Child of the Cold War Visits Moscow

Being raised during the Cold War, visiting Moscow was something I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would do.

Then, in 1989, I sat in front of my television mesmerized as we watched the Berlin Wall come down and East and West Germany were quickly reunited. Not long after, the Iron Curtain crumbled, and the Soviet Union was dissolved.

A Fam Opportunity

In 2007 an opportunity arose for Art and me to participate in a familiarization (fam) trip to visit Moscow and St. Peterburg, Russia: we jumped on it.

Typically, when a travel agency is offered the opportunity to participate in a fam trip, there’s not a lot of notice.

If we were lucky, we might get four to six weeks’ notice, but often it’s one or two weeks. In this case, I think it was about four weeks. Which wasn’t a lot of time when factoring in the visa application process, which also occurred over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

Applying for a Russian Visa

Completing a visa application is not usually difficult. But getting a Russian visa required filling out one of the longest forms I have ever encountered.

There were a couple of questions on the Russian visa application that required a bit of thought and research on my part.

First was military service. I don’t recall if they wanted to know our ranks, but they did want to know when we were in the service and what our jobs were. They asked if we had served in any wars, and if so, who was the enemy. Next was what weapons were we qualified to use.

Where Had We Traveled in the Last 10 Years?

The question that had us really scrambling asked which countries we had visited in the last 10 years and the dates.  Oh my, we owned a travel agency and had been traveling a lot in the past 10 years. How would I ever come up with this list?

I pulled out my current passport at the time which was only about 4 years old. Then I had to dig out my previous passport (thank goodness I saved it!) and piece together our travels as best I could. Once the European Union came into existence, we found a lot of countries no longer stamp passports as you enter and exit, which made things a little more difficult.

We had to consider numerous cruises in Europe, Asia, the South Pacific, and Indonesia which all visited a lot of different countries. I went to my computer and pulled up my photos which also helped me to get the dates of our travels. I managed to dig up itineraries of similar cruises which were sailing at that time, and that assisted me in creating a list of the countries we had visited.

Will You Need a Russian Visa?

If you are planning a visit to Russia, you must obtain a visa before arriving in the country. The only exception is if you are traveling with an organized tour from a cruise ship. If you choose to not get a visa and take a tour, you must remain with the tour group at all times. Venturing anywhere on your own is not permitted. You can’t even disembark the ship on your own without a visa. If you are going on a cruise with a stop in Russia, I recommend you obtain a visa.

Since I am not actually planning a trip to Russia at this time, I was unable to open the current official visa application on-line. However, I was able to gather some information from the CIBT Visas’ website.

CIBT states that each person must complete the application for a Russian Visa on-line and it will take up to an hour to complete. There are some questions that might not seem straight forward, so CIBT has provided additional information to assist in completing the application.

Watch those Dates!

The most difficult thing for those of us in the US is entering the date in the correct order. On the Russian visa application, you must use the day/month/year format. If you are not paying attention, you can easily request your visa for the incorrect dates, which can cause major issues.

Remember, if your Russian visa is not correct, you won’t be allowed in the country. If you show up with the wrong dates on your visa, you’ll just be sent right back to the US. There is no in-country visa service available in Russia to correct the visa once you have arrived.

The Wait

We sent in our applications and waited. And waited. We didn’t hear anything.

Art and I were worried our military backgrounds would keep us from getting our visas approved.

Our tour was leaving from New York, and we had yet to purchase our airfare from Columbus. Our plan was to wait until we had our visas. In order to get a decent fare, we needed to purchase our tickets at least two weeks prior to our flight date. Finally, we just decided to go ahead and purchase the tickets to New York. We knew the price would go up dramatically if we didn’t, so we just took our chances.

We kept in touch with the company we were traveling with, IsramWorld Tours (the same company that provided our trip to Egypt). They said, not to worry, there was the Christmas and New Year’s holidays to deal with plus the fact that the Russian Orthodox Christmas was celebrated January 8th, so there was that holiday to consider as well. Isram was confident the visas would come through.

