Arbat and beyond

As I walked around the massive construction site that surrounded Afimall City, I couldn't help but wonder who would be occupying the Federation Towers and the other massive towers in the vicinity. My walk from Arbat Street had taken me along Smolenskaya Square, Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, and different sites to the place now known as the modern part of the city in the heart of Moscow. I would actually have described it as a stone’s throw from the heart of Moscow, leaving behind the dull, grey, rectangular, chicken coop-like dwellings, but city planners and namers think differently, and the call the shots.

It was supposed to be a 5.4 km walk according to google maps, but it felt shorter. I came out of Arbatskaya metro station and stood facing the House of Shells reminiscent of the building with the same name in Salamanca, Spain. It is strikingly Hispanic, and houses some such organization or consulate. I stood and admired it on the cold, grey afternoon, pulled my scarf on tighter and started my walk.

Leaving the movie theater on my left, I took the underpass and emerged on the conveniently pedestrian Arbat street where I saw the first of a series of tourists posing for pictures to capture this very significant moment on this mythical, store-lined street; phones, clothes, shoes, paintings, souvenirs, accessories… all available at exorbitant Moscow prices. Sandwich men and women beckon people aggressively, or passively, to the various restaurants and coffee shops for different palates which also grace the streets. My favorite happens to be Hard Rock Café where I chose to have my meal. In typical Russian style, it presents a bland, not exactly appealing façade, but is elaborately ornate on the inside.

I was surprised to see a few caricaturists braving the cold, but there were no happy smiling faces sitting comfortably for portraits as they usually did in the summer. The easels occupied their usual spots, and did were the chairs, all decked in plastic guarded from the frequent unexpected showers, looking a bit forlorn. A very friendly, short, elderly lady, in a colorful, multi-layered, voluminous dress was entertaining passers-by with a melodious folk tune from her balalaika. I stopped to listen for a bit and she smiled kindly at me. I smiled back, put a few notes in the tin at her feet and took out my camera. She nodded, which I took for permission to photograph her. I did and thanked her with a nod as well, and was back on my way. 

I walked past different statues adorning the street, and another musician, whose guitar, contrary to the old lady’s balalaika, emitted a more contemporary, fast-moving, rock tune. He had CDs on sale for those who had enjoyed his performance, which from the sizable audience bobbing their heads, tapping their feet and smiling, I was sure would leave with some of his wares. I took the opportunity to enjoy the not so, usually crowded street, partly due to the weather, the time of day and partly to the time of year.

After successfully declining invitations to savor different cuisines and managing to escape the claws beckoning me to the museum of torture, or the museum of erotic art, I was relieved to find myself in an establishment of five floors of guitars, posters, and music memorabilia all colorfully displayed on dark wood walls. The service was not particularly as unpleasant as I’d experienced in other places in Moscow, although one got the impression after an order had been placed, that they had gone to the farm to slaughter the cow for beef and pick the vegetables to be roasted for the simple meal I'd ordered.

Aside from the business-mongers, Arbat Street is also the home of the Pushkin-House Museum. It is conveniently placed at the end of the street, a few steps away from Smolenskaya metro station and can’t be missed with the statue of a young Pushkin and his adorable wife opposite the robin’s egg blue, two-storey building, adorned with white window and door frames. It guards some memorabilia from the time of his stay in the apartment he had rented and lived in with Natalia Goncharova, his young, beloved wife, during the early years of their marriage. The same one in defense of whose honor he tragically lost his life in St Petersburg after they had moved there. Actually, only two pieces of furniture brought over from the landlady’s country house are authentic period pieces from Pushkin’s time. All the same, it is an interesting tour to learn about Russia’s literary sweetheart, even without the headphones which I declined in favor of my personal perception of the place. 

The museum is made up of several rooms in different colors. From the cloakroom, there is a convenient underpass which leads you to the museum where you are first greeted by a portrait of Alexander Pushkin in a small, square gold frame. Straight ahead is Natalia’s is in a bigger oval-shaped one gracing the wall over a dining table and chairs. The back of these are supported by pairs of gold swans facing opposite directions, upholstered in a beautiful, delicate silk fabric, which I seriously doubt that Pushkin could have afforded at the time. In the company of the portraits of the host and hostess at the time, the room featured portraits of the literati as well; journalists and artists of the time, among them Sheremetyev, after whom one of the international airports in Moscow is named, in addition to bound literary works by Shakespeare and Field. This first room in pastel blue, which may have been the drawing room, projects the view of the cultural atmosphere of Moscow at the time.

