. Having added some 20 million GBP to the local economy it was dismantled – and the building materials sent to the refugee camp near Paris.

It was all very gleefully satisfying.

Of course, Banksy is in many ways something of a performance artist, one who sucks all around his work into participating. From the ongoing arguments about whether his paintings should be allowed to stay put, be painted over, or be protected with glass, involving building owners, local councils, Transport for London, art critics, buyers, the media and after that, the general public. To the fact that he once got into a tit for tat wall painting war with a more venerable tagger and his followers. Which only ended when the other party, King Robbo, sadly had a (non-graffiti related) accident and eventually died of his injuries.

But I suppose what surprised Mama is that given all that has happened in the three years since Dismaland, there wasn’t more about things like the UK currently descending into self-induced turmoil, as though in defiance of how often Banksy really surfaced in the headlines, he should be out there spray painting furiously at all hours, all night, every night, fulfilling the same sort of role as political cartoonists in the newspapers, or comedians on the TV programmes like Mock the Week or Have I got News for You, churning out topical commentary on the latest stories to hit the headline week after week after week.

And it isn’t like he hasn’t said anything at all.

Brexit Banksy Moscow

Of course, Mama mused, it seems Banksy has been spending a bit of time in the US, so perhaps Brexit is not feeling quite so immediate. Mama also gathers one of his current area of focus is Palestine, and there is definitely a case to be made that this is a place which needs attention from someone who has proved very effective at communicating to the public at large in a way that gets people’s attention.

Still, there is another reason than that ‘Banksy: Genius or Vandal’ is more of a Banksy retrospective for the potentially uninitiated, and this is that the exhibition turns out not to actually have anything to do with Banksy himself.

In fact, just this week he posted a screen shot on Instagram of splendidly well-crafted conversation indicating that he might be a bit miffed about it.

Banksy on Instagram Moscow exhibition

The organisers of the exhibition at the Central House of Artists did actually say up front that he was not involved, mind you, but it does explain a couple of things that Mama found surprising when she went round. One is that the tickets start at 550 roubles, which is not 20 quid (it’s more like a fiver) but it is pricy for a Moscow art exhibition, and that’s if you buy online and for a weekday. It’s 15 pounds if you want to skip any queues and have a guided tour, but there are Q-codes which you can scan and get an audio or textual commentary (in Russian) for free. Mama paid 750 roubles (7 or 8 GBP) when she bought at the door on a weekend.

The other is that there is a certain amount of leveraging the merchandising opportunities at the end. Mama hadn’t previously associated Banksy with paying to have your photos taken in the style of some of his better known stencils, or branded T shirts. In fact, while actually at the exhibition, she had spent some time pondering this and trying to work out if this was some kind of new work on the commericalisation of art. Hey ho.

The exhibition closes on 1st September. In the meantime, if you want to see what he is actually doing now, you can visit his website or check him out of Instagram.

More information

The Moscow Banksy exhibition site website.

Banksy’s website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about Yate, South Gloucestershire, UK.

Address: The Central House of Artists, Krimsky Val, 10/14, Moscow, 119049

Opening: Until 1st September 2018 11am to 9pm Monday to Sunday

Admission: Adults: 650 roubles on weekdays and 750 roubles at weekends, no concessions. It’s 100 roubles cheaper if you buy tickets online, and 1400 roubles for a guided tour booked online.

By Metro: Oktabrskaya (orange and brown lines) – turn left, cross over the massive seven million lane highway and head left down the other massive seven million lane highway at right angles. Park Kultury (red line) – turn right, cross over the Moscow river, cross the seven million lane highway. The Central House of Artists is opposite Gorky Park.

By other means: Actually, the bus route ‘Б’ stops right outside. This is a circular route, which takes you round the edges of the centre of Moscow and hits a fair number of metro stations on the way.

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Banksy in Moscow a review of his unauthorised exhibition.

How to use and admire the Moscow Metro

The Moscow Metro is widely touted as one of the must-see attractions on any Moscow bucket list. Which seems odd for a public transport system but then you have probably heard about the fabulously beautiful stations.

Electrozavodskaya Staion Moscow Metro

And the station design is indeed a draw. We’ll get to that. Scroll down if you just want to admire the pictures of the best stations on the Moscow Metro.

But the Moscow Metro is more than just a stunning public space. There are all sorts of wild claims on the Internet about its efficiency and punctuality. Of course, when you actually use the network for any length of time you will discover that…

…amazingly they are almost certainly all true.

Even at 11pm at night, if the countdown clock at the end of the platform showing when the previous train left goes above 2.5 minutes, Muscovites start getting restless. At rush hour you can rely on the trains being closer to 90 seconds apart. And although there are sometimes planned closures at the weekends, it very VERY rarely stops running unexpectedly. In fact, the one thing you can never use as an excuse for being late is that you had a transport crisis involving the Moscow Metro. Far too easy to check up on. It will have been headlines news.

Muscovites tend to claim to have been stuck in a lift instead.

So given that people who are not used to regularly driving around London say that Moscow is the Worst Place Evah to tool around on the roads, this subway train system ought to be your go to method of getting about on a visit to the capital of Russia. We’ll deal with how to use the Moscow Metro first, therefore, and get to the history and which stations you should visit for their sheer visual appeal later.

Tips for using the Moscow Metro

Metro stations are easy to spot because of the big red M that marks their entrances. The system is laid out in a very straightforward way, with number of straight (ish) lines running into and out of the centre, bisecting the brown circle line. In any case, you can download the official Moscow Metro app to help you navigate.

Moscow Metro Map

However, to keep you on your toes in the face of this simplicity, connecting stations frequently do not have the same name; although Biblioteka Imani Lenina, Borovitskaya, Arbatskaya and Alexandrovsky Sad are four different platforms belonging to four different lines, they are all basically one (large) station. Keep an eye on this.

Arbatskaya (dark blue line) is the pretty one though.

Arbatskaya Station Moscow Metro

Moscow Metro tickets

The Moscow Metro has a flat rate fare, so you pay the same amount if you go two stops on the outskirts as if you go all the way across the city. You can get tickets from machines, which have an English language option, or you can go to the manned (or, more usually, womaned) counters, called a kassa. You probably shouldn’t assume English language support here, but there has been a drive to recruit more English-speaking cashiers, and stations which are English-enabled have a sticker that says ‘we speak English’ in the window.

We Speak English Moscow Metro

A single ticket costs 55 roubles, and a two journey one, 110 roubles. You can also buy a 90 minute ticket which allows you to use as many forms of underground or overland public transport as you like within the 90 minute time period. This costs 65 roubles.

If you buy a ticket for multiple metro rides of 20 or more, then it will cost about 33 roubles per journey. You will only need one ticket for your group as you can just keep using it to open the barriers until it runs out.

Taganskaya Moscow Metro

There is also a plastic reusable card, called the Troika, which you can either load up with money or one of the monthly unlimited passes (should you be in town for a while), which you can then use on all public transport in the city. The Troika, however, can only be used to let one person through the barriers as there is a block on its being used again for 20 minutes, so you would need one for everyone in your party. They cost 50 roubles to acquire, although you can get special ones for tourists from tourist information booths attached to some of the central Moscow Metro stations, which you just hand back at the end of your stay.

These information stands also sell Moscow Metro themed souvenirs. And, recently, started giving out all sorts of advice and help for your stay in Moscow. Worth a stop then.

How to get on a train on the Moscow Metro

Once you get onto one of the platforms, which are generally open plan with tracks on both sides, you will be looking at the signs dangling from the ceiling to tell you where to get on your train from, as these list the stations served by each route. On the back walls there is also a long list of the stations available from where you are. These also indicate where you can change to other lines and the stations served from there.

Semenovskaya Moscow Metro

Other signs to look out for are the ones which tell you where you can transfer to another line, which will be colour coded to help you work it out, and also the ones that say ‘Выход в Город’, or ‘exit to the town’ followed by some of the most interesting places you can find at each exit. Which are often quite far apart from each other so it always helps, if following somebody’s directions, to find out if you should be going out the exit from the front of the train or the rear, depending on which direction you are coming from, into the centre or out of it.

Sign Moscow Metro

This is because most of the signs are still in Cyrillic, so may not be wildly helpful to you. Although look out for the flagstone signs set into the floor, which are in English and Russian, and the bilingual Moscow Metro maps on the information posts, usually in the centre of the platform, as well as on the trains themselves. These information posts also allow you to press a button and ask for help from a live interlocutor, both with getting about or more serious problems.

Decorative details Moscow Metro

Announcements on the trains themselves are now also in English as well as in Russian, and even if you do not catch the name of the station coming up next, you can always tell if you have got on the train going in the wrong direction as those going towards the centre have a man’s voice, and those leaving the centre have a woman’s voice.

Except on the circle lines, in which case it’s a man’s voice for clockwise and a woman’s for anticlockwise

The English version refers to the lines by number, whereas the Russian one says the lengthy full name of each line, which consists of two of the stations at either ends of the line. We are using colours, to, err, cut down on the confusion. Um.

