Moscow on the line

ballet again

2012-02-01T03:52:00.000-08:00

Y very sweetly took me to the ballet the night before last. Swan Lake at the Stanislavsky theatre. Fab - pretty camp, with glorious over-blown sets and some real pantomime moments (especially, as it should be, the evil sorcerer).

new hat...

2012-02-01T03:46:00.000-08:00

Seem to be obsessively buying 'Russian' things including - finally - a proper fur hat. Err, with ears.

10-of-the-best: no.4 Gorky Park

2012-01-29T12:28:00.000-08:00

Gorky Park is in a constant process of re-invention right now, which is partly about an (almost first) attempt to make Moscow a more liveable city and partly about some weird deals between the Kremlin, the mayor and an oligarch or two (so what is new?)

The initial stage, commissioned through the Strelka Institute (set up by oligarch Alexander Mamut), was to add in some new urban designish elements - benches, more up-market cafes, an outdoor cinema and a summer 'beach', whilst clearing the last of the mini Coney Island type fairground rides from the river frontage. Then this next stage, which is AMAZING! There is now the biggest and best skating area I have ever seen, a mixture of different rinks linked by ice ways, all framed by some quite neat wooden and colourful pavilions and bridges.* I note that their website has a fab, that is to say quite hammy, animated CAD walkthrough (skatethrough?) crooned over by Louis Armstrong.

The stage to follow in the Spring is the shift of Garage from, well the garage (Melnikov-designed constructivist) it was in, to here. This is publicised as beginning with a pavilion by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, then a temporary home designed by Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) together with Olga Trevias/Form Bureau, which will convert the Park's concrete 1960s Vremena Goda (Four Seasons) restaurant, long abandoned. After that, Garage will come to "occupy a nearby 8,500 square meter hexagonal pavilion. The historic 1920s pavilion of six sections with a courtyard (was) first constructed to house the first All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.."

So, of course, this leads to interesting questions. Well of course the usual one as to whether it will happen. And then there is the cash. It was already known that Roman Abramovich has had a hand (and money) in the re-development of Gorky Park and now his girlfriend Dasha Zhukova, the owner of Garage, is moving in there too. As Andrew Osbourn put it in the Telegraph earlier this year: "using part of his estimated £8.4 billion fortune to turn (Gorky Park) into a showcase for the Russian capital is an undertaking likely to further endear Mr Abramovich to the Kremlin which regularly urges oligarchs to plough some of their fabulous wealth back into society". But then - maybe - they are also getting some real estate in return.

* I took the photo just after the ice had been cleaned, hence the emptiness. In fact, each winter since Soviet times, the paths of Gorky Park have been watered and left to ice all winter. I have only not skated there in the last couple of years because it always seemed as full as rush-hour in the Metro. Having a refrigerated bed has meant that this mild winter has not caused a problem; and the rink is just as full as it was in past times.

Go here for more about the Gorky Park facilities and a list of the best other ice rinks in Moscow.

10-of-the-best: no.3 Solyanka

2012-01-29T11:24:00.000-08:00

Dragged V to Solyanka (the restaurant, not the road or club) for Sunday lunch today, which in fact is much too uber-trendy for his liking. But I have to have it on my list of best non-mainstream-tourist places to hang out, just because it shows that Muscovites* also have cool, contemporary cafes where you can sit all day with your chums, the newspapers and/or your iPad - and with your kids if you have them; that is, that there is life beyond the superficiality of most tourist-class restaurant bling and chintz.

And if you prefer something more cozy and even less showy, then there is always People Like People/Lyudi Kak Lyudi/люди как люди, just around the corner.

*Actually some Muscovites don't like it, because the original started out in St. Petersburg.

I hate auchan (but it is very cheap)

2012-01-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

And then what did I do but end up - for the first time in Moscow - in an enormous, packed Auchan/ашан supermarket where I found myself buying (much cheaper) valenki anyway...

getting the boot(s)

2012-01-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

As the Moscow News guide said, there is a street market alongside Donskaya Ulitsa, selling mainly food but also these valenki - traditional felt boots. Sorely tempted even though my luggage is already stuffed full. And what can I do with valenki in Islington, north London?

sad but true

2012-01-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

Went to visit the Shukhov Radio Tower today, which was top of my list of things to do. Why you may ask? Because it was the most amazing bit of 1920s engineering, a lightweight steel lattice grid, completely radical at the time: and because Alexander Rodchenko took some fab photos of it. It is also under threat of demolition and I am an architectural junkie. I took a walk, based on this one from the Moscow News, although in reverse, that is, coming out of Shabolovskaya metro station first (the tower is directly opposite) and then going to Leninsky Prospect - not the prettiest bit of town, but quite representative.

Also made me realise that I may be in Moscow, but I am a typical Londoner - I have my patch and don't go much beyond it. So in two and half years here have only infrequently been south of the river or over to the Arbat and the west-side. OMG, so much still to see.

the summing up begins

2012-01-28T11:09:00.000-08:00

Of course the trouble with leaving anywhere is the urgent need to sum up experiences, to finish all things still undone, and to run around attempting to see many places as yet unvisited. This is going to have (a not necessarily wonderful) impact on the remaining pages of this blog.*

Throughout my stay, I have been refusing the lazy stereotypes of Russians in general and Muscovites in particular - that is, that they are gloomy, beaten down by a history of Suffering and yet also an Enigma ( 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a ... etc., etc'): and that, given time, underneath they are completely wonderful ('when you get to know them'). Russians themselves, of course, also partake in these bland definitions of national identity, both seriously and with a considerable amount of rich, melancholic humour: just as the English resort to images of polite eccentricity, and the French to chicness.

But, because of recent history, people from outside this country seem to persist in caricaturing Russians, blurring the normal diversity of most ordinary people with either their government or with only tiny sub-cultures - the oligarchs, siloviki ('heavies') and mafia. Meanwhile, plenty of other sub-cultures, like the hipsters or gopniki, don't even get noticed elsewhere.

That doesn't mean there aren't real differences, but these, to me, are most interesting in how they play out in the everyday - in our various body languages and habits, and in attitudes and assumptions about how to survive and make sense of the world(s) we live in. That is what I have been trying - and failing - to unravel.

But if I had to make one lazy stereotype about Russians, it would not be about glumness or stoicness, but rather what I can only call a kind of mischievousness... encompassing teasing and self-deprecating humour, enormous pleasure in story-telling, and a certain contrariousness.** Unlike the rest of western Europe and America, though, which does not differentiate between public and private identities, this is mainly kept for family and friends (except perhaps by contemporary artists). Think Norwegian or Icelander, mixed with some Irish. Or am I talking nonsense? Comments please!

* I am also aiming to add more to as many of my 'mini-series' as possible, including 10-of-the-best, the art of parking and city bingo. So, busy busy busy....
** There is also something mischievous embedded deep into politics, which there becomes both surreal and manipulative. See 'Putin Pranking himself'

time to go...

2012-01-26T03:03:00.000-08:00

Spent some time idly watching this woman attempting - with much difficulty - to climb the steep embankment of the railway, on her way across the tracks. This is a common shortcut, which can even get quite crowded, and a regular 'desire line' forms. However on this day the usual path had been momentarily obliterated by a light snow fall and this woman cast of sideways, getting stuck in an awkward patch and continually losing her foothold. After several minutes she took off her gloves in an attempt to use her hands, and some time after that she made the sign of the cross. And then, finally, she got to the top.

