russia

Soviet KGB Headquarters - Moscow

Our second day in Moscow begins with a walking tour of the Kitay Gorod district, in the very center of Moscow. The small narrow streets are lined with artisans selling everything from paintings to clothing.  Anna explains this district has historically been the home of "free thinkers" and "artsy" people.  Along the main boulevard we found the Moscow Hard Rock Café where they have the typical selection of logo wear and American food.  Leaving Kitay Gorod, we began exploring the Moscow subway system, known as the Metro.  This system is amazing, made up of over 170 stations, buried as deep as 300 feet under the city; it transports over 9 million passengers per day! 

Returning to the Red Square area by metro, we walked to the Soviet Gulag Museum located behind the Bolshoi theatre.  This haunting museum chronicles the cruelty of the Soviet regime from 1917-1956.  Concentration camps were used to split up families, provide industrial labor and expand the nation through forced relocation plans.  Scientists, architects, painters and many other "free-thinkers" were taken to the concentration camps to be killed, eliminating their ideas and influence from society. 

After this we moved on to a lighter experience, Vodka tasting at a local restaurant.  Here we sampled several vodkas and had a great lunch meal.  Returning to the metro, we convinced Anna we could make our way back to the hotel.  Even after several "practice runs", the metro system is confusing at best.  The basic problem is that all of the maps that were available at the hotel and other tourist locations had been translated into English.  However, most of the signage in the metro is not translated, so we found it very difficult, if not impossible to translate from the English to the Russian names.  We had the same problem with street maps, since none of the street signs are translated.  Headed out to dinner that evening, the trip through 3 metro stations, with one transfer and a walk of a few blocks took us over an hour to negotiate.