Etiquette on the Moscow Metro

Once on the carriage you can sit down if there are free spaces and no pensioners who need the seat. Do NOT attempt to sit if there are pensioners who need the seat, or kids, or anyone else who looks like they might want it more than you if you are under the age of 50. Especially if you are a man. Russians take the etiquette of giving up seats quite seriously. This may well not be a problem as a lot of people use the Moscow Metro, and getting a seat often isn’t possible anyway.

Park Kulturi Moscow Metro

Other areas where Russians practice strict Moscow Metro etiquette are NOT standing on the platform right in front of the doors while waiting to get on. You stand just to one side and let the people getting off get off first. Failure to do so will probably result in injury as nobody is expecting you to be in such a stupid place and passengers will pour off the carriage briskly as soon as the doors open.

In order to facilitate this, if you are standing in front of the doors inside the carriage, you may well be asked something. It will sound something like ‘vii oohoditeh sledushaya?’ and means ‘Are you getting off at the next stop?’ If the answer is no, the idea is to jiggle around with your neighbours on the carriage until those getting off are nearest the door.

Best to move down inside the carriage when you get on then, if you are going more than a few stops. Luckily this is made easier by the fact that Metro carriages are much wider than most European ones, so there will actually be some room down the central aisles.

Carriage Moscow Metro

Entertainment on the Moscow Metro

If you have a long journey, consider logging onto the free WiFi, which you can do by finding the WiFi provider marked MT_FREE. You will need to supply your mobile number so that the service can send you an access code, but you only need to do this once. This is standard practice for all free WiFi providers in Moscow. There will be ads. Frequently for Durex. Clearly riding the Moscow Metro gets you in the mood.

If you don’t want to enjoy that experience, then an increasing number of trains have TV screens which show Moscow related news about Moscow specific exhibitions, shows, events, and other places to visit, as well as community initiatives implemented by the Mayor of Moscow, and the weather forecast. FIFA World Cup matches too.

You can also look out for some of the specially decorated trains. There are retro ones, celebrating past versions of the wagons. Or carriages commemorating different historical, cultural and sporting events, or high days, holidays, or other important aspects of Russian life.

Trains Moscow Metro

Other entertainment is provided between platforms by the Metro Music programme and consists of organised busking throughout the day at dedicated spots. You can look it all up and see who will be playing as you walk past. Every now and again they shift all the designated areas around so that a) you don’t get too fed up of being serenaded on your regular commute and b) you don’t miss out being serenaded on your regular commute.

Moscow Metro history

Along with the general user-friendliness of the system being built rather later than, say, the London underground and to a more unified plan, the other attraction of the Moscow Metro is the striking beauty of many of the stations. This came about not by accident, but is an integral part of the history of the underground train network.

They started off with the red line in the 30s, and for this they dug up great tracts of the city, bulldozing everything in the Moscow Metro’s path. This was a bit much even for the Soviets, despite not really being known for worrying about making people feel uncomfortable. And so they got in some engineers from abroad, invested a whole lot of money in machinery, and started to tunnel deep underground. This was a big deal in a country reeling from the aftermath of the revolution and civil war, and is one of the reasons why the stations which were built in the next wave of construction were turned into People’s Palaces – the whole project was a showcase for the might, determination, glory, and other impressive sounding positive adjectives of the USSR.

Lenin Moscow MetroThey also then arrested all the foreign engineers, who happened to be British ones from the London Underground, and deported them shortly afterwards. Not a high point in Anglo-Soviet relations.

Mosaic Moscow Metro

But on the upside, disruption on the surface was minimised and sustainable network growth established. They are still extending the lines today. Since 2010, 61 new stations have been completed, with up to 20 more expected later in 2018 alone. This massive project, which in part is designed to connect the outer suburbs of an expanding Moscow to the centre, is expected to last until 2025. At this point there will be double the kilometres of track as compared to when they started, and a whole extra Large Circle Line, to add to the other new one, the overland Central Circle Line, they opened in 2016.

Novokusnetskaya Moscow Metro

The most beautiful stations of the Moscow Metro

The first station from the underground drilling phase, Mayakovskaya on the darker green line, is considered one of the most elegant. Art deco styling for the columns, and be sure to look up at the mosaics in the ceiling.

Mayakovskaya Moscow Metro

Another well decorated line from the early days is the dark blue line, going out east. Electrozovodskaya, dedicated to factory workers, is worth a look for the marble reliefs and the ceiling lights.

Electrozavodskaya Metro Station

This line conveniently takes you to Vernissage souvenir market, where you will get off at Partisanskaya, celebrating the guerrillas who fought against the invading army in World War Two.

Partisanskaya Moscow MetroWhich is one of the other major themes of station design, after glorifying the revolution through the means of public transport.

Work did not stop on the Moscow Metro just because the country was involved in a war which would claim 27 million of its citizens’ lives, although it did slow down a bit. Thus the mosaics for Novokusnetskaya on the dark green line (one of the nearest stations for the Tretyakov art gallery) were completed by an artist actually trapped in the siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), who managed to get his works of art out, but not himself. He later died of starvation, along with large numbers of the rest of the population of that city.

So as some of the major construction was done relatively soon after the end of this war, when the victorious struggle for survival and the sacrifices to achieve it were still uppermost in people’s minds, it is not surprising that many of the stations are memorials to this period.

World War Two Moscow Metro

If you only have a limited amount of time to navigate the network, then your best bet is just to go right round the brown circle line, whose stations are all very worth seeing.

Probably the most stunning is Komsomolskaya, which connects to the red line. This is because here is where a number of long distance railway lines terminate, and so would be one of the first stations visitors from outside Moscow would see.

Komsomolskaya Moscow Metro

Another particularly notable stop is Novoslobodskaya (connected to the grey line), with its stained glass, a craft not much in evidence in Russia generally speaking.

Novoslobodskaya Moscow Metro

The brown circle line will also allow you to admire the other decorating theme, that of celebrating some of the different ethnic and national identities which made up the Soviet Union.

Belorusskaya Moscow Metro

As well as the generally superior lifestyle everybody was leading.

Skiing Park Kulturi Moscow Metro

Stations built after Stalin’s death under Khrushchev are much plainer, a trend mirrored in the construction of apartment buildings above, as the emphasis shifted from housing people in style, so simply getting people housed at all. But marble, solid wooden benches, and beaten metal, with the odd painted detailing still exist.

You can, however, see a resurgence in impressive design features at the new stations. As well as central ones such as Trubnaya or Dostoyevskaya on the light green line, you might want to take a trip down to the bottom of the red line to stations like Troparevo, Rumyantsevo or Salaryevo, or along the yellow line.

Rumyantsevo Moscow Metro

Troparevo Moscow Metro

This end of the red line also has the only Moscow Metro station on a bridge, Vorobyovy Gory, which coincidentally also has the best view over the FIFA World Cup stadium, Lujniki.

Plus, if you keep going along the dark blue line, you will get to Park Pobedi, which has the longest escalator in the world!

The final station you cannot miss, however, is Ploshchad Revolutsii on the dark blue line, which conveniently is the one nearest Red Square. This is because it has a whole bunch of bronze sculptures of Soviet super heroes.

Sniper Moscow Metro

Befitting super heroes, they have super powers. You will note that a number of the sculptures are rubbed shiny in places. This is because it is good luck to rub (some of) them. You can get help with exams, money issues, children, your job, quitting smoking, first dates and travel, depending on which statue you rub and which Internet site you believe.

The most famous is the border guard and his dog. You may be suspicious, watching the many many tourists pose with a hand on his nose, that all of this is just something only visitors believe in (so it is lucky there are actually four versions of each statue, meaning queues do not form). But in fact you only have to wait a few seconds more to see a passing Russian casually reach out a hand too as they walk briskly by.

Border Guard and Dog Moscow Metro

Moscow Metro tour

It is perfectly possible to find tours of the Moscow Metro, from various tour companies as well as the organisation which runs Metro itself, in partnership with the Museum of Moscow. If you want to do a self guided Moscow Metro tour, then it might be better to go early on a Sunday, when your main competition for the best selfie spot (clearly marked out on the floor for you in key stations – I am not even joking) will be the other tour groups, rather than somewhat irked commuters.

Still, one of the delights of the Moscow Metro is not the big show stopper stations, but coming across all the pleasing little finishing touches, the stylised ventilation grills, the imposing doorways, the many and varied light fittings, and other assorted details, and the best way to do that is just to use it as much as possible to get to as many places in Moscow as you can.

To help you do that, here is a great big guide to everything a visitor to Moscow might want to see. And another one about the best places to eat affordable Russian food.

Light fittings Moscow Metro

More information

This is the website for the Metro.

This is the part of the Moscow city government page which gives updates on Moscow Metro development related news (in English).

Information about the Museum of Moscow tour (in English).

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Read all about the #Moscow #Metro and its #beautiful stations as well as a practical #guide to how to use it

MummyTravels

Eating typical Russian food on a budget in Moscow

So you are in Moscow and you want to eat. And because you are in Moscow, you want to eat authentic Russian food.

Luckily, you will be spoilt for choice.