I don't understand quite why people take this route; it is not near a train station, so I don't think it is about avoiding fares. So where are they going? Can someone tell me? Meantime, it seems quintessentially Russian - to deliberately take another even more difficult path rather than just follow the proscribed, err, legal one (that is, under the railway bridge and along the road).

And - somehow - it sums up many things about being here, now that I am about to leave. New job starting in London in three weeks time. So, sad to go and so happy to be going home.

more snow cleaning operations (but hardly any snow)

2012-01-26T03:01:00.000-08:00

Despite unexpectedly minor snowfall this winter (although glad to say we are at last having those incredible pale blue icily clear skies, with eye-watering-frozen-nostril-hair temperatures of minus 15) the snow cleaners are still out in force. Have stopped myself showing you yet another picture of road snow-gobbling machines, but here are some humans whose job it is to repeatedly jump out of a van and sweep snow off the top of tram-stop shelters.

And even this is just a substitute for what I really wanted to show you, but didn't have a camera at the time. For there is the fab snow-clearing train, a proper-sized train but which is a symphony of snow-gobbling front end, together with a conveyor belt carriage, followed by a long sequence of carriage-shaped but roofless snow containers. All, of course, mainly empty of snow since there isn't much.

2012-01-14T08:29:00.000-08:00

On the way back had a one night stopover in Beijing. Definitely where the next Masters of the Universe live. An extraordinary combination of, on the one hand, chaotic, endlessly entrepreneurial everyday life (selling everything* and operating at every level from people riding sellotaped mopeds to owners of shiny polished black Mercs); and on the other, totally organised mega-scaled infrastructure development - not pretty, always overlarge, but well-built and smartly finished - and new buildings going up everywhere. Makes Moscow feel quite normal.

*As evidenced by the fact I got caught a mere three minutes from my hotel by the Beijing art student scam, an activity ubiquitous and famous enough to have its own entry on Wikipedia.

happy new year (and happy 'old' new year of course)

2012-01-14T08:20:00.000-08:00

Amazing time with my daughter in Sydney, including an island picnic watching the New Year fireworks. Lovely. I can't help wishing that you could bottle whatever it is that makes for laid back, sunny-mannered, easy going Australian life - as a present for Muscovites to inhale from periodically. Not all the time of course, just now and then.

off to London for Christmas - so snovim godom!

2011-12-16T08:26:00.000-08:00

Have had a crazy busy week, and - suddenly - it is christmas time and I am off back to London until the new year. So с ноым годом! (the stereotypical joke being that there is no 'happy' in the Russian phrase for 'Happy Christmas').

and then (still) this

2011-12-16T08:16:00.001-08:00

... and 45 minutes after that

2011-12-14T06:58:00.001-08:00

view from my office 10 minutes later

2011-12-14T06:57:00.001-08:00

view from my office

2011-12-14T06:56:00.001-08:00

city bingo 6: adverts for kredit

2011-12-11T04:31:00.000-08:00

These are also ubiquitous - stickers on fences, on aforesaid posters, on metro carriage windows; offering credit, repairs and various necessary certificates.

city bingo (re-visited)

2011-12-11T04:25:00.000-08:00

Haven't played city bingo for a while - but posters for aging rock stars and tribute bands (city bingo 5) continue to abound...

airing the baby?

2011-12-11T04:18:00.000-08:00

Watched this woman park her pram in the middle of our courtyard and then pace around for about 20 minutes, until she got too cold to stay. I know it used to be considered very healthy in England to put even tiny babies out in the fresh air when they were sleeping. So, does it happen here too? Or is this woman crazy?

sneg at last?

2011-12-10T09:03:00.000-08:00

As it got dark and people made their way home, we had the beginnings of the first proper snow of the winter. But remains unexpectedly mild, so still a wetness to it.

protesting and shopping (but mainly shopping)

2011-12-10T08:51:00.000-08:00

Feel guilty about this, the clash that is, between the urgency of doing Christmas shopping before I go back to London next week, and the desire to show solidarity with the protests here. So I went shopping, but via Revolution Square (not Bolotnaya Square where the mass of people were) to see what was going on and to momentarily join the small crowd there listening to speeches, despite a legal ban on using that particular space. The atmosphere was calm, almost jolly, very like many similar public demonstrations I have been part of in London.

So - what an amazing sign of something happening here, of a proper large-scale peaceful public response to 'the party of crooks and thieves' almost for the first time. But, then the pessimism sets in. The government's response shows that they have quickly learnt lessons from western governments. Just let it all happen. Police it firmly but non-provocatively. That way public anger can be defused and then (probably) safely ignored, in all its importance and futility.

Occupy...Moscow?

2011-12-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

It is taken for granted here that Russians are used to elections with little or no meaning, and that people have developed other creative strategies for everyday enjoyment and survival (mainly, it feels to me, by focussing inwards on the personal, immediate freedoms of one's own mental and family life). This is despite, or perhaps because of, a simultaneously stagnating and chaotic political system. As V puts it - the problem with this country is that it manages to be completely static and immoveable, and yet leaves you always uncertain as to just what might happen next.

So those initial pre-election rumblings (well, booings) and now the street demonstrations alleging fraud over the elections, which are continuing despite a massive police presence, the deliberate mobilisation of the pro-United Russia Nashi (Ours) youth movement and many, many arrests, seem suggestive of something very important. Online there has been plenty of lively oppositional stuff for a while (such as the video evidence on YouTube of ballot stuffing/ballot falsification/invisible ink pens given to voters) but now finally - aka Arab Spring/Occupy etc., etc., it seems to be hitting the streets.

So, whilst United Russia still run the Duma, the smooth control that Putin has exuded (and assumed) seems shaken. As Brian Whitmore puts it in his blog The Power Vertical, what we have is yet another version of that static/chaotic thing - " nothing has changed and everything has changed."

The photograph shows a disputed - that is, probably illegal - United Russia election poster, which copied exactly the public information poster designed to get more people to vote.

finally.....

2011-12-03T05:34:00.000-08:00

Finally got to the State Tretyakov Gallery - again courtesy of V - and can't believe it's taken so long to get around to it. Unlike its partner building on Krymsky Val, which involves transversing acres of the smiling peasants and heroic workers of socialist realist painting, the other older Tretyakov is a perfect size. There is a small collection of gorgeously and unexpectedly realistic icons, but the central interest of Pavel Tretyakov (as a collector around the 1850s) was Russian realism: the catalogue quotes him as writing "... just give me a murky puddle, but let there be truth in it, and poetry."

And there are plenty of poetic 'murky puddles' here including portraits of suffering serfs and their everyday lives amid the glories and difficulties of the russian landscape. There are also artistic journeys both in unison with the rest of Europe (18th century portraiture and some late 19th century impressionism) and away from it (a 19th century politically critical realism which has some very theatrical moments, and a version of Art Nouveau which is completely absorbed by the dramas of fairytale). A great afternoon out on yet another wet and sleety day.

