The Pianist 2

I just had a go!  And a guy said it was great!!

Seven Sinister Sisters

Moscow's Seven Sisters are seven Stalinist-Gothic monoliths - Muscovites know them as Сталинские высотки (Stalin's high-rises).  There were meant to be eight but only seven were completed (though an eighth is in Warsaw - the Palace of Culture and Science that we visited).  The seven are:

1. the Hotel Ukraina
2. the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Apartments
3. the Kudrinskaya Square Building
4. the Hotel Leningradskaya
5. the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
6. Moscow State University at Sparrow Hills
7. the Red Gates Administration Building

Gargantuan, dirty-white, crazily crenellated, featuring somewhere the hammer and sickle, intimidating in their sheer thereness, they were meant to be a show of power and they certainly scare the hell out of me.

Hotel Ukraina

***Just seen on Wikipedia that a precursor was our own dear Liver Building in our own dear Liverpool!  Will never look at the Liver Birds in the same way!

Royal Liver Buildings

And here's Warsaw:

Palace of Culture and Science
(with a touch of Capitalism)

The Pianist

Sitting in the Lobby Bar of the Radisson - Nick has just gone over to play the piano.  Sounds of Americana fill the hall and everyone's enjoying it.  Very proud!

Strong Stuff

We met some people from Ohio in the hotel - a retired couple and their daughter.  They were here to pick up a Russian orphan she has adopted.  There they were, in the corridor, with 2-year-old Maxim, who is about to fly the Atlantic to begin a new life as an American.  Not surprisingly, he hadn't uttered a word in the 36 hours since they picked him up.  It was a primal scene, very raw.

The Big Smoke

But the unbelievable atmospheric conditions in Moscow are getting us down, so we're bailing out early.  Tonight we head for St. Pete.

"Москва, я люблю тебя"

Tretyakov Gallery

     Yesterday we visited the Tretyakov, Moscow's great gallery of Russian art.  We saw what is probably Russia's holiest icon - Our Lady of Vladimir - reputedly painted by St. Luke but actually dating from the 12th Century.  The other icons were pretty amazing as well - pieces by Theophanes and Dionysus and Andrei Rublev's Old Testament Trinity.  The 'Old Russian Art' section also had an 11th Century mosaic of St. Demetrius from Kiev (a few decades older than Balliol) and an 11th Century stone relief of two horsemen.
     In the paintings section, our favourites included Ivan Argunov's Unknown Woman in Russian Dress, Orest Kiprensky's portrait of Pushkin, Ivan Kramskoy's Nameless Lady (which adorned the cover of my Penguin Classic edition of Anna Karenina), Ivan Shishkin's Rye and Tree-Felling, Vasily Surikov's The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy on Red Square (featuring a bilious-looking Peter the Great) and Boyaryna Morozova, Repin's portrait of Ivan the Terrible cradling his dying son, Vrubel's Demon and Demon Overthrown, Konstantin Korovin's Roses and Violets, Valentin Serov's Girl With Peaches and The Rape of Europa and Zinaida Serebryakova's At the Dressing Table.
     Check out:
http://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/316