Top of the range is White Rabbit, a Michelin starred restaurant consistently ranking in the top 50 restaurants in the world, which aims to blend fabulous views, traditional Russian cuisine and something a bit more continental. Other fabulous dining experiences are at the Cafe Pushkin, where gorgeous surroundings complement its borscht made with forty two varieties of cabbage, the special apples, and smoked goose breast.

Pushkin Cafe at New Year in Moscow

Then there’s Chemodan, with a Siberian vibe and bear on the menu. And Dr Zhivago in the National Hotel, which has the advantage of overlooking Red Square.

You can work your way down and around from there for some considerable time if you want to.

However, sightseeing in Moscow is likely to be a pretty full-on experience with much to do and see. Sometimes you just want to grab a quick, affordable meal before you move on to the next attraction. Here, I will set out some of the best places you can get such cheap eats in Moscow, but still avoid McDonald’s and eat local, trying typical Russian food.

Starting at the most basic, look out for signs to the various Cheburechnaya, both as fast food stalls or hole in the wall style cafes. They will serve fried dough pockets filled with (variously) cheese, meat, mushrooms and mashed potatoes. These cheburek were one of the most the most popular street foods of the Soviet Union. Really cheburek should be eaten in a cafe where you can only stand at the tables for the full experience. There’s one of these near metro station Sucharevskaya, called Cheburechnaya Drujba. 

Teremok is a chain of cheap fast food joints often found in shopping mall food halls, but also with their own cafes close to Red Square and on the Arbat. Teremok serves blini (Russian pancakes) with a wide range of fillings both sweet and savoury, and soups. Such as borscht! The blini will come made with little designs baked into them too, so you really can’t go wrong.

Teremok blini restaurant Russian food in Moscow

Look for the large cow outside Moo Moo, which has restaurants all over central Moscow. Moo Moo takes a cafeteria approach so you can pick and choose from the wide range of dishes on display. For a proper Russian food experience, get a salad to go with your meat cutlet, a sort of fat burger patty which could be made of beef, pork, chicken or turkey, and add buckwheat kasha on the side. As a drink, there’s mors, made by boiling fresh fruit in water, or compot, which is dried fruit boiled in water. There is also kvas, a lightly fermented small beer type drink, traditionally made from toasted black bread. Plus soup. Such as borscht!

Moo Moo Russian restaurant in Moscow

Grabli is another cafeteria service restaurant, which also tends towards the steam punk, décor wise, and usually quite large dining areas. There is one in Detsky Mir, if you are planing to go there. Or by the Nikulin Circus and on Tverskaya Street, among other locations.

Grabli restaurant complete with hot air balloon decoration in Moscow

This style of service will allow you to get up close and personal with just how many different ways Russians can cover boiled vegetables with mayonnaise.

Famous salads to look out for both here and pretty much everywhere are olivier, which is a sort of potato salad with benefits, and ‘herrings under a fur coat’, which includes pickled herring, beetroot and boiled egg. If you must do without mayo, try vinigret, made of peas and beetroot and potato, or one of the slightly fiery, somewhat tart salads which in Russia are called ‘Korean’.

Alternatively there’s the meat jello salad called Kholodets.

Russian food salads in Moscow

You can look out for Kroshka Kartoshka in the food halls in malls too. It dispenses jacket potatoes. Jacket potatoes are not particularly Russian, but along with all the usual fillings, you will also be able to get some of the more sour flavourings enjoyed by the Russians, such as the feta-esque brinza cheese, pickled mushrooms and salt cucumbers. And you can also get soup. Such as borscht!

The very popular Lapim i Varim serves pelmeni, a super traditional Russian dish, which nevertheless has a lot in common with tortellini. Lapim i Varim has a much expanded idea of what a pelmeni dish can be. Offerings include shrimp, potato, liver, cheese, and lamb, as well as the more traditional pork/ beef mix of the ‘Siberian’. We like it so much we wrote about it here.

Pelmeni at Lepim i Varim in Moscow

The mid range Varenchnaya No 1 cafes (of which there are at least 15) also serve a range of different pelmeni dishes, salads, snacks like dried toasted bread sticks to dip into sauces, blini, and a full menu of main course classics such as boiled meat wrapped in cabbage leaves (aka golupsi), chicken kiev, cutlets again and soup. Like borscht. Plus! The atmosphere of an old Soviet communal flat. So you really ought to try a different cabbage soup here, then. Called shchi, it is basically borscht without the beetroot.

Of course, you can always eat in the deliberately retro Soviet Style cafeteria, Stolovaya No 57, of the otherwise now very glam shopping emporium, GUM. There is also a retro toilet in GUM for your historical pleasure.

Do not ignore the foodie food courts either, although these won’t stick to Russian cuisine. There’s one very conveniently on the ground floor of Nikolsky Plaza on Nikolskaya Street, just off Red Square. If you fancy a bit of a trip out of the centre to a place which is an attraction in its own right, then check out Danilovsky Market. Danilovsky Market is Moscow’s answer to London’s Borough Market, and combines fresh fruit, veg and other raw food stuffs, with lots of stalls selling prepared dishes, both hot and cold.

Or you could go to the shop Yeleseivsky, which sells all your regular supermarket staples, but also has a deli counter for you to choose picnic items from. The salads are particularly good. And the fresh bread. Or the cakes. And the biscuits.

Of course, similar edibles are available in a number of the food shops up and down this street, Tverskaya, as it slopes gently down to Red Square. But Yeleseivsky is fabulously decorated inside, as befits the opulent pre-revolutionary food shopping experience it started out as.

The famous Yeliseyevsky shop in Moscow

And then there are the many restaurants and chains offering food from Central Asia and the Caucuses, which is what Russians eat when they want a break from their own ethnic cuisine but don’t want to go as exotic as French. Shashlik, barbequed meat, is a must. In addition, from Georgia look out for the soup kharcho, a warming spicy tomato and meat soup, and khachapuri, a flat bread pie with a variety of fillings. Try the one with oodles of melted cheese and a runny egg cooked in the middle. One of the more centrally located Georgian restaurants in Moscow is, in fact, called Khachapuri. 

Khachapuri Georgian food and restaurant in Moscow

Uzbekistan is famous for its lagman noodles, thick homemade noodles which are often added to soup, and plov, a slow cooked meat and rice dish, which when done right is astonishingly flavourful. Plov is often found on outdoor food stalls as well as indoor restaurants. You can get it at Vernissage souvenir market for example.

Another Russian obsession is sushi. Yes, I do realise sushi is in no way Russian.  But just as Anglo-Indian culture made the dish chicken tikka masala its own, and General Tso’s chicken is much better known in Chinese-American cooking than elsewhere, so Russians have put their own unique twist on this classic Japanese food, and that is to serve it with pizza. Go on, you know you want to try sushi and pizza. We tell you what it is like at La Gatta, but it’s pretty inescapable. Even the most lavish expensive dining experience in Moscow, the Turandot Palace, happily combines sushi with Russian, Chinese and French food, so clearly this sort of fusion cannot be wrong.

Sushi and Pizza at La Gatta Restaurant in Moscow

If you don’t eat meat, do not despair. Visit Moscow during Orthodox Lent or the run up to Christmas (both of which will be slightly different in timing to Catholic and Protestant Lent/ Christmas, so keep an eye on it) and you will discover that many cafes and restaurants offer a fasting menu which is effectively vegan. The word for ‘fasting’ in Russian is ‘post’ (пост), so you want items labeled that or a separate ‘postnoe menu’ (постное меню). Luckily, fasting happens a lot in the Orthodox church calendar, so you may well find these meat-free and dairy-free dishes are on regular sale throughout the year, even if you come at a different time.

Coffee-wise, there are lots and lots of cafes. The home-grown answer to Starbucks is Shokoladnitsa. While their standalone coffees are not particularly cheap, they do breakfast and lunch deals which are good value and include a number of Russian items. Look out for the sea buckthorn tea as a very Russian alternative to coffee. And if you are looking for a morning meal, try the sirniki, a sort of drop scone made from curd cheese and served with jam and sour cream.

In fact, offering budget menus around lunchtime is common throughout Moscow, and it is worth looking out for signs saying ‘biznes lanch’ (бизнес ланч), which will get you a salad or soup and a main course plus a drink for a reasonable price in all sorts of cafes and restaurants, not just the ones offering traditional Russian food.

To go with your coffee, you could also try cake. Russian cakes are pretty fabulous, although not for those without a sweet tooth or a willingness to take a lot of calories on board. Most of the more cafe-like eateries mentioned so far will serve classics like Prague cake (chocolate), polyot (meringue and cream), ptichye moloko (souffle and chocolate) or medovik (honey and nuts).

Russian cakes in Moscow

But ice cream is also something of a national obsession. You should have some while walking around either GUM or the former Detsky Mir, the Central Children’s Store on Lubyanka (or both), just like all the Russian visitors to the capital will be doing.

Hopefully, you will now be able to find the best places to eat budget Russian food in Moscow. Let us know how you get on, if you liked the borscht, or if we have missed a hidden gem of a cheap Russian restaurant or cafe from this list.

Read for some sightseeing now? Read THE guide to Moscow for first time visitors.