The painting shown is called Silence, by Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov (1903), which I photographed mainly because it eeriely reminded me of Peter Doig.

the art of parking (3): the full-on

2011-12-03T04:48:00.000-08:00

Er - that means taking up the whole pavement. And an added interest (could easily be another mini-series) is the non-art of taking disability seriously; here an example of the ribbed, yellow-painted paving slabs which are placed here and there to indicate something or nothing to blind and partially sighted people.

Completely randomly.

on photographing

2011-11-26T05:43:00.000-08:00

Went to check out GUM and its christmas decorationss (which are different from the last two years - when they were the same - but also not as good) and couldn't move for people photographing each other, mainly wedding parties. I counted 16 brides-and-groom pairs, as well as several women being snapped by their boyfriends. As I have mentioned before, Russians have no problem posing; everyone seems able to gurn to the camera as if to the manner born, all happily dolled up in thick makeup, (male and female both) and enough hairspray around to destroy the planet.

christmas arriving

2011-11-26T05:29:00.000-08:00

Bleak solid grey skies today, varying between rain and sleet; but hurrah, those christmas decorations are appearing in the streets and shops. Feeling surprisingly cheery about this - which is not my usual way. So just going to go with the happy flow for now...

fish-n-chips (almost)

2011-11-26T05:24:00.000-08:00

What is it about living abroad that makes me culturally regress around my eating habits? I often crave fish and chips here (not a dish I eat that often in London - although there is a terrific one near where I live). So got very excited when I found a Nordsee on Pokrovka on my lunchtime walk today, one of an international german-originated chain which "ist die größte europäische auf Fisch und Meeresfrüchte spezialisierte Restaurantkette („Quick Service“ und „Casual Dining“) mit eigenen Restaurants" according to their website.

More like IKEA than an english fish-n-chips shop but still who cares? Fish! And Chips!

back to Moscow...

2011-11-25T06:57:00.000-08:00

Who can choose?

back to London...

2011-11-25T06:56:00.000-08:00

protesting (3): booing for Putin

2011-11-25T06:54:00.000-08:00

Well, who would believe it? Seems that Vladimir Putin was booed by a huge audience last week, when he climbed up into the boxing ring following the success of his favourite martial arts fighter over an american opponent, and used the occasion to promote his party, United Russia.

Of course, as with all news here, there are immediately many contradictory and/or weird fuddlings - he was not booed it was people cheering; the whole story has been fabricated; it was the outgoing loser being booed; people were only booing because they needed to go to the toilet; people were booing but only because they don't want sport and politics connected; booing is a good sign because it shows that people have freedom of speech; he was booed and it represents 'the end of an era'. Make up your own mind (or not) here.

about that kitten....

2011-11-21T11:56:00.000-08:00

So cute - but. I have been putting off admitting to the next stage in my stray kitten story - only because I did what I planned and returned it to the (warm) building corridor in which I found it, behind some heating pipes. No further news except to say that when I went back to look it had disappeared. So here's hoping...

protesting (2)

2011-11-21T11:49:00.000-08:00

In fact one of the strongest and most public ongoing campaigns in Moscow has been against the (elite) privilege of being able to beat the always terrible traffic, avoid speed limits and generally drive like shit - by having special removable, flashing blue lights on your car roof (migalki). Made worse by the fact that many more than the allocated number are being used, because such lights can of course be bought illegally.

The Blue Bucket movement has seen people put blue buckets on their cars, in ridiculous mimicry of the lights, and then when that was banned, putting them on their heads. The protests have been vocal enough to bring on what appeared to be a recent police clampdown - with migalki drivers being stopped and checked. But as usual here, the response has been mixed; some say it is just for show, others that it is just legal migalki owners trying to stop illegal abuse 'watering down' their privilege. Nobody ever really thinks anything is going to change, even when they do go out on the streets in frustration and anger (and with humour).

protesting (1)

2011-11-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

Got momentarily excited by this poster, suggesting that some political protest was at last happening in Moscow, until I realised that it was just a design student project. In fact, some of the liveliest campaigning groups in Moscow seem to be around architectural heritage and its destruction (no Occupy movement here yet).

The group Archnadzor has brought together some of the different preservationist groups and do a lot of campaigning including some direct action - still a risky business in Russia. You can see some old photos at Moskva Koterey Net (The Moscow that is No More) of what has already been demolished to make way for the post-Soviet/Capitalist Realist boom; and read more at MAPS (MoscowArchitectural Preservation Society) - the only site with an English language version.

games time

2011-11-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

When I first came to Moscow, I kept reading and hearing references to Mafia Games. Also did a bit of geo-caching, so just assumed (perhaps stupidly) that this was some kind of street-based cops and robbers role-playing game. But recently bought a designer cards version from Art Lebedev of what turns out to mainly involve a lot of sitting around and opening and closing your eyes.

Actually, the game looks great and somehow very Russian. People are allocated roles on the basis of cards, resulting in a minority of mafia and the larger group of unknowing innocents, plus some other characters. In the 'night time' when the goodies have their eyes closed, the baddies get to murder someone. During the 'daytime' everyone tries to work out who the baddies are (including, of course, the baddies). The game continues until either the mafia are destroyed or they outnumber the good people.

Then almost simultaneously with this discovery, I found out that you can do an 'adventure' game in Moscow. It is basically a tour - sorry quest - with clues. Will report back more when I get around to trying it....

You can read the original Mafia Games rules here and a more detailed explanation and brief history on Wikipedia.

I know I know..

2011-11-13T06:53:00.000-08:00

I know, Moscow is full of stray dogs and cats and the last thing you want to do is to take one home. But this kitten was so tiny, abandoned so late in the year, good at the piteous squealing, and unusually fluffy and fancy for a feral.

My current plan is just to fatten her up over the weekend and return her to the streets, but then I am such a sucker for small furry things. Or unless anyone else wants a cat.............

watching Down Terrace

2011-11-13T06:47:00.000-08:00

Went To Ben Wheatley's film Down Terrace last night, which is being show as part of the New British Films Festival here. Offered as a crime thriller, it is actually very very funny, with the action mainly set in claustrophobic close-up in a Brighton crime family's seedy terraced house. Besides some odd questions - (Why have you filmed in such a shabby house? Why are no policemen shown? Why doesn't the plot make sense? Are all British families like this?) which Wheatley answered with droll good humour - the film's disfunctional characters, chaotic family relationships and miscellaneous murders seemed to resonate just as happily with a Russian audience as they did with me.

magic lorry?

2011-11-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

I don't understand why there is a higher proportion of random and slightly weird things in Moscow, but there are. Even the trucks behave in mysterious ways.

missed as usual

2011-11-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday was the 70th anniversary of the 1941 military parade - celebrated by a military march through Red Square - that began the Battle of Moscow (which defeated Hitler's army right at the edge of the city). Missed it, but you can watch the RIA Novosti video here.

