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Moscow in the Snow James Hill for The New York Times By RICK LYMAN Published: November 23, 2011 THEY’RE like mountain goats, these women. Skittering up, over and around the ice sheets and the snow slicks on every sidewalk in central Moscow, their spike-heeled boots somehow finding purchase on the sharp, crusty surface. Some of them are texting while they do it. My wife and I are making our way slowly up Tverskaya, Moscow’s grand boulevard and main shopping drag. The traffic-choked street is so wide it cannot be crossed above ground, so every 100 yards or so subterranean passages, chockablock with stalls selling everything from lingonberry cakes to lingerie, bring you from one side of the boulevard to the other. Everywhere, it seems, we are moving too slowly. Young people in leather coats and wool caps zip around us, as do the hundreds of improbably elegant women in their gravity-defying boots scurrying without pause over jagged ice floes that force us to stop, consider and plot our ascent. Moscow, in the grip of the cold, is not everyone’s idea of a perfect vacation. It is a famously difficult city in general — especially for pedestrians, those with no Russian and anyone put off by pushy crowds, confusing signage and surly ticket sellers. Winter just makes it worse. People are bundled up in furry cocoons. The sidewalks are largely uncleared. Still, for my wife and me, visiting our daughter, who was there for a semester abroad, it takes only a few hours to realize that present-day Moscow is also alive and energized, a city in the giddy grip of really enjoying itself. It would be a stretch to say that Muscovites embrace the winter, but they come as close as human beings are able to outside a ski resort. Bitterly cold outside? No matter. Snow piles atop snow piles? Life marches on. Restaurants are full. Sidewalks are crowded. Theaters and opera houses are packed. Parks are crisscrossed by people on ice skates along with those who are simply taking a leisurely stroll as though at the height of spring. And there is one real plus to coming in the lowest of the low season. The main tourist sites — the museums, the cathedrals, the tourist markets — are uncrowded and relaxed. No long queues for tickets, even at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. No waiting in line, behind a thick crowd, for a quick glimpse of Catherine the Great’s coronation dress. We arrived in Moscow well after dark, which was not saying much as there were only about six hours of true daylight each day we were there, the sky not brightening until around 9 a.m. and dipping into twilight by 3:30. We stayed at the Hotel National; the towers of the Kremlin glowed from beyond the Alexander Gardens, across the street. Luxurious and surprisingly small, the National is perhaps the city’s most historic top hotel. John Reed stayed there while covering the Bolshevik Revolution, and Lenin himself took up residence in Room 107 until grander digs were available in the Kremlin. A quick drop of bags and a hurried consultation with the hotel’s chipper and efficient concierge staff for recommendations of a Georgian restaurant, and we were back in our winter coats and headed through the crowded subterranean passage to the Kremlin side of the boulevard. The central part of the vast, sprawling city is defined by semicircular ring roads that arch around the Kremlin — the city’s heart — like crescent moons. The road just outside the National curves around the Kremlin and the old, adjoining Kitay-gorod district. About a half mile up Tverskaya, at Pushkin Square, you hit the Boulevard Ring, and another half mile or more beyond, at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, the Garden Ring. Within those bands lie most of the city’s tourist destinations, top restaurants, major hotels and most popular theaters. It’s a vast area, though. The map says it’s 2,500 yards from the Kremlin to the Garden Ring along Tverskaya, though with winter’s chill and the clotted subterranean pedestrian tunnels, it feels a lot longer. You enter Red Square through the Resurrection Gate, a pair of archways torn down during Stalin’s time but rebuilt in 1996. The gate perfectly frames the vast expanse, with the colorful onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral in the near distance. A small protest was under way — we tried to read the signs and listen to the bullhorn speeches, but couldn’t figure out what it was about — and some of the protesters were handing out leaflets while others tried to sell incense sticks that could be used in any of the nearby churches. This heart of Moscow, in crisp winter air that seems to make the spotlights on the Kremlin towers shine with a hard clarity, is splendidly beautiful at night. While there are still drab boulevards and forbidding side streets, the main squares and thoroughfares are aglow with illuminated onion domes, commercial billboards and bright red stars still burning above the Kremlin’s towers. But most astonishing was the sprawling ice-skating rink decorated with kiddie cartoons and balloon shapes that takes up a giant chunk of the square, smack between GUM’s central door and Lenin’s mausoleum. It was well into the evening on a very cold night, but there were still more than a hundred people making their way around the rink, mostly families with squealing children, and middle-aged couples keeping a tight grip on each other. We passed by the ice rink several times during our week in