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Where to find typical #Russian #food on a budget in #Moscow Russia

THE Guide to Moscow for First Time Visitors

Coming to Moscow and not sure what there is to see and do beyond the famous onion domes of Red Square? I am a Brit but I’ve lived in Moscow for well over ten years off and on since 1996. Currently I’m bringing up two Anglo-Russki kids in the capital of Russia, and I’m married to a native Muscovite. This is my guide to the most essential sights for first time visitors to Moscow, as well as other cool, interesting and unusual things you might want to look out for if you have a bit more time to look around.

You can’t miss Red Square and St Basil’s Cathedral

Obviously you are going to have to visit Red Square, with St Basil’s Cathedral, the iconic image of Russia as its focal point. You can even go round the church, built in the 16th Century by Ivan the Terrible. St Basil’s is colourfully painted throughout, with tiny winding staircases leading to a succession of dimly lit, atmospheric chapels, all richly highlighted in gold leaf. Sometimes there are also singers.

Red Square Moscow

If that experience is not spooky enough you can also visit the mummified body of Lenin, still in his stylish boxy tomb next door to the cathedral. Shuffle past Lenin, ignore the smell, and don’t try to talk or pause or the guards will… frown at you. Then you can go and see the graves of other famous revolutionaries (and Stalin) in the walls of the Kremlin outside.

Want to see what high-end shopping looks like in Moscow? Nip into GUM, the former Soviet state department store, now thoroughly revamped. Its pre revolutionary roof is a work of art, as are its ice creams. Eating one is a Russian tradition, one of the things you must do in Moscow whatever time of year you visit.

GUM Moscow

Red Square is freely accessible most of the time, except when Lenin is receiving visitors or there is a public holiday which requires celebrating with a parade. The opening hours for St Basil’s are 11am to 6pm in summer and for Lenin’s mausoleum, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday 10am to 1pm. Read more about what to see and what (not) to do on Red Square here.

The Kremlin vs St Basil’s

Of course, one thing you may have discovered while visiting Red Square is that St Basil’s is not, in fact, the Kremlin, and the dead centre of Russian political power is also somewhere you can’t miss on a visit to Moscow.

Inside you can admire cathedrals with Tsarist connections, neo-classical government buildings, a cracked bell, some formal gardens, lots of cannons, a really hideous Soviet-era concert hall, and the Russian president’s helipad.

Kremlin helipad Moscow

On Saturdays from April to October you can also watch an elaborate changing of the guard ceremony, although there is also a more modest version every hour or so outside the Kremlin walls at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Lots of high kicking marching and saluting.

If you pay a bit extra you can go to the Armoury and look at national crown jewels type treasure. You might be thinking the communists would have got rid of it, but you will be wrong. There will be a lot of bling. Some Faberge eggs. It will all be exceeding shiny.

The Kremlin is open every day except Thursday. The Armoury costs extra for entrance at two-hour intervals. You need to book your visit on the day, but you can do this via the internet as well as in person.

Experience ‘wild urbanism’ at Zaryadye Park

Prefer some fresh air? If you wander down to the river you can check out Moscow’s newest public open space, Zaryadye Park. It is definitely one of THE spots to go and get your Instagram on – in particular you should head for the bridge that sweeps out into the middle of the river for an uninterrupted shot back up towards Red Square and the Kremlin.

Kremlin from New Zaryadye Park Moscow

Designed by the same people who are responsible for the High Line in New York, it also contains an open air amphitheatre, an underground glacier and a multimedia experience showcasing Russia’s manifold beauties. And the park itself is designed in zones to represent the different climates and flora of the very large territory Russia currently encompasses.

This post covers what happened just after it was opened, and why it lived up to its tagline of ‘wild urbanism’.

Cruise down the Moscow River and see it all

Just up from the park in the summer season you can catch cruise boats which will allow you to drift comfortably down the Moscow River taking photographs of many of Moscow’s top attractions as you go. Sail past Zaryadye Park again, the Kremlin (the best views are from the river), the reconstructed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (see below), the former Red October chocolate factory (it’s very red, you can’t miss it), the GIANT statue of Peter the Great (there are no words), and get off at Gorky Park, although you can choose to go on for longer too, and admire one of the main stadiums for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, some of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe, as well as a lot of trees.

Read more about cruising down the Moscow river, including what to look out for and why, here. Cruises also run during the winter too, but those only start and finish in Gorky Park.

The old meets the new in Gorky Park and Muzeon

Gorky Park is a much bigger space than Zaryadye Park and in the last few years has been completely renovated. It now has a large number of (variously) cafes and food stalls, flowerbeds, artfully scattered lounging cushions, boating lakes, open air theatres and cinemas, playgrounds, free yoga and dance classes, fountains, sports facilities, random hip happenings, places you can hire bikes, and a huge outdoor ice rink (in winter).

Gorky Park Moscow Fountain

You can also nip back towards Peter I (you can’t miss him) and check out the park, Muzeon, directly opposite Gorky Park. This started out as the dumping ground for defaced Soviet busts, figurines and towering 3D representations of people like Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the KGB, which were torn down at the end of the Soviet period. But it has mutated into something a bit less bitter over the years and now has all sorts of other sculptures for you to wander around and wonder about. Still, if you want to get a selfie with Lenin, this is the place to come.

Lenin Bust Muzeon Park Moscow

Both Gorky Park and Muzeon are free to enter. Opening hours are roughly equivalent to daylight hours. Read more about the delights of Gorky Park here, and the origins of Muzeon can be read here.

Want to find out more about how the statue of Peter the Great came to be imposed on the Moscow skyline? Read this.

A tour of Soviet Moscow

Travelling around Moscow, you will have already noticed that the fact that there is a park to deposed Soviet statues does not mean that there aren’t any hammer and sickles on display elsewhere around the city. If you are looking for traces of Moscow’s communist history, it’s easy to find them.

Leave Red Square, for example, along Nikolskaya Ulitsa at the far end of Red Square from St Basil’s, and at the top of this attractive pedestrianised street you will find a giant mustard-coloured building. This is Lubyanka, the former headquarters of the KGB and now the actual headquarters of the FSB. No, you cannot visit. But you can look at the monument to the many people who died in the Gulags off to the right, on the spot where the statue of Dzerzhinsky used to be.

KGB Headquarters Moscow

Look out over the Moscow rooftops at Detsky Mir

More cheerfully, to the left (yes, right next door) is the Central Children’s Department Store on Lubyanka, which back in the USSR was much more snappily named Detsky Mir, or Children’s World. Even if you don’t have kids along, you might want to pop inside because you can go outside on a viewing platform at the very top of the building, giving you an excellent view over Lubyanka, and the rooftops back towards the Kremlin and Red Square.

Rooftop View of Moscow

The fact that you can indulge your inner child on the way up with one of the bigger Hamley’s stores, a number of child-oriented attractions such as a room of anamatronic dinosaurs, and all sorts of interactive games in the corridors is surely just a bonus.

The Central Children’s Department Store on Lubyanka is open from ten am every day and closes at ten pm. Read this post if you want to find out more about this venue.

Explore VDNKh, the Soviet theme park

If you want a real USSR experience, though, you should head out of the centre to VDNKh. Begun as an exhibition space to show off all of communism’s finest achievements from the small (breeding a lot of pigs) to the large (first man in space), this very enormous park is dotted with all sorts of pavilions to things such as Armenia, honey and electromagnetic engineering, which are both very Soviet in design and extremely attractive.

Pavillion VDNKh Moscow

It’s fun to wander around and admire the architecture, but nowadays the pavilions also contain a number of very visit-able attractions, including an aquarium, an interactive science museum, an illusion factory, an urban farm, art and history exhibitions, and a space shuttle you can go inside.

In addition (but do you need an addition?), right next door to VDNKh is a whole museum devoted to space exploitation, which is an absolute must-see for anyone with any kind of interest in space rockets, space dogs, space chess sets and space ice cream and has the added bonus of having the most fabulous roof-top sculpture of any museum on the planet.

The rocket sculpture above the Memorial Space Museum of Cosmonautics in #Moscow

And! In winter they build one of the largest outdoor ice skating rinks in the world so you can skate past the pavilions of VDNKh, and then whizz down a tubing run that winds round an actual space rocket.

VDNKh is found a fifteen minute journey from the centre of Moscow half way up the orange metro line, and is open all day. For more about the history of this remarkable space as well as what you can do there, read this post.

Visit the Museum of Contemporary History

Of course there is always the actual museum to the revolution, including its build up and its consequences right up to the present day, although now it bills itself as a Museum of Contemporary History rather than out-and-out devoting itself to the formation of the USSR.

This means that there is a Putin room. There is a collection of pipes sent to Stalin from around the world. And there is a Yeltsin Spitting Image puppet. In addition to Lenin related items and similar.

It is also cheap and central, being on the main drag down to Red Square Tverskaya Street, just up from Tverskaya/ Pushkinskaya/ Chekovskaya metro stations. And since it is housed in the former English Club, a gentlemen’s hang out for expat Brits and Anglophiles in Tsarist Russia, it’s in a really nice-looking building.