(Just an FYI, IsramWorld Tours is now called IsramIsreal and has refocused their offerings no longer providing tours to Russia.)

A few days before our scheduled departure date, both visas arrived. We did a happy dance and then started to think about packing for a trip to Russia in January.

Packing for our Visit to Moscow

Now that required a bit of thought. The picture in our minds was cold and snow. So, we brought our heavy wool coats, hats, gloves, and turtlenecks. Warm socks and of course boots.

When we would tell people where we were going, we would get the same response from everyone, “Why on earth would you go to Russia in January?”

You see, in the travel business it’s all about opportunity. Fam trips are usually offered in the off season, so we weren’t surprised by the trip being offered in the dead of winter. But when you have the opportunity, you just have to take it.

Our Visit to Moscow Begins

Imagine our surprise when we landed in Moscow and found the weather warmer than it was in Columbus, Ohio! And to top it off, there was no snow! Even the locals said they were surprised with what a mild winter they were having. So, we ended up being lucky.

Upon our arrival we went through immigration. I went through first, with no problem. After I left, Art walked up to the podium. I turned around to wait for him.

Art had his hat on, and the immigration officer, in a deep voice, gruffly said, “Take off your hat!” Art complied. The officer held the passport up and looked from it to Art and back again. Then, he said, “Ah yes, that’s you!” and smiled. He handed Art the passport and wished him a good stay. It was nice to know they had a sense of humor!

It was late afternoon by the time we arrived at our hotel, so other than the hotel tour, and a welcome dinner there was nothing scheduled for that day.

Our Hotel

We stayed in the Ritz Carlton, which was a first for us. It was beautiful with fine finishes, warm and inviting and as lavish as we expected. The hotel will be undergoing renovations through 2021, so I’m not sure what it will look like when completed.

The hotel is on Tverskaya Street, only a few blocks walk to both the Bolshoi Theater and Red Square. For sightseeing in Moscow, it’s in a great location.

City Tour

Our first morning began with a half day city tour of Moscow. We viewed the Moscow State University, housed in one of the buildings known as the Seven Sisters. These seven massive skyscrapers were all built in the Stalinist style between 1947 and 1953 and are found throughout Moscow.

 We also saw the Olympic Stadium, and the Bolshoi and Maly Theaters.

Of course we had a shopping stop at the Izmailovo Flea Market. Where we were particularly impressed with the hustle of one young entrepreneur. 

A Great Salesman!

This young man, maybe 20 years old was operating a stall at the flea market. He had a great assortment of those little nesting dolls. In particular, he had various American football teams, both professional and college. Each was made to represent players of the teams, with their team colors and names on the jerseys, as well as appropriately decorated helmets. Not only did he have every team we could think of, but each team’s dolls also had the current players.

Several of Art’s children are Ohio State grads, so we eagerly asked if we could purchase two sets of the OSU football team nesting dolls. Unfortunately, he only had one set. But he asked us to wait just a few minutes and he would check his other store to see if he had any more there.

Off he ran, and sure enough, in a few minutes he returned with another set of OSU nesting dolls. He opened them up to show us they were the same players as the first set.

Red Square

Of course, no tour of Moscow would be complete without a visit to Red Square. We disembarked our motor coach and walked from one end of Red Square to the other. Here we saw St Basil’s Cathedral, Lenin’s Mausoleum and the GUM Department Store.

Both Art and I were struck by how small Red Square was. We remembered seeing the military parades on the news with tanks and thousands of troops marching through Red Square. Our impression was that Red Square was a massive place. In reality, it’s about the equivalent of a New York City block.

 I was excited to see the beautiful St Basil’s Cathedral, with its colorful onion domes. Unfortunately, our tour didn’t take us inside the cathedral, but the outside was certainly impressive.

GUM Department Store

Our tour ended in Red Square and since we had some time before our next tour started, Art and I went inside the GUM Department Store.

We were expecting a gray, dull, unadorned interior with generic shops. Instead, we entered a shopping mall, with every high-end store imaginable. Still decorated with colorful streamers and garland from the recent celebration of Orthodox Christmas; it was beautiful! That really blew our minds!