Also first real indication of winter. Beautiful, bright but piercingly cold weekend followed by several days of mainly rainy, sleety, wet and icy flurries, at their worst moments slanting in almost horizontally. Lovely.

only a little bit weird

2011-11-10T10:01:00.000-08:00

Spent some of the week with friends and colleagues on a visit from London; mainly sharing in late night eating and drinking activities. Which gives me the chance to introduce you to a regular haunt - Gladiator, a Georgian restaurant just around the corner from Kurskaya station. Proper shashlik, served with great bundles of herbs and leaves: all served in pavilions banding a central garden (which is populated with.. well you can see.)

the art of parking 2: the insouciant

2011-11-10T09:55:00.001-08:00

building, building everywhere

2011-11-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

As I have mentioned before, there is currently so much building and renovation going on around this area, that the ongoing health-and-safety(not) theme is just too easy to illustrate, frighteningly so. I read an article recently about Tajiks, who make up a large percentage of the mainly immigrant building labourers. Tajikistan’s migration service reported that during the first eight months of 2011, the bodies of 603 Tajik gastarbeiters had been repatriated from Russia. Of these, reports James Brooke, 67 were attributed to “attacks by nationalist groups” - which is bad enough in itself - but which also means over 500 deaths on building sites in less than a year.

And today is Unity Day, a day off and a yearly excuse for Russia's nationalist extremists to march, reminding these Tajiks that their position in Moscow continues to be fragile in every way.

more balancing acts

2011-11-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

This may appear as a simple case of standing on a chair (on scaffolding). But actually, the chair is also balanced on a low coffee table....

more on books

2011-11-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

Reading Snowdrops - with its emphasis on the rotten side of Russia - made me think of the other books I have read about the country since I got here. Nothing has been worse than Rob Lilwall's Cycling Home from Siberia which stayed so much inside his self-centred head, that we never really heard from anyone else (sample - chapter 2 is entitled 'how shall I die?', followed by a quote from Fight Club.) In comparison Dervla Murphy's Silverland - also involving Siberia and a bicycle - may be be traditional in including some history and useful facts (rather than just what the traveler is feeling at the time), but shows both insightfulness and modesty in her engagements with people and place.

Then there were two authors who write about Russia through the prism of its literature; Elif Batuman's The Possessed and Rachel Polonsky's Molotov's Magic Lantern - the first of which I read very fast and without much concentration; and the second of which I have not yet got around to finishing. And enjoyed, in a fairly abstract way. But I can't help feeling that - except for bits of Murphy - A. D. Miller is quite correct when he admits that we write about Russia mainly to write about ourselves:

"Just as travel writing chronicles the traveller's preconceptions as well as his journey, so for some novelists, Russia is not, or not only, a sort of moral zoo, which writer and reader can visit with a safe sense of superiority. It is also a place to test their moral pride and presumptions." quoted from here.

Which means that Russians themselves, as themselves, (and in all their variations) don't turn up very often. Or that I am reading the wrong books.

And the eagle-eyed will note that the photograph here is from earlier in the summer. In fact the leaves in Moscow have almost all gone. Must get my camera back from London (where I left it) somehow.

and back again

2011-11-03T08:17:00.001-07:00

Actually it wont be Moscow or my Russian colleagues that finally chase me away from here. It will be a few of the English people I work with. Maybe it is an expat thing more widely, but it's as if being in Moscow makes some - particularly young men - regress to juvenile behaviour in ways that I cannot believe they would do at home, or would be allowed to do. Somehow their sense of entitlement (the slouch of confidence) takes on a smothering excess of smugness and self-importance; producing a depressing mixture of often-vocalised assumed superiority over everything Russian, and a kind of swaggering copy of the worse of Russian macho manhood.

I have just finished reading Snowdrops, a thriller-ish novel by A. D. Miller, who was the Moscow correspondent of the Economist for some years. His hero has some of these qualities (although the author lets him off lightly), using the excuse of joining in with wealthy Muscovite hedonism as a means of easily slipping into other, more unpleasant, thoughtless and unethical activities. The book was recommended by two people separately who have both come to visit here, because it evokes many of the experiences of being in Moscow. Although a little thin as to story, and with a tendency to treat all Russians homogeneously as a collective 'them', my friends are right about this book. The asides about everyday life here made me snort happily in recognition.

blighty (more)

2011-11-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

I also said, absented-mindly, that Russians have terrible posture. This was after we had been on the tube, observing other passengers and thinking about differences . V noted that everyone looked a lot more relaxed, had what I suggested we call the 'slouch of confidence.' This is partly a matter of fashion; English styles are a lot baggier, hanging off the waist and the shoulder, loose fitting, more casual. But it is also that Russians (in Moscow at least) do seem to hold themselves more hunched.

This is not because of any discomfort with their own bodies; as I have said I find the Russians I have met much less self-conscious than English people, easier with being up much closer to each other and happy to consider themselves in any mirror, any time. So I don't know why there is such a big difference in shoulder/back rigidity. Comments welcome.

Photograph courtesy of Leeza Semionova

thoughts from blighty

2011-11-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

Been in London for a few days with my Russian colleagues V and L, and stupidly blurted out at some point that I found London much more civilised than Moscow. Then spent a lot of time back-tracking (and trying to clarify what I was getting at). That I didn't mean that the people are uncivilised, or even the mindless rules combined with chaos - muscovites notice lots of random rules in London and cannot believe that we follow them - only that the public urban space of the city is so much more comfortable, much more for the 'public'.

Although we also nicknamed London ToyTown, both because of the tiny houses all lined up, and because compared to Moscow, public transport is designed for midgets.

parking techniques 1: "the 45 degrees"

2011-10-25T06:53:00.000-07:00

In honour of returning to Moscow, a new mini-series on the art that is parking. Technique number one; when the parking space is not wide enough for a complete car, just prop the nose on the pavement.

can't believe it!

2011-10-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

Can't believe it! I have been using a very cheap compact camera to take photographs for this blog (it is a rule of mine not to use anything more fancy) and have only just noticed - after having this one for over a year - that it takes panoramic pictures by stitching 3 images together. Well, I just thought it did one of those stretched image size things so have never checked it out... and then found out by accident whilst wandering home via Metro - hence not a brilliant example.

So - now I have to decide if photos like these are within my blog-photo-rules or outside of them....

more hanging

2011-10-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a lot of building work going on, both new construction and renovation. It is almost too easy to add to my collection of people hanging off buildings.

a lovely walk (oh and where do you get the best coffee in Moscow?)

2011-10-23T06:37:00.000-07:00

The area across the 10-lane Sadovaya (Garden) ring, away from Kurskaya and towards the centre is one of my favourite parts of Moscow. There are certainly other nice parts of the city within this 'second' ring road* - such as around Patriarchs Pond - but I guess this eastern side has always been my patch for happily idle strolling.

There aren't any special landmarks, just the usual muddle of pre-revolutionary, soviet and post-soviet buildings, in varying stages of decay and renovation. Yesterday I walked along подоссенский/Podossenskii pereulok which runs parallel between these rings, and then further in the same(ish) direction, which - with a certain amount of getting lost, shortcuts through yards, and some serious zig-zagging - ends up (after coffee in the Coffee Bean on покровка/Pokrovka ulitsa) at Lubyanka metro.

I rank Coffee Bean as one of the best places for coffee in Moscow, but there is lots of choice on both Pokrovka and on, or just off, the other key radial road down to Lubyanka, called мясницкая/Myasnitskaya Ulitsa. I also paused at the Art Lebedev cafe and shop (Ul. Myasnitskaya 22, bldg. 1 (Bankovsky per.5)) and thought about visiting the Red espresso bar, further up Myasnitskaya, towards Chisty Prudy, but stopped myself.