Closed Mondays. Do not ever try to go museum visiting in Moscow on a Monday. This is almost always the day they have off. The Kremlin is the exception. The last Friday in every month is also often not a good idea, as this is also usually another closed day. On the upside, if you are in town, on the third Sunday each month and some public holidays, a large number of museums are free. There will be queues for the more popular ones, however.

Go underground and visit Bunker 42 and the Gulag Archipelago

Top of the list of more off-the-beaten-track Soviet-related locations to visit is Bunker 42, where you can relive the Cold War. Be prepared to walk down many many stairs, and go deep deep underground to find out where the Soviet leadership intended to ride out any attack the West could throw at them. To visit you have to be part of a tour, and it’s pricey compared to many of the other museums and experiences in Moscow at over 2000 roubles per person for the English language excursion. It may nevertheless still be worth it. To fortify you for the slog back up the stairs, there is also an underground cafe down there.

Another museum which aims to look at the less palatable aspects of the Soviet Union is the Gulag Museum, about the extensive network of labour camps for political (and other) prisoners. Open every day (except Monday) from midday, it is between Dostoyevskaya and Tsvetnoi Boulevar metro stations.

Tanks, planes and guns

If you want to look at really big guns, then the Central Armed Forces Museum is for you. It covers the whole history of the Red Army, although the Second World War dominates. Called the Great Patriotic War in Russia, this might give you some understanding of how brutal it was on the Eastern Front.

But as well as some very sobering dioramas of the horror that was Stalingrad, triumphal collections of captured Nazi flags and other such aide-memoires, you should be able to find all the uniforms, tanks, planes, armoured vehicles, and weapons big and small you could possibly want, and the actual American U2 spy plane shot down by the USSR in 1960 to boot.

U2 Spy Plane Powers Moscow

There isn’t much English language support, but its appeal is very visual even if you don’t know your AK47s from your AK74s. There are handling opportunities too, although not going so far as to let you actually fire the things on display.

The Central Armed Forces Museum is to the north of central Moscow near metro station Dostoyevskaya or Prospect Mira and open every day except Monday and Tuesday.

Victory Park and the Napoleonic Wars

Somewhat further out from the centre is Victory Park and another museum which is closed on Monday. This time it is exclusively about the Second World War. In case you weren’t sufficiently convinced by the Central Armed Forces Museum about just what a big deal it was to the Soviet Union, Russia, and the allied victory.

In fact, although it celebrates the end of World War Two with a giant monument designed by the same person who did the humongous Peter the Great statue you will not have missed on the Moscow River, the park was actually only completed in the 90s. But there are even more tanks round the side of the museum as a reward for coming out here as well as the deepest metro station in Moscow, Park Pobedy. Enjoy the ride up the escalator!

The park also hosts various events during the year, many of them entirely unwarlike, such as the Ice Sculpture Festival in the New Year holidays.

If you want to find out more about the other disastrous land war in Eurasia, then right next to Red Square is a museum devoted to the incautious invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte. It’s not actually the blood-red gothically detailed State Historical Museum which dominates the other end of Red Square to St Basil’s, but a subdivision next door.

The State Historical Museum is itself interesting for those who want to look into pre-twentieth century Russian history. Right back to prehistoric times. For non-Russian speakers it is essential to get the English language guide, as most of the objects in the museum have been selected because they have an interesting story attached rather than being merely representative. You will want to hear about them. This museum is, wonder of wonders, NOT closed on Monday or any other day.

Historical Museum Red Square

Read this post for more about what you can see at the Historical Museum, and why you shouldn’t tell your children that most things from deep history are found in graves.

Travel round and round the Moscow Metro

It’s not often that affordable, everyday and extremely practical means of travelling around are recommended in a guide to the top things to do in any given city, but there is a reason why it keeps coming up for the Moscow Metro, and that is the outstanding station design. You don’t need an interest in trains to appreciate the ceiling shapes, the light fittings, the many and varied artworks, the marble, the statues, the door details, and the columns.

Komsomolskaya Moscow Metro

The project began with the intention of building a series of people’s palaces (and to glorify the Revolution through the medium of public transport) and you have to say that it was a success, although they throttled right back after the first wave of construction. What this means is that most of the really spectacular stations are along the circular brown line, so it is simplicity itself to tour them.

Other notable stops are Ploshchard Revolutsii, the nearest stop to Red Square on the dark blue line (Soviet superpeople and animal statues, rub dogs or chickens for luck), Mayakovskaya on the green line (look up), and most of the stations on the dark blue line going East, which conveniently takes you to Vernissage souvenir market (see below).

However, the Moscow Metro is still under construction, and some of the newer stations in the south have also been decorated with an eye to making a functional space delightful once again. To compare the old and the new, the southernmost stations of the red line might be worth a journey, plus you’ll get to go through the station which is actually on a bridge of the Moscow River!!! And also right next to the 2018 FIFA World Cup stadium.

Troparevo Moscow Metro

To find out more about how to use the Moscow Metro, its history and what stations are essential viewing, read our guide.

The modern, the traditional and the trendy art galleries

If you are interested in seeing the Soviet Union through the eyes of its artists, you can visit the large rectangular box like building you will not have failed to notice while you were visiting the fallen statues of Muzeon. This bit of uninspiring architecture houses the New Tretyakov Gallery, a museum to the Soviet avant guarde and what followed it. Really worth a look if you have any interest in Kandinsky, Malevich and enormous canvases of Stalin twinkling avuncularly down at you.

The New Tretyakov Gallery at Krymsy Val

If you prefer your art more contemporary, just inside Gorky Park the Garage art gallery is one of the most likely spaces in Moscow to find out what Russian artists are up to now although it also has a lot of exhibitions by international names. It’s not very big, so easy to pop in and out of, and there is a pleasant sort of cafe, if none of the ones in the rest of the park appeal.

There is also the relatively new Moscow Museum of Modern Art, which has five locations all over the city and a wide variety of exhibitions, as well as the Moscow Multimedia Museum, which has Lego stations in the foyer.

Their websites will tell you if there is anything on which you feel particularly drawn to, but for a flavour of what you can see at any of them, click on the links in the text above, which also give more information about the locations, costs and the fact that they are closed on Monday.

And if you want to see just how hipster Moscow’s trendy art and design scene can get, check out the former Red October factory just down from the Kremlin and next to Muzeon, although this is rather better for hanging out in cafes and bars. So also go to Winzavod or the ARTPLAY complex in the east, down from Kurskaya/ Chkalovskaya metro, or Flacon in the north near Dmitrovskaya metro.

That said, when it comes to art, as a tourist, you’ll usually get directed to the Old Tretyakov Gallery which is back up the river a ways, on the south bank not that far from Red Square. Its building is much more attractive than the New Treatyakov Gallery’s, and its art is pre revolutionary.

Old Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow

You are unlikely have heard of any of the artists, but if you get hold of one of the many-languaged audio guides, by the time you come out, you will have a decent working knowledge of the whole of the history of Russian art, and a serious bear and birch trees addiction.

Or you could go to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, which is full of the paintings the Soviets acquired in the Second World War, among other things. Lots of Impressionists and Picasso and so on. Also, many life sized plastercasts of great works of art from around the world for the edification of Soviet citizens who were unlikely to be able to see them in person.

The Old Tretyakov Gallery is at Tretyakovskaya/ Novokusnetskaya metro stations, and for an overview of what you can see there and why it is interesting, read this post.

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art is near the Christ the Saviour cathedral (see below) at Kropotkinskaya metro station.

Both of them are closed on Mondays. Of course.

Admire Moscow’s pre-revolutionary architecture

As well as visiting the gallery, you might also want to have a wander around the area surrounding the Old Tretyakov Gallery, the south bank . This being one of the places you can see what Moscow looked like before the revolution, full of low-lying pastel-plastered mansion houses, sometimes even still wooden or partially wooden. There are also 19th century factory buildings, as well as a whole bunch of churches. Walking away from the Kremlin down either Novokuznetskaya or Bakhrushin Streets towards the metro station Paveletskaya will give you an overview.

Moscow mansion house

Prefer a more art nouveaux vibe? Then the back streets near the Old Arbat street are where you should attempt to get lost. Maxim Gorky’s house is a particularly famous building, having been designed by the architect Fyodor Shekhtel for businessman Stepan Ryabushinsky in the early 1900s before it was handed over to the writer by Stalin himself. You can go round it, and if you do, be prepared to be particularly impressed by the staircase.

Peep into the lives of famous Muscovites

In fact, there are quite a lot of flat, house and country estate museums dedicated to the writers, artists and performers who lived in them, so if you have a favorite look them up and see if you can go and see where they ate, slept and worked. One of the most enthusiastically celebrated is Mikhail Bulgagov, of Master and Margarita fame, as there is not one but two quirky house museums to his life and works in his former apartment block. One of them is the place where Bulgakov located the Devil’s abode in Moscow. Graffiti covered stairs, art installations, theatrical performances and a bus tour of the area are also available. Read about our visit here.

Of course, if you are a tourist in Moscow you should almost certainly take a walk down the Arbat street itself – it’s that kind of place.

