Прогулка по реке

Well, today I finally have some pictures. I haven't been taking a lot for two reasons (really one). The first, is that it makes you look like a tourist, and quite frankly, I don't think that's safe in the neighborhood around the Academy. The second, is that it makes you look like a tourist, and tourists who aren't in the Red Square, Kremlin, or Alexandrov Gardens are very likely to get there passports and documents checked, which can lead to large bribes and so forth - things I'd generally like to avoid. So today, since we have Fridays off, I went to the park across the street and took a few pictures of the river while everyone else was at work and the Militsiya wasn't out patrolling the area yet.

Before the pictures, however, I must say that there are two things I don't think I'll ever get used to here. The first, is the uniforms. I'm pretty sure that every government employee, except for people with technical jobs (like the street cleaners and other people who work for Гормост), has a military style uniform. So they are everywhere, and I still haven't been able to figure out who's from ДПС (police), who's ФСБ (FSB), and who's in the army (actually, the real military guys are pretty easy to spot when they're in dress uniforms, but FSB officers frequently wear camouflage fatigues, making them harder to distinguish, but ridiculously easy to see).

The second thing is couples making-out . . . EVERYWHERE. They're on the Metro. They're one the escalators. They're on park benches, buses, trolleys, trams, and trains. They do it as they're walking down the street and sometimes even in restaurants. I probably wouldn't mind it that much if it wasn't literally everywhere I look. Making it the second most frequent sight in Moscow for me (the first being аренда, which translates as "space for rent").

Now for the pictures (click for larger versions):

This is on the way to the bridge I use to get over the river and get to school every day. No real significance, except that I just looks so cool.


Андреевский мост (St. Andrew's Bridge), which I use every day to get to my Metro station, because of a fluke of construction, which prevents me from using the other two, more convenient stations on my side of the river. Evidently, it lights up at night, but the sun sets around 11:00 here and I don't usually have any business there after 8:00 AM, so I've never seen it lit up.


And this is my view EVERY DAY on my way to school. I tried to get a picture of the Church of Christ the Saviour shining in the sunlight, but as you can see, it was partly cloudy, and the sun wouldn't cooperate. However, if you look to the left of it, you can see another church with shining domes, and the churches in the Kremlin in the center are also shining. The Church of Christ the Saviour is probably the coolest building I've ever seen, even though the one in this picture is a reconstruction of the original. This one stands on the former site of the world's largest swimming pool - a wonderful result of central planning.


This is a panorama of the river on the other side of the bridge, so looking South, towards MGU (which for some reason isn't visible, despite being one of the taller buildings in Moscow). The two funky towers with big metal objects on top is the Technology Ministry, or something like that. I can't remember exactly how Iosif put it. The next photo is taken from the embankment on the left.
Unfortunately, it's a little out of my way to see this, so I can't go there every day (although now I have a panorama), but this is the area around the Frunzenskaya Metro Station (how I get to school) from the Pushkinskaya Embankment. Behind the camera is a house, which used to be outside the city, where Pushkin evidently composed a lot of his poems. It's now some sort of library, Iosif couldn't really explain how it works, but it's there . . .

As I said, it's not always safe to take pictures, so most of the places I've been describing look nothing like this, but hopefully you get the general idea of the contradictions and beauties that are Moscow.