As you may guess, I am a coffee snob - so would really like recommendations for the very best coffee in Moscow. Beanhunter only lists 2 for the whole of Moscow (the other Art Lebedev cafe and Coffee Mania, which is okay but screamingly expensive), so I think it is time to add some more....

*The innermost one is called the Boulevard ring. The Garden ring was built where the old city ramparts had been, and originally had trees down its centre (as the Boulevard ring still does). These were cut down in the 1930s, opening it up for soviet military parades and more recently post-soviet traffic jams. There is also another ring, further out, which as far as I can tell, has no name, err, just the fourth ring. And then a fifth called MKAD, which stands for Moscow Automobile Ring Road.

Unidentified packages (7)

2011-10-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

One last thing from the Extreme Room, before I leave Perm behind. I can't really blame the package this time; I just did not bother to turn the lights on when I got back to my hotel and took what I assumed was a small bottle of wine out of the mini-bar for a (very) late evening drink.

Er, it was cognac.

can bleak be nice?

2011-10-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

I kind of like the bleak beauty of Perm. Behind the gallery, down by the river which runs wide and slow are a few couples walking and some men fishing. On the other side - in the medium distance - rows of small dachas watch us back across the dark water. And to the left, factory chimneys blast out smoke into the autumn air. Perm, once a closed town, and still a (dying) industrial one, may have powerful people trying to re-invent it but I am just reminded of that famous Russian saying - ' we wanted the best but it turned out as always.'

The sign reads 'happiness is not far off.'

a cultural revolution?

2011-10-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

The collection and display of contemporary Russian artists and the associated public art commissions - most notably the wooden arched п of artist Nikolay Polissky which has been artfully placed on a roundabout - seem to be what are causing the most complaint in Perm, both because of the cost and because of a general lack of enthusiasm for modern art. Interestingly my interpreter calls all the current activities not a 'city of culture' but a 'cultural revolution'.

For a sense of the debate read Yelena Fedotova, Moscow-based art critic, in her piece 'In praise of little red men: cultural revolution in Perm'.

To enter one of Perm's Public Art competitions go here.

poor art?

2011-10-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

PERMM is currently showing some Russian Povera work - the deliberate use of 'poor' materials, associated with the idea of authenticity and deep rather than surface beauty. The full show has been to Milan: what has returned are mainly the 'skeletons' of Olga and Alexander Florensky, based on the raw wood and metal of argricultural and other working equipment. Not my favourite kind of work, but well curated and effective in the space - the interior is much more a proper gallery than the exterior implies.

For a sense of the debate read Yelena Fedotova, Moscow-based art critic, in her piece 'In praise of little red men: cultural revolution in Perm'.

To enter one of Perm's Public Art competitions go here.

the place of art

2011-10-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

The Perm contemporary art gallery (now re-badged PERMM) is currently housed in an old ferry terminal, down by the river Yama. It had been abandoned, and still looks both small and frayed at the edges; not quite of the calibre of its references (Bilbao, MOMA, Tate Modern, CaixaForum, etc., etc.) But at the same time, the ambition is impressive. I met a young curator who is involved in the task of building a permanent russian contemporary art collection. Perm may not want it, but still nothing of that scale is happening in either St. Petersburg or Moscow as far as I know. And her enthusaiasm was a lovely thing to see.

details

2011-10-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

The older wooden houses in the centre are amazing. Easy to see these as picturesque ruins and to photograph their beautiful, lop-sided, hand-crafted details without thinking much about the occupants.

I was also shown rows and rows of wooden barracks on the outskirts of the city, still surviving from the 1920s, built in that optimistic moment in the belief that a the new type of worker would be formed who would not need a private kitchen or much domestic space. Again, still occupied and almost completely collapsed.

getting on with life

2011-10-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

Then there is the city itself. Quite wealthy through trade in the 18th and 19th centuries, the centre of Perm is laid out on a grid, with what were mainly two-storey wooden and brick built mansions, now fallen into decay. Around this are masses of poorly built and now also crumbling Soviet housing blocks. Still, it feels a lively city (for some reason I kept being reminded of Birmingham) with - in this last autumn moments - many people out and about.

What I saw actually happening was some renovation going on to some of the older brick buildings, and a small amount of miscellaneous additions of street furniture and public art. Hardly enough to scratch the surface of general shabbiness and dereliction, but just enough to make people cross.

festivals and more festivals

2011-10-16T08:45:00.000-07:00

Following cities like Barcelona, Bilbao and Dublin, Perm (in the Urals) is trying to sell itself as a City of Culture. This has even involved going to Brussels back in May to propose that that the European City of Culture title should be formally extended this far East. However, local opinion is clearly a little dubious about the motives of those in power. What everyone knows is that a Muscovite gallery owner, Marat Guelman has been invited in by the regional senator Sergei Gordeyev - or maybe by a regional governor, Oleg Chirkunov - and this can easily be read as a sign that the Moscow elite are taking over.

And, as usual, there are complicated gaps between appearances and actualities. I have been invited here to talk at one of the masses of festivals Perm now organises, in this case bringing together a craftt/household items fair with an architectural and interior design competition and festival (like a miniaturised Ideal Home Exhibition). Quite how these may improve the cultural or economic generation of the region is a little unclear. But there is plenty of energy and many good and creative conversations.

But in terms of other - more solid and long-term - projects, much is started and not completed, There has also been an international design competition for the Perm contemporary art gallery - marketed as PermMuseumXXI - a winner chosen, but then nothing; although now some plans for a much simpler glass extension. There are also proposals floating around for the Opera House (which nobody I talked to knew anything about) and last year some proposals for new wooden houses. So nobody really believes anything will happen.

Perm - city of culture

2011-10-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

Got the day (or rather night) wrong for my flight to Perm, and so had to do one of those running to the airport things, and then get onto a plane leaving at 1.30 and arriving at 5.30 in the morning (2 hour flight, 2 hour time difference) and then go straight into the conference, and my session and then all those associated 'performing animal' meetings and greetings and meals. Finally to this room - called the Extreme - trying and failing to be a downtown boutique hotel. I quite like it in a funny kind of a way, although the lovely translator delegated to keeping me happy said she found it scary.

idyllic, with kebabs

2011-10-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

Can't decide if this scene is also Parisian. There were a set of working boats, for trawling out leaves and rubbish from the water, and - I guess - mending things from. These three guys were standing next to a low and fiercely smoking charcoal grill, layered with fat meat kebabs. And they also had a standard domestic bathroom sink rigged up next to it, on the pontoon. Have lived here long enough to find that completely normal (or maybe odd).

idyllic?

2011-10-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

This idyllic scene is literally 3 minutes walk from where I live; an unexpectedly Parisian-looking section of the Yauza river, a shallow tributary to the Moskva. There is a beautiful pink and white neo-classical set of buildings for the lock machinery and (presumably) the lock-keeper, given that the middle island has a small but exquisitely kept garden and house. And I hardly ever go there, because both sides of the river are major traffic routes. Most times of the day it is completely impossible to cross. And I mean impossible; the flow of very fast traffic never stops. At weekends it is fractionally quieter, so yesterday I took my life in my hands, and ran.

And on the other side of the road there is this short stretch of path by the water which is separated from the cars by a small park. Lovely.

doing up the dvor

2011-10-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

The courtyards/dvors/двопа of Russian housing blocks come into their own at this time of year; as people sit out with a book, or their dogs, or their children, or their friends, and/or their cans of lager and snacks, and/or just staring into space - and bask in the last moments of autumn warmth.