Why is the Old Arbat famous?

Well, it is one of the oldest streets in Moscow, and one of the major routes in and out of the city for friend and foe alike. Originally lined with artisan’s workshops, eventually all the aristocrats had their palaces here. Later it developed more of a middle class medical and legal vibe before the artists, writers and poets moved in to make it the bohemian quarter.

More recently, in the 1980s this is where you could go to help kick start Moscow’s headlong jump into the wild waters of capitalism by getting involved with the black marketers exchanging jeans and foreign CDs for Soviet memorobillia. It was, therefore, a cool, edgy hangout, and the posibility of having a run in with the police, high.

Scruffy teens still to this day occasionally persist in turning up and trying to look cool by playing rock songs on their guitars. But they are fighting what is probably a losing battle with the pleasant cafes, souvenir shops and stalls, and professional street entertainers of the type you might find in Covent Garden in London or along the Royal Mile of Edinburgh.

You might want to check out the Kino wall, though, a much graffitied monument to Russia’s most famous underground rock star, who died unfortunately young. If it is still there. What with clashing with the new genteel vibe and all, there are rumours it is about to be painted over. Catch it while you can.

Victor Tsoi Wall Arbat Moscow

To get to the Old Arbat, you can either get off the metro at Smolenskaya and walk down the street towards the Arbat metro station (another one of the pretty ones). Or do the trip the other way. This experience is equally as fun in the evening as during the day.

To find out more about Soviet underground rock, read this post.

Shop for souvenirs at Vernissage in Ismailovo

Another great place to shop for your matryoshka doll is Vernissage at Ismailovsky Market. This sprawling outdoor complex combines a large number of arts and crafts vendors, souvenir emporium, fine arts gallery and a flea market, and is housed in a colourful fairy tale wooden kremlin recreated from the 17th Century. The main buildings are popular as a wedding venue, but there are also little museums to vodka, bread, folk art and child delinquency if you have had your fill of admiring the attractive wooden stalls and their contents, and there will also be outdoor entertainments such as live action blacksmithing for you to enjoy.

Kremlin in Ismailovo Moscow

Vernissage is open from 10am all week, but for souvenirs and shopping you really want to go there at the weekend as during the week the number of stallholders is much reduced. This post tells you a lot more about how very very fabulous Vernissage is, and what else you can buy there.

What more can Moscow’s parks offer?

Vernissage is right next to one of Moscow’s many excellent and very extensive parks, in this case Ismailovskiy Park, although this particular urban wilderness is probably of more subtle interest to the casual visitor than others with more obvious tourist attractions.

Such as Tsaritsyno in the south, which has a full sized replica of the original 18th century royal chateaux built for Catherine the Great, striking orange and white outbuildings, and a dancing fountain.

Bridge Tsaritsyno Moscow

There is also Kolomenskoye, which has one of the oldest churches in Moscow, Peter the Great’s modest cabin and a full sized replica of the original 250-room wooden royal palace of Peter the Great’s father to go round, as well as horse drawn carriage or sleigh rides (depending on the season).

Horse and carriage ride Kolomenskoye Park Moscow

These parks are situated quite close to each other in the south of Moscow along the green line, but that doesn’t really mean you should attempt both on the same day. You’ll want Tsaritsyno metro station for the gingerbread gothika, and Kashirskaya or Kolomenskoye stations for the 8th wonder of the Medieval world.

Read more about each location in this post for Tsaritsyno, this one for Kolomenskoye, and this one for the palace.

Be observant of Russian Orthodox churches

Moscow’s architecture is very much bound up in its churches. Moscow was once known as the city of 500 000 000 cupolas (at least), especially in comparison with its more secular and classically inspired neighbour, St Petersburg. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Orthodox church took back many of its buildings from their communist occupation by libraries, cinemas, museums, housing, communal gyms, public toilets, factories, storage facilities and other community projects returning them to the gorgeously decorated places of worship they are again today.

The biggest restoration project in Moscow of this kind is the Christ the Saviour Cathedral on the Moscow River, just downstream from the Kremlin.

The cathedral was demolished by Stalin to make way for a giant revolutionary monument and Soviet palace, which was to be the biggest such structure in the world.

Unfortunately, the soggy banks of the Moscow River proved unsuitable for building something so large and so the foundations were turned into an outdoor swimming pool. Today, it is once again a huge, gleaming, white marble-cladded gold-topped cathedral, built to the original specifications. You can visit it and admire the frescoes and icons inside. As well as the religious space, there is also an art gallery in the basement.

Christ the Saviour cathedral Moscow

The cathedral is open 9am to 7pm throughout the week, services willing. As with many religious establishments, they prefer tourists to dress modestly. It is traditional for women to cover their hair, and if you plan to be looking around a lot of churches, a head scarf might be a useful thing to have in your bag, should you be of the female persuasion. Men should remove headgear, and no-one should hold hands. It’s bad luck, apparently.

Further along the river, near the 2018 Fifa World Cup football stadium, is Novodevichy Convent, which as well as remaining one of a number of working Orthodox Christian monastic orders in Moscow, is notable for its cemetery, which contains the great, the good and the extremely notorious, as well as very striking headstones all round. Krushchev, Chekov, Gogol, Eisenstein, Bulgakov, Molotov, Mayakovsky, Shostakovich, Ilushin, Yeltsin and many more are buried here. You can buy a map of the graveyard at the entrance.

Moscow City, Skyscrapers and TV Towers

You will not have missed, while looking round Novodevichy, the towering glass buildings of Moscow City, or the International Business Centre as it is supposed to be called, as these are right next door. There are some genuinely striking bits of modern architecture here, but the real area of interest is that this complex houses the second tallest, the third tallest, the fourth tallest and the sixth and seventh tallest buildings in Europe (the tallest is now in St Petersburg, and the fifth tallest is in London). And you can go up the skyscrapers and look down over Moscow from unfeasibly high up, if you should so wish.

City of Capitals Moscow City

Decide if you want to spend the money, and read about our experience on one the tours to the Moscow City viewing platforms here.

However, the classic place to go if you want to stare at Moscow from above is the Ostankino TV Tower, still the tallest structure in Europe, even if it has been eclipsed by buildings with proper floors in lists of such things. As a bonus, it is lit up at night, and has a revolving restaurant, as well as a glass floor in the 360 degree observation deck.

Find Ostankino Tower close by to VDNKh, where it is virtually unmissable if a bit of a walk from te metro. Bring your passport as they won’t let you in without it and check the weather before you go – clouds may well obscure the top of the tower.

Enjoy expert performances of ballet, music, opera or the circus

Russia is deservedly famous for its ballets, and there can be no better location to see one than the Bolshoi Theatre just off Red Square. The historic stage is the one for the full on gold leaf, red velvet, boxes and balconies experience, but other venues under the same company’s umbrella are available, if less prestigious and lacking in really sumptuous architectural detailing. Booking is now possible online, and really needs to be done well in advance.

Bolshoi Theatre Moscow

If you want the thrill of walking into the Kremlin as more than just a tourist, try getting tickets to the Kremlin Ballet, which is housed inside the Kremlin itself. The only downside is that it is held in a considerably less visually attractive building than the Bolshoi.

Performances in either the Bolshoi or the Kremlin are unlikely to be radically innovative, but there will be virtuoso spinning and jumping, which is what you want really unless you are really into your dancing. Both of these also do opera for those who prefer singers to dancers.

If classical concerts are more your thing, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and the venue attached to the Conservatory are also both lovely spaces, central and chock full of performances, also on the more traditional end of the spectrum.

Less highbrow but equally as essential in order to experience the full range of authentic Russian entertainment options is a trip to the circus. In Moscow these have permanent, specially constructed buildings, such is the seriousness with which this art form is taken. The Nikulin Circus on Tsvetnoi Bulvar is bang in the centre, and the Great Moscow State Circus on Vernadskogo is rather bigger but further out in the south west, near the University.

Both have all the acts that you might expect, traditional and less so, visually spectacular, breathtakingly nerve-wracking and laugh out loud funny, with no need to understand Russian to enjoy them. But be warned; those have opinions about performing animals should steer clear.

To be honest, there are so many venues big and small all over Moscow for all sorts of shows, that if none of the above appeals but you want a dose of the performing arts then there will be something out there for you, even in summer when traditionally the big companies go on tour abroad. You want ice dancing? Indie bands? Puppet theatre? A musical version of Anna Karenina? A-tonal string quartets? Elton John? Depending on the season and day of the week it will be there.

Finish your day with people watching, cafe culture and nightlife

There is also a thriving nightlife in Moscow with cafes, bars and clubs to suit every taste too. When the weather is nice in the summer months you can just stroll around the pedestrianised centre, starting at, say, Tverskaya Street just behind Red Square, immediately making a sharp right along Kamergerskiy Pereulok, and then you just keep wandering along from there, investigating any side streets that look interesting. The evening will be awash with venues that have spilled out onto the broad and accommodating pavements so just take your pick. There will be buskers of all kinds and all sorts of people watching opportunities.

Moscow street musicians

In winter, well in winter just get indoors.