Moscow. There was never a line and it was rarely crowded, but there were always at least a few families with children taking tentative laps in the shadow of the Kremlin walls. We were among the few people walking through the frozen gardens on the Kremlin’s north side, past the somber Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with its guards standing to attention inside glass booths safe from the elements, and up to the Old Arbat district. The Georgian restaurant, Genatsvale V.I.P., was a kind of theme-park affair dressed up to look like an old mill, with spinning wheels, log walls and a roaming accordion player. Communication was difficult. The waitress, dressed in a sexy version of Georgian folk costume, offered little help. So we opted for the famous Georgian dishes we’d read about, a delicious chicken satsivi (cold chunks of white meat in a walnut sauce), some khachapuri (cheese-stuffed bread) and an assortment of grilled, skewered meats. It was very good. But other tables seemed to be having much grander, happier feasts — huge platters of meats and salads and toast after toast, sometimes with the kitchen staff scurrying out to serenade everyone. This was also our first encounter with what we discovered to be a distinct Moscow character: the insistent coat check person. At many modest restaurants, and certainly at the top ones, customers are given no choice but to check their coats (it’s free, and tips are not expected). A dining room free of winter gear seems to be a sign of class, and the whole process becomes a little ceremony, a punctuation point between the cold world outside and the warmth within. It also provides a frame for that most frequent Russian winter activity: wrapping the scarf, putting the coat on, positioning the hat just so, checking to make sure your gloves are in the pocket. The next morning began with another walk across Red Square — and another protest beside the Resurrection Gate — before we dove into St. Basil’s. The interior is a labyrinth of chapels, one for each of its domes and spires. We were pretty much left on our own to pick our way through the maze. Outside of one school group, the place was empty. It’s a brisk quarter-mile walk from there to the ticket booth at the foot of the Trinity Tower, the Kremlin’s main entrance for tourists. Those who, like us, intend to start with a visit to the Armory Chamber — the museum of the czars’ possessions, from Fabergé eggs to ornate carriages — were directed to yet another gate a few hundred more frigid yards away. Walking across the cold, deserted streets of the Kremlin was a lonely exercise, watched only by a handful of grim-faced guards in long wool coats, icy plumes of breath shooting from between compressed lips. In the fortress’s historic, central square, a few seconds of orientation were needed to distinguish the Cathedral of the Archangel from the Cathedral of the Assumption from the Cathedral of the Annunciation. But once we did, we were able to make our way through them in chronological order, a kind of mini-course in the development of Russian ecclesiastical architecture. Again, except for the middle-aged ladies perched on chairs to keep a steely eye on things, each place was ours. In the early evening, we made our trek over to the Red October Chocolate Factory, a complex of art galleries and bars on an island in the river. The hope was to get a glance at Moscow’s trendy side, but we apparently arrived too early, and made do with a couple of ridiculously expensive cocktails (no beer or wine, just cocktails on the menu) at a place near the huge, kitschy statue of Peter the Great atop a tall-masted ship. For dinner, we wandered back up Tverskaya to Kamergersky and found that sushi place where young people were slamming beer and sake surrounded by a dozen flat-screen monitors playing silent films of sea birds floating over beaches and estuaries, an homage to the Moscow Art Theater, just across the way, where Chekhov’s “Seagull” had its first big success in 1898. By the third day, my feet raw from the long trudges across the snowy city. I was ready for a steam. My wife passed. The sexes are separated at Sanduny baths, and she didn’t want to go in alone. I had no such qualms, though I was the only one in my section of the baths who was not part of a group. After three attempts to find the right door into the complex, I was shown to my own vinyl sofa and given hangers for my clothes, a towel and some slippers (at an extra charge). A bottle of mineral water set me back the equivalent of $4. Travel Guide: Moscow Inside, men took turns pummeling one another with thick bundles of leafy birch branches soaked in water. I tried whipping myself with the things a few times — it’s supposed to make your skin feel great — but couldn’t quite get the angle right. Every now and then, one of the Russian men walked over to a giant steel door in the wall, opened it to reveal a glowing red inferno and slung in a giant ladle of water. By the time I left, the floor was strewn with leaves and debris, like a driveway after a storm. ONCE upon a time, the train trip to St. Petersburg was, for most tourists, an overnight one. Those trains still exist and have their nostalgic adherents. But since 2009, with the inauguration of the high-speed Sapsan train, the trip can be made in four hours, making Peter the Great’s former capital an easy hit for travelers willing to fork over the $200 round trip. In a day and a half we were able to devote five hours to the Hermitage, have a terrific