There is something uniquely Russian about these spaces; both because of the block layouts (which seem weirdly random), and the endless ubiquity of green-painted low metal fencing, yellow-green striped kerb-stones, primary coloured play equipment, tarmac paths and tightly packed trees. And their slightly hidden quality - offering brilliant (but difficult to negotiate) green and pleasant short-cuts across the city.

Came across a fascinating investigation of this micro-rayon living by partizan publik, which explored two such dvors, one in Tblisi, Georgia and one on the outskirts of Moscow. On the surface these are almost identical - given that blocks like this were built right across the Soviet Union. But the group provide what they call "an inventory of user strategies' to show differences as well as similarities in how people occupy these spaces, and their various responses to a post-soviet world where such public spaces are really beginning to show neglect.

everyday scenes 2

2011-10-07T03:42:00.000-07:00

And since I am reminding myself of the realities of life for many here, there has to be mention of the everyday glory that is the Moscow traffic jam.

soup time

2011-10-07T03:38:00.000-07:00

There is some kind of soup kitchen near the station (provided I presume by a charity) which is, as you can see, well-attended. There have been various - mainly desultory - references to problems with poverty, both as part of the national elections and from the new mayor of Moscow as he settles in. In fact, the Moscow News recently reported a city Poverty Plan. To quote the report (by Nathan Toohey), Vladimir Petrosyan, head of Moscow's Social Welfare Department, said:

that a “social contract” had been agreed with 26 Moscow families, while a further 84 families were prepared to take part in the program. The contract lasts six-month with the authorities obliged to provide work, place any children in day care and even “send grandmothers to a sanatorium, for example.”

So that should sort it. (Although I should add that things only seem a little better in Moscow, Idaho. I kept getting articles on poverty from the Moscow-Pullman Daily News when I was doing that Googling thing.)

everyday scenes 1

2011-10-07T03:33:00.000-07:00

I don't write much about poverty, homelessness and drunkenness on this blog. Living near a major railway station (linking to the south east of the country and Ukraine, so an entry point for many economic migrants) the size of the problem is just far too obvious; particularly at this time of year when it is still warm enough to sleep out. So, I end up doing the same as everyone else, just ignoring these people.

Had one very drunken and dissolute character knocking about in our apartment corridor for several hours last night; down to his underpants and banging on all the doors, roaring about something. Just lucky (and relieved) that he still had his pants on.

hanging about (more)

2011-10-07T03:17:00.000-07:00

...and the other, other obsession - people hanging off buildings from basically just two pieces of string...

leaves falling

2011-10-07T03:14:00.000-07:00

Regular visitors to this blog will know that one of the things I am obsessed with (along with the weather and food) is the creativity in 'making do' when it comes to street cleaning equipment. But I just going to pretend this photo is showing how quickly the autumnal leaves are falling (oh, damn, but that means I am talking about the weather again...).

more on the weather front

2011-10-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know I talk about the weather a lot but - given that the UK is unseasonally sunny at the moment - just wanted to note that the skies here continue to be grey and overcast, and that everything is rainy, damp and slightly chilly, in fact exactly English autumn weather. Damn.

my all time hero

2011-10-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

In my continuing saga of missing fantastic artists who are visiting Moscow, I failed to notice that William Kentridge was giving a performance at Garage yesterday. But never mind, because the exhibition - Five Themes - which is a traveling show from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art*, presents a truly breath-taking and brilliant selection of his work to date; covering sketches, animations, made objects, films, 3D projections and multi-screen installations, all showing his obsessive versatility, fantastical imagination and - often clownish - humour. He should be as famous as, I don't know, artists like Gerhard Richter and Jake/Dinos Chapman (or maybe he is and I was just foolish to only discover him accidentally a few years ago).

And somehow his work seems particularly relevant right here, right now. Both because it sits outside much western contemporary art, being not conceptual, intellectual and self-referential but graphic, metaphorical and narrative-based (that is, much more like contemporary Russian art) and because it has a way of incorporating politics that is very engaged and explicit without being didactic - something other (rather more inward and personal) artists here could learn from.

So - a must see if you happen to be in Moscow before 4th December 2011.

* To be properly accurate, from the San Francisco Museum, together with the Norton Museum of Art. Show curated by Mark Rosenthal.

not mentioning the election

2011-10-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

Whilst the Putin/Mededev roadshow wends its merry - and predictable - way, I have been thinking some more about how powerful the idea of escape is here; not just escape away (abroad, or into wealth) but also inward, away from the 'centre', away from rules and regulations; and away from (controlled and controlling) public/politcal debate. In continuity with the old Soviet tradition of kitchen talks, of politics discussed around household tables - and of samizdat of course - some of the creative people I have talked to here seem to find the greatest freedom in private actions. I met an architect who runs a radical studio (at least I think that is what he does). He laughed at me when I asked if I could see his group's work on the web - we prefer to keep things underground, he said.

Had to resist stealing this RT YouTube clip of Putin singing from my friend Miriam's blog, so will just give the link to her post instead. And to get some of the - slightly weird - resonance with the Cameron/Clegg duo in the UK, also see this clip of Mededev dancing. Easy to see which one is Clegg.

tales of the unexpected 5

2011-10-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

Quite unnecessary and a bit unnerving. So don't know what he is doing at the entrance to the Dendi cafe which is otherwise another of those nice places to go for weekend breakfast, with reasonable prices and a typical russian traditional/shabby chic interior.

And, yes, it is Sid James on his apron.

unspoken connections

2011-10-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

I don't know whether it is because I am of a certain age, or whether it happens to all foreigners, but there have been several moments of kind exchange with strangers (also mainly older people). In the Metro, there have been those who, hearing me speak English to a Russian friend, come over and greet me - in whatever language they prefer. Today, in the supermarket, the cashier on reaching the end of my stumbling Russian and therefore realising I was a foreigner, reached under the till counter and gave me a discount card for a massive designer retail outlet; adding quite formally and in beautiful English 'a present for you.'

I find these encounters very touching - because if I understand correctly - it connects to something I also feel; that we were Cold War children, separated and isolated by politics.... and now (somehow unexpectedly) we can just be in the same city together, in an ordinary way. And I still find that a little amazing.

In a similar fashion, one of my colleagues has just come back from his family home deep in the Russian countryside - no running water or electricity, and he has been there all summer making repairs to his mother's house so it will be warm enough this winter - with a huge handful of home-made socks and slippers. On hearing that he was working with an English woman, his mother's friends also insisted on giving me presents.

english zavtrak

2011-09-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Had завтрак/zavtrak (breakfast, not to be confused with завтра/zavtra/tomorrow) out at a cafe as usual; this time back at Respublika bookshop/store in Tverskaya because I was hunting for some 'designer' presents.

Couldn't resist ordering the English breakfast which - as you can see - was eggs, bacon, steak and (kidney) beans. It also came with beer as standard (which, despite being English, I turned down.).

getting in with the in-crowd

2011-09-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Feeling v. pleased with myself for managing to blag into the biennale opening. Just marched up to security and said the artist Susan Hiller had invited me. This was - in its way - a complete truth. At the end of her talk, I asked the artist if she could tell my where her work was being exhibited. This is because there is absolutely no information on the biennale website about things like that (no programme of events either; its all a guessing game, to the extent that on opening night the whole of the ArtPlay area was full of very posh, very lost, looking people asking plaintive directions.)

