Chapter 5 Moscow, Russia. September 2019

Before I get too far, I need to record that part of my last chapter on St Petersburg was cut off somewhere in the system. I have added back the picture links but I have refrained from trying to reproduce the missing text which talked about Catherine's palace and the Hermitage. Just for records.


We arrived by fast train from St Petersburg in 4 hours and were met on the platform by a burly, heavyset man who said his name was Michael. He took the smallest bag and left me to haul our 2 large suitcases from the train to the car.  He did not say a word all the way to the hotel where he dropped us. Probably ex-KGB.


We checked into the hotel and were met by 4 of my cousins who had invited us out to dinner.  3 of the cousins were Russians whom we recently discovered.  They were the grandchildren of a Great Uncle of mine (Alfred Keyserlingk) who had 2 daughters out of wedlock.

 2 years ago one of the daughters met in Moscow with my cousin Karl Eckstein, a Swiss lawyer who operates in Russia and Switzerland. She was in her 90's and still teaching as a professor of geography at the University of Moscow. DNA testing proved that there was a perfect match between Karl and this lady. Her family name is Glazovsky.


Alfred, brother of my grandfather, had spent his life working in Russia for the Tsar. We have to guess that one thing led to another...


 As I run the Keyserlingk website at

www.keyserlingk.info

we have included these new cousins with the agreement of the members of that branch of the family.

We walked from our hotel to a nice Ukrainian restaurant where we had a very pleasant meal getting to know our new cousins for the first time.

Monique and our Moscow guide in front of one of the Kremlin gates.

St. Basil's cathedral built to celebrate the victory of Russia over the Tartars of Kazan.

Inside the halls of GUM

One of the many sculptures in the Moscow metro.

In the Moscow metro.

Looking down into Moscow from University level.

Cousin Karl Eckstein explains a Moscow fact, or story...

The next morning we met up with our new guide, Ivan to take a walking tour of the Kremlin, Red Square and of the Moscow Metro. Moscow downtown is like Washington DC in that it is the center of government and a show city rather than an economic city. Despite that, a very large percentage of the Russian GDP originates here.  By the way, it should be noted that the GDP of Russia was about US1.5 trillion which is less than that of Canada, Italy, and Brazil. Considering that it has 3 times the population, it really is not a powerhouse economy, particularly considering that 60% of the GDP is based on oil and gas.  This reliance on oil and gas has resulted in Russia being very reliant on food imports rather than having developed its own food production.

Pictures of ur Moscow stay can be seen at:


https://photos.app.goo.gl/TUnPZE2ZjbDjzjfm9

One picture shows my wife Monique sitting on the train leaving St Petersburg which is the beginning of our trip across Russia.

The Square is well known from pictures but is actually larger than I had imagined. We were lucky and had nice weather to walk around the Kremlin which was and, to some extent, still is the center of power of Russia as the current president has one of his offices there.   St Basil church, which is the one with the colorful domes, actually has 2 levels. There is a staircase inside the church with huge steps that allows one to get a wonderful view around the Church. Only for the hardy.

After a nice lunch in a restaurant in the space occupied until a few years ago by an ugly hotel with 3000 rooms designed in Stalin times, we went down the metro and stopped at several different stations to admire the decorations. Impressive.

The next day our cousin Karl Eckstein from Switzerland took us through red square again down to the river where we took a little ship down the river to a place where there is a new gondola up the mountain looking down on Moscow.  During our walk, Karl told us stories about Moscow as he has been working on and off in Moscow since 1980 and has witnessed the major changes.

He told the story of the huge underground shopping center in front of the 4 seasons hotel and about the hotel itself.

Shortly after the fall of communism, many old communist party members were upset with the changes and wanted to protest using the square in front of where the 4 seasons hotel now stands. The authorities did not want the protest to go ahead so they had a 30-meter deep trench dug. Later, the trench was used to house a huge 3 story underground mall. The mall still operates today.

The 4 seasons hotel was built in the place of a Stalin approved hotel facing this square. It is an ugly Soviet-style building but looking closely one sees that the 2 sides of the building are different.   The story has it that Stalin signed off on two different facades so his bureaucrats let the building reflect the different papers Stalin signed.

We then went to the Cemetary where the opera singer Dimitry Khorostovsky is buried. Monique loves the singing of Dimitry and wanted to visit his grave. Although he died in 2017, the promised grave monument has still not been built but is expected to be in place by November 2019. It was put in place on October 16th, as shown below:

That evening we boarded our train to Kazan and had our first overnight on rails. The 12-hour trip had us rattling and rocking over very uneven tracks. It will take us a while to learn to sleep through that rough ride. It reminded me of Amtrak rides. This is not like high-speed trains in China which are as smooth as silk...