Moscow Explorations and Revelations

Thursday and Friday of this week (November 4th and 5th) were holidays here in dear Russia. Fortunately, a public holiday means I didn't have to work. Excitement over in my corner!! Anyways, this lovely lack of responsibility meant that I actually had time to be productive and have adventures. I won't bore you with the details of Thurday's activities because they were fairly mundane and headache-y (picture a GRE studybook and a marketful of fish).

However, Friday was a different story filled with, as my face book status reads, "dragons, cathedrals art, art that's not-so-much art as a kid with a paintbrush, McDonalds, Christmas trees, masks, stereotypical construction workers (evidently its an international thing), wrong streets, right streets, underground streets, clowns holding people by the legs, and much, much more."

Kayla and I met at Central School around 1 and then headed to McDs to plan our adventures. We decided the first site should be the MARS art gallery/museum. Let's just say that the getting there did prove to be half of the adventure. We got off the metro and wandered across the park in our chosen direction. Along the way we came across way too many kids, a statue of a clown holding someone upside down, a horse, a statue of a man in a skirt slaying a dragon, and a restaurant called Mr. Burrito that had pictures of giant pretzels. The MARS is slightly out of the way and in the middle of a typical European street which was surrounded by construction workers. Oh, and by the way, the stereotype for construction workers in the US is not specific to the US. They will whistle and holler internationally. But the museum was worth it.


The museum was relatively small, but filled with a variety of projects. Three rooms contained architectural/interior designs for offices. Some were exceedingly cool. Evidently, it IS possible to have your own bubble. And, you can even work in a hamster wheel if that suits your fancy.






There were two rooms with more contemporary art which were really impressive. Giant hands, banana peels, masks, 3-D bodies, etc.



From the MARS we made our way to a metro station and then to the Red Square area. Instead of venturing around the actual square, we expanded our horizons. Our route took us pass the parliament building and a statue of Moscow's founder. We also passed the Bolshoi. After a while, we ventured into a book store, but found nothing to our satisfaction. Venturing further we explored one of Moscow's oldest buildings.

This building is fantastic. It has been turned into a very ornate and touristy super market with a small souvenir shop in the back. But the architecture, the interior design - BREATHTAKING! I had to buy something there, so I ended up purchasing a chocolate truffle bar and green tea.





From the supermarket we traversed over to the Arbat and hit up Dom Kenegi, a bookstore that has a wide selection of English books. I ended up with a copy of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. It should keep me occupied for a while.