Stalin’s Bunker

That afternoon we participated in a tour of Stalin’s Bunker. I guess because of our military background, Art and I found Stalin’s bunker to be extraordinarily interesting. 

In the early 1930’s, an elaborate set of tunnels was built under Moscow. These tunnels were reported to have housed weapons and armaments in addition to acting as a way for the powers that be, to easily get around Moscow without exposure. The bunker was built as a part of that project.

Officially known as the Emergency Command Post of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the construction of the bunker was covert, built under the guise of a stadium. It was explained to us that in order to keep the construction of the bunker under wraps, all the workers who built the underground bunker were prisoners and, of course, were housed and otherwise kept separate from the workers building the stadium.

The tour takes about an hour and a half, and although you only see a small portion of the entire bunker. The largest room is a circular, ornately decorated, conference room with a domed ceiling.

Within the room is a large wood table with wood inlay. It is round, but without a center and there was also an opening. It was constructed such that it would allow someone to be in the center and walk from person to person seated at the table.

You will see Stalin’s desk, a uniform, and a display of some of the items that were used during the time.  Art was so excited to see the “logogrific” ruler, aka a slide rule!

There is a dining room located near the conference room where you can experience a typical Georgian meal, which was included with our tour. Stalin was from the country of Georgia, thus explaining the Georgian cuisine.

Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater

That night was our special treat. We were going to see a performance in the Bolshoi Theater, Madama Butterfly. Neither Art nor I are fans of opera, but we figured we could pretend to have a bit of culture, at least for a few hours.

The theater lobby was expansive and accommodating and we were able to check our coats at the large coat check.

Within the Bolshoi there are three performance stages, the Historic, the New and the Boris Pokrovsky Chamber.

A Major Restoration

Two years prior to our visit the Bolshoi began a major restoration of the Historic stage. The project, funded completely by the government, was finally completed in 2011 and the estimates of the cost are anywhere from 688 million to 1 billion USD. At any rate it is now restored to its original Imperial splendor and the photos look stunning.

Madama Butterfly

The opera was to be performed on the New Stage. Built in 2002, the seating area of the New stage is decorated tastefully, and subtly. There were numerous boxes in the upper levels as well as a large “royal” box at the back of the theater. There was a large crystal chandelier in the center of the ornately painted ceiling. 

On the stage was a sparse set. It turned out that we were to see a modern interpretation of Madama Butterfly, with traditional music, but nontraditional staging.

Shortly before the show was to begin, screens were lowered on either side of the stage. The lights went down, and we prepared to be transported to another world.

Except… we weren’t. The set we saw at the prior to the show starting was the entire set. Not knowing the story of Madama Butterfly, we were completely lost, and the set nor costumes provided us any clues as to what was going on.

The screens on either side of the stage were used to translate the opera from Italian to Russian. Oops, we don’t speak either language.

Long story short, we waited until intermission and decided to leave. We went to the coat room and asked the attendant to retrieve our coats. She was so nice and tried in her very broken English to make sure we understood it was just intermission and the opera wasn’t over.

I was certainly glad we went. It was still quite an experience and I can say I attended a performance at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater.

We walked out of the theater and decided to head on over to Red Square to take some night-time photos.

Snow Arrives!

The next morning, we awoke to snow!! We were amazed at how quickly they had the roads cleared.

The machinery they were using was fascinating. It reminded me of a big crab, reaching out with its claws and pushing the snow into its ‘mouth’ in the center.

The snow went up a conveyer belt and emptied into a big dump truck. As soon as the dump truck was full, it would pull away and another would take its place. It was quite the process.

There were people out shoveling the last of the snow off the sidewalks, using the most primitive snow shovels I have ever seen. It was different, but they did the job, and it was done quickly.

Kremlin Tour

Our group walked over to the Kremlin to begin our tour. We waited outside in line for what seemed like quite a while. We visited several locations within the Kremlin walls, our first stop being the Armory Museum with its collection of jewels, crowns and royal armor.

