Moskova

Last week (16-23 December 2007) I was in Moscow. I went there to attend a conference in the Independent University of Moscow.

Let me begin form beginning. When I wrote to organizers that I am interested in attending the conference little I know that it's going to be a bit of circus. From day one I got emails saying that they are not going to be able to arrange academic VISA and we will have to travel with Tourist VISA. There is nothing strange in it as it happens quite often for many other countries when you are traveling for short period. But the strange phenomena was that we had to get invitation letter form a travel agency and an approval form a hotel about our whole "tour". I mean we were told that we should never mention that we are going for academic purpose. Well, later I came to know that for the organizers this whole thing was big headache and now I sympathize with them.

At the end I had not too much of difficulty in getting VISA once all the papers were in order. The consulate wanted me to produce the original of the "tourist voucher" which, of course, took some time to arrive form Moscow.

Finally I set off on 16th morning by Aeroflot to Moscow. It took about 6 hours form Delhi to reach Moscow. Since the time difference is just 2 and half an hour I did not feel much of jet-lag. In fact I felt uneasiness because I had to be awake throughout last night as the flight was early morning at 5 am. We finally descended on Moscow airport and I found that somebody is waiting for me at the airport to receive me. I thanked them as I did not know a single word of Russian and would have been an impossible task me to wander around myself on the day one.



All the time weather was gloomy with little sunshine in Moscow and temperature was something between -2 to 2, very unusual for people in Moscow. The locals were complaining a lot since its Christmas time and usually they have temperature between -10 to -6. They have sports based on snow like ice skating etc and now they don't know what to do in the vacation. You see, the effect of global warming could change the culture for ever.

The most thrilling part of my visit to Moscow, apart form the conference, was face to face with Lenin. The man who revolutionize the way we think or the way we live, he who changed the history, for better or for worse. Body of Lenin is still kept in a small building (for nearly 70 years now) near Red Square which anyone can visit. We had to bribe the policemen for it as we were late and there was a big queue. It's open for public in the morning 10 to 1 and we reached there about 12:30. We could jump ahead of the queue for 100 rubles each. I must say that the body is kept in very well condition. You could see the face of the man, that beard and his forehead and nod approvingly for the flash of history.



The Red Square and Kremlin are the central part of Moscow. One can roam around that place and spend a lot of money. I mean going to visit any museum or Kremlin costs 300 rubles (roughly 6 euros) each time for each person. I guess it's quite costly.
What strikes one in Moscow is it's big wide roads and identical buildings. Somebody said that the wide roads were made to stop people form protesting as it's difficult for public to close the road and easier for the authorities to reach there. No wonder it was a Soviet way...There's a newly built church near Kaptorinsky square. It's beautiful and huge with a dome of 50 kg gold. In the 18th century they had a church on the same place but soviets destroyed it and made a swimming pool on it. After soviet fell in 90's they rebuild the church again. The whole center area of Moscow is full of 18th and 19th century houses and at every step you witness history.

Moscow is really a beautiful and organized city. Whatever you say, there was something good about communists. You wonder whether it would have been possible to have wide roads, less pollution, the huge architectural buildings of Moscow State University (and similar ones total 8 of them), well organized Metro etc. How many cities are there in this world which are so well organized. I wonder....


Now it's time to tell few bad incidents which happened with people around me.

1. One of the Professor form US was roaming around in the Red Square area on one of the evenings. Suddenly a policeman came and asked for the Passport. This gentleman wasn't carrying Passport. So he offered the policeman to come with him to his hotel which was at 15 minutes walking distance. But the policeman refused and told him that he will have to go to the police station for inquiry. On insistence the policeman offered another way out "3000 rubles neither you report nor me". After a bit of bargaining they settled for 2000 rubles.

2. Me and one of my friends were walking around in Arbat Street. We ran out of the local cash so we wanted to get exchanged our euros/dollars. There are a lot of exchange places on that street. By this time we were confident and comfortable in Moscow. We go to one of the places and gave our currencies for the change. The Lady on the counter got the change and counted in front of us. We happily pocketed the change and left. After a couple of hours, when we went for dinner we realized that we were running out of cash. We started counting and found out that both of us were tricked and were given 1000 rubles less, each of us. Well, what can we do.....

3. This was an incident of pick pocket in the Metro. One of the gentleman attending the conference had pick pocket in Metro and lost quite a bit of money and passport.



Well! apart form these few incidents we did not face any problem. In fact, we found that most of the people were quite helpful. Finally I got back to India after a week with mostly pleasant memories.