What is it about the universe that it no sooner hears you want to go to an outdoor street party involving a tram parade than it abandons the delightfully mild spring weather it had been experimenting with previously and starts sleeting?
Our trip around the vintage autotechnics was, then, decidedly damp and chilly but the upside, from Mama’s point of view was that she was not forced to watch as we smeared paint all over our freshly washed ready to put away winter coats, because you can’t paint cardboard trams when the cardboard is too soggy to stand up.
The upside from our point of view was puddles. We got to splosh about in them and almost totally ignore the trams. Hours of fun. Fabulous.
However, aside from the terrible weather, the tram parade was very similar to the trolleybus parade we attended earlier in the year (and, Mama is beginning to think, the bus parade we will surely be attending in, apparently, August).
A central street in Moscow was shut down for the occasion. There was a stage pumping out music which Mama is still not convinced had anything to do with trams. Crafting opportunities for children should have existed. Many many balloons emblazoned with trams were blown up and handed out to kids who promptly let go of the strings and cried as their new-found pride and joy sailed off into the nearest tree. People dressed up in clothes from different eras of the trams’ existence wandered around and had their photos taken with the general public. You could climb on and off the old trams, the thematically painted trams and marvel at the fixtures and fittings.
The main differences were that as well as trams there were some old cars.
And as well as passenger trams there were street cleaning trams, breakdown rescue trams and similar.
But best of all, because trams are a much older form of transport than trolleybuses, there was also a, wait for the caps lock, HORSE-DRAWN TRAM!
My Slightly Wet Big Brother and I actually took an interest in that one. Although it was then a massive let down that we did not get to ride away on it when the cavalcade eventually glided off home.
For verily, never let it be said that Mama is not capable of learning from her previous experiences and this time we hung around for the actual end of the show tram parade itself!
Maybe next time we will get stationing ourselves to see the HORSES leave right, or even turn up in time to see the trams arrive. Who knows?
And who also knows, but maybe next time the weather will be better on the date itself, rather than reserving the blue skies and glorious sunshine for the following day.
More information
The website of transport for Moscow, with a lot more photos of the tram parade!
Address: Right next to Chistye Prudy metro station.
Admission: Free!
Opening: 12 noon when the trams arrived until around 4pm when they left.
By public transport: Chistye Prudy metro station (red line, orange line – where it is called Turgenevskaya – and light green line – where it is called Sretensky Bulvar. Yes, this sort of naming convention is confusing. Nevertheless, it is all one station really). Funnily enough, the usual trams weren’t running up this far on the day…
By car: Pfft.