To which she replied (and I quote) 'you should come to the opening, it's tonight.' So I did. And before I knew it the nice woman organiser was apologising for the lack of me having an actual ticket, and shepherding us to the front of the queue.

the 4th

2011-09-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

The 4th Moscow Contemporary Art Biennale has crept up from behind, or rather, everything is happening very suddenly without much warning. It turns out that ArtPlay where I work, is one of the major exhibition sponsors; that really famous (and fabulous) artists are speaking in this very building one after another; and that the next door building - which was a complete wreck until yesterday - has been finished practically overnight and now houses some amazing contemporary art, both international and Russian. And will do so until 30th October 2011.

Thus, it came to pass that I found out the day before that Issac Julien, Susan Hiller and Rebecca Horn were all down to give talks right here (along with many others). An amazing treat.

Photo of Issac Julien introducing Ten Thousand Waves at BHSAD, Moscow. Susan Hiller is showing Witness (2000) and Rebecca Horn Moon Mirror Journey (2011) at the Biennale.

In the дом of the new leaf

2011-09-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

Back in Moscow, and now this flat also smelling of apples - both the heaps that L gave me from her dacha (that time of year when everyone is desperately passing their spare fruit on) - and the single, beautifully formed version that came from the very small apple tree on the balcony of my London flat. So, spot the difference.

downer

2011-09-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

I realise that I have been quite grumpy since I got back to Moscow. In fact, my best friend G recently noted a longer term trend; that whilst the first volume of A Year in Moscow was positively funny, this quality has been much reduced in the second.

So I am aiming to make this the last complaining post, at least for a while. It's just that I had to fly back to London from Domodedovo (pretty much just for a day). And for the first time, our departure lounge was gate 3. I have seen other people attempting to use this gate before and have laughed a little. But now, my turn to experience the weirdness of a departure lounge in a major international airport that 1.) is tiny, 2.) has its exit gate stuffed in the corner, 3.) is already a cafe and 4.) had had all its chairs and 'normal' tables removed, so that neither cafe customers nor plane about-to-boarders can sit down. Presumably 4.) being the solution to the impossible crowding caused - when everyone arrives - by 1.), 2.) and 3.).

Okay, no more moaning....

the look of fresh pine

2011-09-13T02:21:00.000-07:00

The park is currently in the beginnings of a make-over with the derelict rides and attractions being stripped out and - from the look of it - 'hipsters' being invited in. Work is being funded by the City government and Roman Abramovich, with one of his lieutenants Sergey Kapkov put in charge of the renovations. So there is a new outdoor cinema (where I watched some of the park's security guards - in full uniform - calmly try and jemmy open the storage shed, which could be seen to contain much useful stuff); a beach restaurant (with an actual beach); wi-fi everywhere; new stylish seating areas and many, many new espresso bars. The overall look is planks/boxes of stripped pine, so it is no surprise that Strelka Institute have been involved - they brought this look to Moscow.

If you want to be reminded of the summer, then see Gorky Park's new 'beach' as well as other kind-of-beaches around Moscow via this RT YouTube clip.

wash out

2011-09-12T09:49:00.000-07:00

Spent much of sunday getting very wet in Gorky Park, at Design Act - billed as a design festival and exhibition, but washed out almost completely. Making the market stalls and furniture out of cardboard was probably a bad idea (and presenting a lecture where power cables + damp meant my laptop gave off electric shocks whenever you touched it was interesting to say the least) .

feeling english (sort of)

2011-09-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

Damp with both drizzling and torrential rain most of the weekend which, together with the Last Night of the Proms and the first autumn Radio 4 episode of the News Quiz (series 75), seemed to bring out my englishness; evidenced by an unexpectedly strong urge for boiled eggs, soldiers with marmite and a proper cup of tea.

At the same time, I made compote and took a first stab at pickling my own cucumbers. So clearly developing a hybrid personal culture based, in embarrassing fashion, on simplistic and stereotypical food habits. And all the while feeling a bit hemmed in by ex-pat life (what do you do when your connection other other people is only because you speak the same language?)

oww!

2011-09-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

Managed to bash into something sharp sticking out of the wall, swerving to avoid a drunken woman asleep on my flat stairs, minor injury but oww! As my friends know I am pretty clumsy anyway so have bumped and grazed myself across many of the world's greatest cities. But Moscow is definitely hazardous - I have also torn my skirt twice, on a broken metal gutter and a badly finished window sill.

Which has got me back to a subject we have talked about a lot recently; that nobody here thinks it is the job of governments or other organisations - public or private - to make life easier for people. Unlike that linking of welfare and state (at least historically) in England, the state here is only about keeping order, not often a particularly caring business. So whether in the design of processes, objects, or places, little or no thought is applied to enabling the comfort or ease of ordinary people.

And I have been wondering if this explains something about the (to me) passive attitude towards those who act without consideration in public - for example, pushing in front of an elderly person on the metro, or driving their cars dangerously fast. Nobody seems to get angry. It is as if, just as with the state, there is no expectation that people should behave considerately to others ( although of course lots of people behave very well, with generosity and kindness of spirit).

september sunday

2011-09-06T05:52:00.001-07:00

And then Sunday. I remember early September weekends from last year - very quiet, surprisingly little traffic on the Sadovaya (Garden) Ring, which is usually jammed packed. Everyone who can is out of the city and at their dacha or abroad, escaping before the school holidays are over.

ugly, ugly, ugly

2011-09-05T06:12:00.000-07:00

V also deliberately took me on different routes to and from his dacha. On the way there we saw endless new high-rise apartment building (both on Moscow's outskirts and around the nearby 'satellite' city) being constructed and piled together in almost exactly Soviet-era industrial building fashion - save for some trivial gimmickry on the facades. On the way back (thankfully after dark) we passed dozens of enclaves for the new Russians; estates of disneyland housing surrounded by tall ugly walls like you would have around a prison, enlivened - which is certainly not the right word - only by the occasional pastiche old-style gatehouse with its big fat gates and guard huts. Ugh.

strawberries and bullets

2011-09-05T06:07:00.000-07:00

V took me to visit his dacha nearby, and again I was honoured to be embraced into the huge welcome, warmth and sociality of his family and friends, as we did what is clearly the usual dacha thing of sitting around the kitchen table for hours, talking, eating and drinking. Lovely.

This particular dacha plot is quite overgrown, in amongst beautiful tall conifers. V's childhood memories are of having strawberry rows to cultivate, and finding - only a small level below the surface - endless bullet casings and even a hand grenade and other fragments of that terrifying and central world war two battle. Ideal treasure for a small boy.

memorials and weddings

2011-09-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

I feel like I am letting V down, because of course I spent most of my time photographing not the serious monuments and churches he was showing me, but the people all around. The memorial park was just stuffed with wedding parties parking huge white limousines next to battered tanks, tottering around in high heels and shiny suits with bottles of champagne and lining up on turn to have their pictures taken.