The blue room, the red room, the grey, room, the green room, the pink room, all adjoined to one another through double doors and big windows on the side looking on to Arbat Street. It must have been a privilege to live there. The red room guarded copies of the five books of Pushkin’s published in Moscow in 1824, 1826 and 1827, among them “Eugene Onegin”, an opera version of which is frequently staged at the Bolshoi Theater, and “Gypies”. It also featured copies of “Galatea”, “The Moscow Telegraph” and ‘Telescope’, newspapers of that era which most likely disappeared at the time of the revolution. From the window of the large, green room with a very ornate secretaire, which may have been Pushkin’s study, is the view of the statue of the lovely couple – Alexander and Natalia, a favorite background for photographs favored by Muscovites and tourists alike. Seldom is there a moment when the couple are unaccompanied by a smiling, live being. Upstairs where the museum exhibits continue, the rooms are open-spaced and are more than likely to be used now for special events.

My walk took me past Lotte Hotel and the whole Lotte business complex which I ignored and made my way to the embankment. The Radisson Hotel stood majestically on the water with a series of cruise boats docked around. One had just left with a trail of turbulence in the usually calm flowing water – probably the lunch cruise. The shiny glass windows for the guests to admire the views of Moscow as they filled their stomachs with the delicacies provided on board, also made it easy for pedestrians to see the passengers seated, with craned necks in the direction opposite the hotel admiring the architecture of the buildings along Smolenskaya Embankment. The background of this soviet-era, architectural mammoth, another of Stalin's Seven Sisters, which is now the Radisson Hotel, offers the image of a more modern, shinier version of similarly gigantic towers which make up Afimall City; a complex of shops, residential apartments and offices. It just seems to me that the majority of the people in Russia are more likely to afford the previously described kind of dwelling, but… as it was once said, if you build it, they will come, so I hope most Russians can leave behind the chicken coops where a toilet is counted by the realtor as a room, and flock to this new part of the city.

On my walk along the embankment, I passed the British Embassy with an interesting and very creative defense wall; every other tile along the wall featured a quote from Russian and English writers. Could it be to provide waiters in line with something to read and mull over and distract them from their impatience? Whatever the reasoning behind it, I think it is very creative and instructional. Step by step, along the river, I came across the occasional couple of tourists, all bundled up, holding on to each other. There weren't many; in total I counted three couples and a single man.

When I finally got to a more populated area, the object of my excursion after a long, solitary stroll, I circumvented the north entrance of the exhibition center, round Afimall City, to the south entrance, past the Crowne Plaza Hotel where I’d been a few times to meet my flight attendant friend when her airline brought her to Moscow, and continued up 1905 Goda (Year) Street. The side street called Three Hills lived up to its name as I made my winding ascent along it, past a gutted building with the facade intact, with a display of commemorating motifs of this significant event in Russian history.

I take my hat off to them for realizing the importance of preserving history, however ugly it may have been. Sometimes memories of atrocities may help to prevent a reoccurrence. According to sources, the events of 1905, among them Bloody Sunday when tsarist guards opened fire indiscriminately on protesters who dared to cross the gates of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, had been preceded by general unrest of workers. Numerous strikes had been the norm as a result of demands from liberal and intellectual agitators for an end to Tsarist absolutism and poor working conditions. 

A street, a building and a metro station flanked by gigantic statues in an enclosed square depicting workers and their tools, bear the name of this year which bore witness to all these unpleasant, but significantly symbolic events. As I walked along 1905 Goda street, along Three Hills Street and to the metro station on the purple line to make my way home, I couldn’t help but think of the Russian nation – all it had been through, all the lives that had been sacrificed for a better, greater cause, and where things stood now. Nowadays, almost everyone has an iphone, and you can hardly see a Volga or Lada because everyone prefers to drive a car from somewhere else. In the time that I have been here, I have not seen a single home appliance with a Russian name. My Russian colleagues, who don’t share my passion for Russia, or all things Russian, would rather I never made any reference to anything Soviet-related.