Also on display in the Armory are several Faberge Eggs, which are exquisite. The intricate details are so unexpected. There are multiple collections of the Imperial Faberge Eggs around the world, which occasionally go on exhibit. If you have the opportunity to see them, you won’t be disappointed.

After visiting the Armory Museum, we saw the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, a couple of cathedrals, and the 40-ton Tsar Cannon dating back to the 16^th century.

McDonald’s

Lunch was on our own that day; Art and I ventured into the local McDonald’s. There are some people in Russia who speak English quite well, but the average Russian does not; which was not unexpected. But we have found that usually when we go into a McDonald’s, for the most part, we know what they have and can order. They usually know the American names of the products. Not the case here.

As we entered McDonald’s, we found it packed with people. I went and waited for a seat to come open, while Art got in line to order the food. He finally got up to the counter to order, and no one behind the counter spoke any English, at all; they had no clue what Art was asking for.

A young man standing in line next to Art, did speak English and interpreted. The order came out was placed on the tray and Art started out to the seating area to find me. As he was walking out, someone bumped into him, and one of the soft drinks (fortunately with a lid) fell over on the tray. Another person who was walking past Art just reached over and set the cup upright and just kept walking.

Tour of Moscow’s Metro

That afternoon we took a tour of the Moscow Metro. I know you may be thinking, why would there be a tour of the Moscow Metro? It’s for the architecture and artwork. There are sculptures, frescoes, and mosaics that are so interesting. All housed within the subway stations.

A Few More Photos

That afternoon we had a little free time before our next hotel tour (after all, this was a working trip) we were able to get out and take some photos of Red Square with snow on the ground. We also had some time to visit Moscow’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and watch the changing of the guard. Many major cities have such tombs, and it is always interesting to watch the ceremony of the changing of the guard. Each country puts its own unique twist on the ceremony, and it is always a moving experience.

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

The last day of our stay in Moscow started with a visit to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the seat of the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia. The original church that stood on this site was built over a 44-year span beginning in 1839.

Stalin ordered the destruction of the original church in 1931. His plan was to use this property to build the tallest building in the world, The Palace of The Soviets, an administrative building of the Soviet government. On top was to be a 100-foot-tall statue of Lenin. Although construction began in 1937, his plans were thwarted by the German invasion in 1941.

The church that stands on the site today is a resurrection of the original church built after the fall of the Soviet Union. It is the largest Orthodox cathedral in Russia, and houses an upper and lower church, as well as a museum and meeting halls. This modern version of the original was constructed between 1995 and 2000 and offers a viewing platform with great views of the city of Moscow.

Novodevichy Convent and Cemetery

Our last stop in Moscow was the Novodevichy Convent and Cemetery. This complex was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. The convent, founded in the early 1500’s, was where the aristocrats of Moscow sent their wayward daughters, sisters and wives to keep them sequestered from the ‘real’ world. There are several unique churches built in different styles. There is also a small cemetery, the Necropolis of Novodevichy Convent which was the coveted burial spot of Russian Nobility.

In 1898 the Novodevichy Cemetery was established outside the wall the south wall of the convent. During the reign of the Soviet’s this became the most high-profile cemetery in the Soviet Union. Many actors, writers, scientists and other Soviet elite are buried here. I was surprised the size and whimsy of some of the monuments.

Overall Impression of Our Visit to Moscow

Moscow was a fascinating place to visit. I’ll admit, I had a few of my prejudices about the Russian people dispelled during this trip. Although the people of Moscow appeared somber, we found them to be kind and helpful. We were very pleased to learn that they did have a sense of humor, and they like a lot of the same things we Americans do.

Our trip to Moscow was memorable for many reasons, but mostly because it’s a place I never thought I would see.

How about you? Have your travels included a trip to Moscow? Did you see anything that surprised you?  I’d love to hear your thoughts or any tips tips you’d like to share. Don’t forget to sbuscribe and share this blog post with your friends!