And finally

Hopefully, this has given you ideas about what you can do to fill your time in the capital of Russia both if you are visiting Moscow for the first time or if you have been here before and want to find something a bit different.

Of course, it is not an exhaustive list of things to do in Moscow.

I haven’t even mentioned the Darwin Museum of Evolution, the theatre of performing cats, the zoo, the train yard with full sized locomotives to climb over, the many many escape rooms (some in English), or the fact that whenever you turn up there is highly likely to be a festival of some kind in the centre with extensive decorations, stalls, games, craft workshops and street performers. For example.

Nikolskaya Ulitsa Easter 2018 Moscow

But you’ll need to go home eventually, so it might be better to just plan to come back to Moscow another time.

Any questions, comments, or suggestions for about what I should have included in my list of top Moscow attractions but didn’t?

And if you need some ideas of where to eat traditional Russian food at an affordable price, try here.

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This is THE #guide to #Moscow for first time visitors and those with more time looking for cool, interesting and unsual things to do in the capital of #Russia

400,000 stuffed animals at the State Darwin Museum, Moscow

A good three years back Mama visited the State Darwin Museum in Moscow for the first time and fell in love. We returned recently to find that not only is it just as good as it was the first time were were there, in all the ways described below, but that they have actually managed to up the level of fabulousness even more. There is now an impressive surround sound surround video experience to greet you in the first exhibition hall, and a new touchy feely area full of interactive educational games off the foyer, in addition to all the ones still in existence in the second building. 

It is fair to say that there is probably nowhere else in the world that has so many stuffed animals on display as the State Darwin Museum in Moscow.

Big Cats Darwin Museum MoscowThree large floors of them, plus more in the building next door. You’ve got dioramas of animals in their native habitats; groups of endangered or extinct animals; scenes of animals being torn apart by other animals, and other… educational… interactions; displays of a bewildering number of different types of squirrel; cases showing a large selection of dog breeds in order of size and likely ferociousness, from wolves down to those little yippy ones you keep in handbags; expositions on the topic of genetics punctuated by the stuffed remains of generations of guinea pigs; collections of all the birds who have the hooked meat-ripping beaks, the pointy fish-spearing beaks, the bijou seed-winkling beaks, the big round night eyes, the really bright feathers, and so on and so forth.

Wolves and Moose Darwin Museum Moscow

Basically, all the possible combinations of stuffed animals you could imagine, the State Darwin Museum in Moscow has ‘em, and a few more to boot. Including a walrus that must be giving the one at the Horniman a run for its money.Walrus Darwin Museum MoscowWhich should make it both one of the creepier and, after the first room or so, one of the more boring museums in the world, but it isn’t. In fact The State Darwin Museum in Moscow is now Mama’s new favourite museum, both on a personal level and on the basis of somewhere good to take us kids.

And we’re pretty keen on it too. Here’s why.

Firstly, it’s entirely devoted to explaining the theory of evolution. This is both interesting and, in Mama’s opinion, important. Interesting because Mama is the sort of person who likes an in depth look at things, and that’s not something that many museums have the luxury of giving. Important because she sends Stupendous Big Brother to not one but two church schools in not one but two different languages. She feels the need to nip any odd notions about the development of life on earth firmly in the bud that he might pick up, because, say, to take an example not at all at random, his (British) teacher has told him everything springing fully formed from the head of a god within a seven day time period is what he believes.

Hitherto Mama has been using the children’s non-fiction books aimed at explaining such things, assisted only by the odd half a room display in the London NHM or the Horniman. This makes it uphill work because, well, the biblical tale is just a better story than one which really requires you to grasp the concept of deep time and generations upon generations of living organisms first. We have difficulty understanding that Mama had a life before we appeared, so it’s not an idea that just takes a few minutes to sink in.

But now she can (repeatedly) take us to a museum which exhaustively covers all the main points in a memorably visual manner. So well done is it, in fact, that Mama, whose Russian is not up to long scientific explanatory placards and who is a wishy washy humanities graduate to boot, had no difficulty working out what the point of each section is. This, she thinks, bodes well for getting it across to kids. She and my Stupendous Big Brother certainly had a number of what looked like spirited and interested discussions while looking at the exhibits.

Guinea Pigs and Evolution Darwin Museum Moscow

If the stuffed animals aren’t enough, there’s also a vast collection of animal paintings on display. Mama is dubious about the artistic value of these, but my Stupendous Big Brother was very taken with them indeed.

Dogs Darwin Museum Moscow

I simply basked in the fact that most of them were entirely visible to someone of my height, nobody told me off for leaning on the glass and that there was plenty of room to gambol around looking for the horses.

It’s not that there’s no English, mind. Each room has a paragraph or two in that to get you oriented, should you feel the need.

Another thing Mama thought was particularly well done about the State Darwin Museum were the interactive touches that have been added to the basic glass cases, and I have to say that I heartily concur. They seem to have made a real effort to do things which bring the displays to life, and really add to what you are seeing, rather than distract or, worse, detract from them.

Mama thought, for example, that the little video screens showing clips of the animals in action in the section all about animals and their native habitats was inspired, and not just because they had put them at kids’ eye height. I liked the buttons you could press throughout the galleries to hear the sounds that different animals make. And the animal jigsaws, especially the ones where the aim was to focus on the massive differences in feet, mouths or limbs between different types of animals. And! The fact that all of these things had boxes next to them to make them easy for me to reach if they weren’t at my height already. My Stupendous Big Brother liked the computer games. Name that animal! Match the animal to their tracks! Match the animal to their habitat!

Computer Game Darwin Museum Moscow

There’s also a children’s play area for the under 7s. It has nothing whatsoever to do with animals, Darwin or evolution – it’s based on those big soft shapes you can move around, stack, build a fort out of and throw at each other, but that in itself provides a nice break and refreshes you for a final push round the museum.

The two interactive show stoppers, though, are on the top floor. The first is the case containing the roaring, mooing, stomping and flapping animated dinosaurs, which are switched on on the hour every hour. Otherwise, the dinosaur section is not extensive (and, surprisingly, the models seem to be made of some kind of plastic rather than stuffed), but this is pretty jolly cool to make up for it.

By far the most exciting thing we have EVER come across in a museum, however, is the giant TV screen on the wall.

At first you just stand on the designated spot and admire your filmed self staring up at a giant TV screen on the wall in the midst of a bunch of glass cases full of stuffed animals. And then, suddenly, one of those animals COMES TO LIFE. And! Meanders over to where your screen self is and if you keep staring upwards, while reaching out, you can see yourself touching and interacting with the animals on the screen. It is FABULOUS. We played with lemurs, a huge tortoise, a deer, a lion, an alpaca, the lemurs again, and yet more lemurs (we liked the lemurs). Cannot recommend it highly enough. The only way it could have been better was if we’d had the actual animals with us instead.

Also on this floor is the section devoted to human evolution. Mama, once again, would like to congratulate the curators for their sheer genius in the placement of this. Nothing like making people walk through the crushing evidence in the two floors below before you hit them with the ‘difficult’ monkey man aspect.

Hell with that, I say. It’s the evolution of horses bit you should be checking out. Radical!

Evolution of horses Darwin Museum Moscow

Anyway, you might be thinking that it is time to go about now, but that would mean you miss all the stuff in the other building, which is connected to this one via a tunnel in the basement. They’ve got a whole bunch of experiences there – a planetarium, various 3D, 4D and, I dunno, 5D booths, and some kind of dinosaur labyrinth discovery trail which looked very exciting, all of which Mama declined to pay extra for on this occasion, although she hasn’t ruled it out for subsequent trips as it wasn’t, she says, outrageously expensive.

But for us it was still worth trekking over for the live insects, including giant cockroaches, grasshoppers, colourful beetles, butterflies, and for the variety huge hairy spiders.

Live insects Darwin Museum Moscow

I don’t know how it is, but when Stupendous Big Brother is faced with a zooful of animals, he insists on charging round at top speed, never spending too long in front of one cage. I think he is worried about missing out on something. But give him an attraction with a more limited number of creatures and he will spend hours in front of each one, especially if they fly. Luckily, I was also quite interested, and when I wasn’t they had a particularly nifty touch screen picture puzzle thing, which only needed Mama to commandeered a chair to be fully accessible.

We also skipped through the rooms on the history of natural history briskly through sheer lack of time.Dragon Darwin Museum Moscow

We didn’t miss out on refreshments though. The State Darwin Museum has not one but two cafes, both of which were open. The first is more the sort of place you can buy a hot lunch, although Mama was also delighted that they let, nay, dragged us in and offered us a spare table when they saw us eating in the (perfectly comfortable actually) seating area outside instead. The second is more of a cakes and coffee affair, and dedicated to that famous naturalist, Janis Joplin. Mmmmmmm, cake, say I. Mmmmmmmm, coffee, says Mama. If, for some reason, you are not up for the ones in the museum, there are plenty of other cafes on the walk back to the metro.