Indian meal at Tandoor and a beer at a faux British pub near one of the ice-choked canals, and spend a couple of hours meandering around the massive Gostiny Dvor department store on Nevsky Prospekt, all decked out for the holidays — without rushing or breaking a sweat. Back in Moscow, desperate to buy some gifts before flying back to New York, we spent a bitterly cold Saturday picking our way through the sprawling Izmailovo flea market on the edge of that park. The crowds were thick, despite the weather. It’s a standard stop on the tourist circuit, the place to go for antiques, memorabilia from the Soviet era, fur hats and hundreds upon hundreds of painted wooden nesting dolls. Despite the temperatures, from mid-December to mid-January it’s bustling with tobogganing, troika rides, folk arts, musical events, souvenir stalls, ice skating and dozens of images of Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, the Russian version of Santa Claus, and his sidekick, the svelte Snegurochka, the snow maiden. The idea is to get something authentically Russian, a bit of folk art perhaps, or a shard from history; certain stalls featured the flotsam from Russia’s past — old silver samovars, platters commemorating the latest Soviet congress, patriotic posters glorifying angry workers and happy cosmonauts. My wife wanted to find some embroidered linens for her mother’s dining room table, and we went from booth to booth, inspecting the various designs as the bitter wind whipped around us and people made their way precariously up the market’s icy steps. Finally, she found what she wanted — a long, gorgeous red-and-cream tablecloth with an embroidered winter scene. The elderly woman in a flowery babushka who was working at the stall, and who periodically reached beneath the counter to warm her hands on an electric heater, grandly spread out the tablecloth and pointed to its many wonderful features. To close the deal, she flipped over the tablecloth with a flourish and pointed to a small tag at the bottom corner. “Williams-Sonoma,” it said. ONLY IN WINTER Moscow Russian Winter Festival. Folk arts, dance, food, crafts and troika rides, from mid-December to mid-January, in Izmailovo Park and Revolution Square. newrussiacenter.org/winter_festival.htm. December Nights Festival. Classical concerts, from the second half of December through early January, at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. arts-museum.ru. Vyugovey Ice Sculpture Festival. One of the largest of several ice sculpture exhibits in Moscow, December through February, on the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics grounds. icefestival.ru. Ice-Skating in Red Square. A rink goes up every winter just outside GUM Department Store facing Red Square, though other favorite skating sites are in Gorky Park and Patriarch’s Ponds. Sessions of an hour and 20 minutes are 250 to 500 rubles depending on day and time. gum.ru/en/projects/rink. Winter River Cruises. A fleet of heated, fully enclosed icebreaker ships plows the Moscow River for two-hour cruises from the Radisson Royal Hotel to Novopassky Monastery; 800 rubles. radisson.ru/royalhotel-moscow/river-cruise. IF YOU GO GETTING AROUND The key thing about visiting Moscow is to acquaint yourself early with the city’s amazing metro system. It can be crowded and brusque, but some of the stations are spectacularly beautiful, and it can take you to within walking distance of almost every major attraction. Tickets are 28 rubles (about 90 cents at 30 rubles to the dollar) for a single ride or 265 rubles ($9) for a 10-ride ticket. In St. Petersburg, most main sites are within easy walking distance, though it’s a long walk if you intend to venture across the Neva River to pay your respects at the grave of Peter the Great. WHERE TO STAY As far as location goes, it’s hard to beat the historic Hotel National at the foot of Tverskaya Street (7-495-258-7000; national.ru ), Moscow’s main thoroughfare. That may be why Lenin chose to stay there until his quarters were ready inside the Kremlin, just across the street. If Stalin is your preference, you could also check out the Radisson Royal Hotel, on the Moscow River at Kutuzovsky Prospekt (7-495-221-5555; radisson.ru/royalhotel-moscow). It is inside one of the seven gothic skyscrapers Stalin built around the city. In St. Petersburg, the Renaissance Baltic Hotel (7-812-380-4000; marriott.com/hotels/fact-sheet/travel/ledbr-renaissance-st-petersburg-baltic-hotel ) is on a side street near St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the Winter Palace, but just far enough off bustling Nevsky Prospekt to be calm and restful. WHERE TO EAT Moscow now offers an array of dining choices, from trendy bistros to fast-food chains. Café Pushkin (7-495-739-0033; cafe-pushkin.ru/en) was instantly the city’s finest restaurant when it opened in 1999 in a Baroque mansion on the Boulevard Ring. While other restaurants may have eclipsed it in culinary terms, it is still a spectacularly beautiful place to have a meal, especially during the holidays. For a more countrified atmosphere, and spicier Georgian cuisine, there is Genatsvale V.I.P. (7-495-988-2656; en.restoran.ru/msk/detailed/restaurants/genatsvale_vip ), just off the Arbat pedestrian mall. St. Petersburg has a wide variety of dining choices. We had an excellent Indian mea at Tandoor, across from the Admiralty Building (7-812-312-3886; en.restoran.ru/spb/detailed/restaurants/tandoor). RICK LYMAN is the deputy national editor of The Times. |