This of course, relates to a strong and important tradition of remembering - and honouring - past sacrifices. But to me, now, it just looked like a simple excuse for a party in a weird location.

memorial

2011-09-05T05:50:00.000-07:00

On the way we stopped at one of the war memorial parks that mark the line where the German army was stopped in their march on Moscow during the Second World War. Which makes you aware just how close they got to the city, before the Russians - with a huge cost of life - fought them back.

a little history

2011-09-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

As part of his very generous, ongoing project to educate me, I have made another day trip with V, this time to New Jerusalem, a monastery near Istra on the Moscow outskirts. destroyed by the German army on their retreat from Moscow in the Second World War, it is still in the process of restoration.

Yet even under scaffolding it is an extraordinary place. Modelled in plan pretty accurately on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in (old) Jerusalem - by Patriach Nikon from the 1650s - in three dimensions it starts to do all sorts of weird things, like putting a multitude of huge sash windows in the major dome, oh, and also having two major domes rather than just the standard one. There are some baroque additions that add to this wayward flavour, but the original design was part of Nikon's deliberate intention to make Russia the third Rome and the centre of global Christian belief, leading to religious reforms and the ensuing schism from what we now call the Old Believers.

back again

2011-09-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

Arrived back late last night to a summer storm, with rolling thunder and sheet lightening bright enough to make you wince. Very pleased to be back, but also already painfully missing my London life. So very confusing; I obviously want the impossible, to be in two places at once (well three actually, since my daughter is in Sydney).

A second year in Moscow (its book time!)

2011-08-17T15:36:00.001-07:00

A Second Year in Moscow by Jos Boys | Make Your Own Book

up and onward

2011-08-14T02:32:00.000-07:00

Back in my London flat, with the gorgeous smell of dacha-grown apples and the lingering sour taste left by our recent sporadic, meaningless riots.

And the end of another year in Moscow - with the beginning of the next only a few weeks away. A friend asked me how I coped with the winter snows and then laughed at the involuntary grin on my face. So, must mean I am looking forward to it.

that time again

2011-08-14T02:18:00.000-07:00

At the end of each of my 'years' in Moscow, I have this (impossible) idea of trying to sum up what I have learnt in one single picture. This is last year's - and for this year, I wanted to capture something of that endlessly interesting but confusing juxtaposition that seems central to life here; the combination of lots of (often mindless) rules and regulations with little bother as to whether these are actually obeyed. It is illegal to cross the railway tracks. And everyone does it.

swimming

2011-08-10T04:55:00.000-07:00

The other glory was that the dacha sat in a pine forest, next to a river. We went for a walk through the woods and then 3 of the group - all in their late 60s - stripped down to swim. Because of the current, this involved going some way upstream and then being carried back in the water to our waiting place. So peaceful, just someone fishing and some other swimming people at various points along the edge.

on new russians

2011-08-10T04:49:00.000-07:00

Everyone at the dacha was dismissive of New Russians who buy up dacha plots nearer to Moscow and build huge mansions. They said that being at an hour and a half distance from the city made the group of dachas here too far for NRs in their 4X4s to be bothered to drive each weekend (given that - especially in the hot weather - everyone goes to their dacha for the weekend, and for as much of the summer as possible, making the already bad traffic jams even worse.)

This means that many of the buildings around here are small and elderly, picturesquely decaying, very basic in terms of kitchen and washing facilities. In old peasant houses, most of the volume was taken up with a huge masonry stove, built to retain heat - which people slept on, used for cooking and smoking, and for sitting inside to wash. A wanted to build one in her dacha, but it was too big and too difficult to fit in. She says that such stoves are becoming trendy again (again with the NRs), but that is hard to get good stovemakers and that many are just for show.

on compote

2011-08-10T04:29:00.000-07:00

One of the regular visitors to the dacha was a biologist, who brought me many samples of herbs and plants and described their medicinal qualities. She also made several variations on Russian compote - a catch-all phrase without any English equivalent as it seems to cover everything from various forms of fruit pureed desserts, to a drink I often have of tepid, boiled up fruit in a (relatively) liquid form, to the fruit- tasting wetness of boiling water poured onto a melange of fruit, leaves and whatever. The latter perfect for both freshness and immediacy.

why the dacha is a thing of beauty

2011-08-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

Finally got to go for the weekend to my landlady and landlord's dacha, about an hour and a half's train ride away from the city.

And what a blissful honour. The building and its fruit trees, cucumbers, marrows, berries and herbs were very much what I had expected, together with the freshness of the air, the purity and cold of the well-water and the strength of smells (dill, coriander, apples). And I expected the constant round of fire-building, cooking, mending, digging, pruning, salting and compote-making. But I found myself also witnessing a personal and social life with direct continuities back to Soviet times as A and N, together with several old friends from their student days at Moscow State University, reminisced and joked and drunk and ate together; around a large table, under a open, outdoor roof, in the midst of apple and plum trees.

I knew that dachas had originally been given as rewards for loyalty by Peter the Great, a tradition repeated by Stalin. But I didn't realise that in the 60s and 70s workers organisations were given plots of land to share out (together with some restrictions on plot size and building height, so as to not echo the previously elitist context) which means that a surprisingly large minority of Muscovites still have access to a dacha. A and N have developed theirs since the 1970s, but the type of life dachas enable remains central; that is, social, convivial and sharing as much as connecting back to the country, to land and to growing your own produce. I can't say if these spaces 'made up for' the constraints of communal housing and in public life, but but they certainly open up my images of, and assumptions about, everyday life and pleasures in the old Soviet Union.

sunny walking

2011-08-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

It was a major joy to be ambling in a park in the summer sun with the trees in full leaf. Kolomenskoye park is big - it has a stream through the middle and a dipping hill down to the Moscow river. Lovely. And there are a whole band of these big parks and forests around Moscow, still to visit.

(Also some lakes and beaches; here is Moscow Elements magazine's top 7.)

Kolomenskoye

2011-08-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Got taken for a lovely afternoon walk in beautiful summer sunshine by V, as part of his on-going campaign to improve my education in Russian history and architecture. We went to Kolomenskoye park (conveniently accessible by metro on the green line) and visited the exquisite little group of buildings around the 16th century Church of the Ascension, a UNESO World Heritage site. And got into a discussion about how it looks like a rocket ship, so the space race must have started earlier than we thought...

road works-not

2011-08-09T06:07:00.000-07:00

Back in Moscow, albeit briefly, and start out very grumpy as I appear to have been completely re-Londonised in my time away. Horribly flustered by heaving chaos, queue-barging and being stood very close to whilst going through Domodedovo airport passport control. And in the centre of town find that all the pavements have been (half) dug up, making walking about a bit haphazard (as well as a hazard), as if some disruption to everyday life must always be essential here.

And of course, the rumours are that the works - commissioned by the new mayor, Sergei (I will stop corruption) Sobyanin - are happening because his wife owns a brickworks, and yes you have guessed, all the pavements are being bricked. And now the city has run out of bricks.

Which is so typically crazy that you have to laugh, so then I remember that this is one of the many reasons I like Moscow and find I am very glad to be back.....

Dacha time but not for me

2011-07-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

I was planning to spend the summer traveling across Russia, but unfortunately my intentions have had to change; besides a short time in August I will be in London until the beginning of September. And looks like I will miss out on a dacha trip also. Damn.

Will just have to catch up with my Russian reading, all those 19th century novels and travelogues and anything else recommended...