So we had a good time. Mama’s favourite bit? The fact that in the whole museum there is not one mention of creationism. No pandering to the existence of this anti-science nonsense whatsoever. It’s great. She says. I think what edged it for my Stupendous Big Brother and I though was that the shop has a decent selection of reasonably priced plastic animal toys, and Mama was so delighted by our day that she let loose with the roubles and bought us some.

The only downside Mama can possibly think of is that you might feel squeamish about the sheer numbers of animals that have, at some point, been killed to furnish the displays. Mama offers up the opinion that, well, what’s done is done, and at least the museum is making use of the taxidermy it has inherited in a positive and educational manner. It is probably a more ethical day out that some of the live animal entertainments she has seen in Moscow and the UK, especially the ones that are run for profit. No matter how well looked after the captive beasts on display are.

Orangutan Darwin Museum MoscowBut as ever, that is a decision you will have to make for yourself.

All in all, this is clearly a museum that has its eye firmly on the patronage of the under 7s, as well as being extremely appealing to the over 40s. There is even a nappy changing table in the toilets. As a result it was busyish, but still not rammed in the way that such a place would be in, say, London in the summer holidays. Things might be different in winter, of course, when it’s less attractive to be outside, and people have not packed their young off to the datcha with the grandparents for the duration.

Update: It is busier in the winter, but not unpleasantly so, and we still got to play with all the buttons and so on as much as we wanted.

Mama thinks you should go to the Darwin Museum if you are ever in town, if not for the evolutionary science, then for the shining example of how to lift a museum out of the ordinary.

She thinks, in fact, that all school children everywhere should be flown in specially whenever they get to the relevant section of the science curriculum. Best. Field trip. Evah.

Especially as, rumour has it, they let you handle the cockroaches on school trips. How cool is that?

More Information

The State Darwin Museum website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say (at great length) about evolution and creationism.

Address: 117292, Moscow, 57/1 Vavilova Ulitsa

Opening: Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 6pm. Closed Monday and the last Friday of every month.

Price: 400 roubles for adults for main set of exhibition halls. Kids over 7 are 150 roubles. You pay extra for various other aspects of your visit, including the interactive play area.

By Metro: Akedemichiskaya (orange line). Be on the front of the train if you are heading out from the centre and leave by that exit. Turn right. Go up the right hand stairs. There should be a large sign directing you (in English as well as Russian) to take the first left. Walk up that street for about ten minutes and the museum is on your left.

By Bus/ Tram: You can get the 119 bus from Akedemichiskaya or the 14 and 39 trams from Univesitet (red line) to the stop Ulista Dimitriova Ulyanova.

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The Darwin Museum of evolution in Moscow is an excellent museum not just because it contains 400 000 stuffed animals. Its interactive enhancements are both well thought out and fun.

Lepim i Varim: eating at a pelmeni restaurant in Moscow

What is the best food to eat while you are on a visit to Russia? I expect is a question constantly on everybody’s lips.

Perhaps it’s the cabbagey beetroot soup borscht? Beef stroganoff? Blini and caviar? Chicken kiev?

Or does everyone just drink vodka for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

And there is always the ambitious combination of pizza and sushi we wrote about earlier.

Well.

One of the most ubiquitous Russian dishes you’ve probably never heard of is pelmeni. You’ve probably never heard of it because it generally gets translated a ‘dumplings’ which doesn’t sound very appetising. Although in fact they are much more like ravioli.

Or the Polish pierogi, except that the difference between pierogi and pelmeni is that instead of boiling and frying them, you just boil them. The pelmeni dough is also thinner, each individual pelmen is smaller, and the filling is usually raw, and minced meat based, before you cook it.

It’s a convenience food, but a convenience food which originated in Siberia (possibly by way of China), where it is quite easy to keep a little bag of pastry encased meat balls frozen while you schlep through the forest looking for something to kill and turn back into more pelmeni. The name may, in fact, come from one of the indigenous Siberian languages, and in its original form sounded like ‘dough ears’. And they do look rather like pasty looking severed ears, all ready to eat.

Pelmeni Lepim i Varim Moscow

Tasty ears though. Mmmmmmmmm.

Pelmeni are cheap and sold in every kind of food shop in Russia. All you have to do at home is pull a bag out of the freezer and dump them straight in boiling hot water for 15 minutes, drain them and add sour cream, and maybe a knob of butter. Some people like to serve them with a lot of the broth produced by the cooking process too. And Papa will probably sprinkle over dill if Mama isn’t there to stop him.

Of course, homemade pelmeni are a thing, but it’s like making your own sausages. A lot more bother than is really worth it when the packet from Sainsbury’s is so close and so tasty. The only time Mama and Papa ever did it was when their supply dried up in the UK. It was fun, but took a lot of kitchen space, time and everyone got covered in flour. And then we’d polished the results of all our labours off within a week or so.

We do have a handy pelmeni making implement though. Somewhere. Shame Mama doesn’t know where it is right now as it would make a fabulously obscure picture for your next pub quiz.

Anyway, now we are in Moscow, we eat them fairly regularly for tea.

So you might be wondering why we would bother going to a restaurant which specialises in pelmeni recently. It’s not like Mama spends a lot of her time sampling the local foodie restaurant scene. Couldn’t she have chosen something a bit more exotic when she had the chance?

Ah but you see, this restaurant chain, Lepim i Varim (‘mould and boil’), touted as the best pelmeni restaurant in Moscow, also consistently tops Trip Advisor’s rankings for all restaurants and cafes in Moscow. Someone as curious as Mama can’t but want to find out why, given that the place is actually within her price range, otherwise known as ‘not much more expensive than McDonald’s’.

Lepim i Varim pelmeni restaurant Moscow

Which is particularly true as children under seven (that’s me!) eat for free. The children’s menu is a bit abbreviated and the portions are smaller, but since what I wanted anyway were the classic Siberian pork and beef pelmeni, and I could only eat five of the six in my bowl, Mama calls that a win. Everyone else just gets free bread and sweeties. You do have to pay for coffee though.

Of course, the Lepim i Varim menu goes a bit further than just your basic meat mix. You can get lamb, crab, salmon, mashed potato, beef and mushroom, cottage cheese, chicken or cherry filled ones, to name a few of the options, all with their own differently shaped or coloured dough surround. Technically, this variety would make some of the offerings vareniki rather than pelmeni, but you can go too far in trying to distinguish between the all the variations of stuffed dough pockets in my opinion.

We added to my choice the lamb and coriander pelmeni, which Mama highly recommends, and the ones with mushrooms in, because Mama, inexplicably, really likes mushrooms. Next time she thinks we should go for the potato ones because they come with crispy onions. Or the cheese ones. Or the salmon. Or perhaps… I think we might be returning to Lepim i Varim regularly.

To add a further twist you can choose to add not only the traditional sour cream, but all sorts of other sauces and a salad accompaniment from the display case next to the counter. They also offer cold drinks here too, or you can order tea, coffee or broth with you pelmeni.

Lepim i Varim pelmeni restaurant in Moscow

Yes, Lepim i Varim is an order at the counter and wait till they call your name sort of place. In compensation, my Hungry Big Brother was very amused by the names of the dishes that were yelled out, which are slightly whimsical in nature: ‘say “cheeeeeeese”‘ (cheese), or ‘rich inner world’ (offal) anyone? And if the servers are feeling particularly gung-ho they might give an amusing twist to the customer’s name they are calling too.

Other items on offer include soup. Borscht! Or for my Hungry Big Brother, chicken noodle soup.

Chicken noodle soup Lepim i Varim Moscow

In fact, there was even a bar at one end of the restaurant Mama took us to at Prospect Mira. I have no idea if there is a bar in every Lepim i Varim, but I daresay this mix of hearty uncomplicated food, the easy going atmoshpere, the comfortable seating, the very reasonable prices, the welcoming attitude towards young children, the easily available booze and the free bread contributed to the mix of families and people in their teens and twenties who were occupying the tables when we were there.

Other attractions include the retro styling, complete with obligatory Soviet pot plants, and the opportunity to watch some of Lepim i Varim’s expert pelmeni makers at work through the glass wall into the kitchen.

How to make pelmeni at Lepim i Varim Moscow

Big up to the ladies at the Prospect Mira branch for their good-humoured tolerance of Mama sashaying back and forth in front of them taking All The Pictures. We never put up with that sort of behaviour.

Clearly if you are in Moscow you have to eat pelmeni and Lapim i Varim is a pelmeni restaurant in Moscow you can trust to provide you with a good introduction to this typical Russian food. Three locations in the capital and one in Tula and counting!

More information

Lepim i Varim’s website (in English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about chicken noodle soup.

Address: We went to Prospect Mira 26/1, Moscow, 129090. Metro: Prospect Mira (brown and orange lines). There is also one in the central location of Stoleshnikov Pereulok 9/1, Moscow, 107031. Metro: between Okhotny Ryad/ Tverskaya/Ploshard Revolutsii (red/ green/ dark blue lines) or Kusnetsky Most (purple line). And another at Leninskaya Sloboda, 26, StrEAT in Roomer, Moscow, 115280. Metro: Avtozovodskaya (green line).

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Lepim i Varim is a pelmeni restaurant in Moscow and frequently the top rated restaurant on Trip Advisor for the capital

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