Moscow is an incredibly green city. It has 120 parks in total – 120!!! – and the whole 20% of the Central district is taken up by park spaces. A week doesn’t pass without me taking a walk in a park, no matter the time of year. With so many to choose from, there is…
March 8th is the International Women’s Day. In Russia it is also an unofficial start of Spring. The reason for this association is probably the custom of giving flowers to all the women in one’s life – family, romantic, platonic, professional. The resulting abundance of blooms everywhere screams “Spring Is in the Air!” In reality,…
I feel like this winter went by so fast – especially with me spending most of its advent abroad – that I already miss its crisp, snowy days. One such day I took a fantastic 9-kilometer (5.5 mile) walk across the Moscow Center. This is Part 1, basking in the glow of a winter sunset:…
Oh, were you expecting some words? Ok then. This is the ice sculpture garden that went up over winter holidays in Moscow’s Hermitage Garden, which is literally across the street from my apartment. I didn’t even know it was there until I showed up to take some MORE pictures of Moscow’s snow-covered parks (this winter…
VDNKh is one of those Moscow places I do not particularly enjoy yet keep going back to over and over for various half-baked reasons. What is VDNKh? Good question. Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva, (Exhibition of Achievements of the People’s Economy) is Moscow’s enormous exhibition complex and is one of those grand Soviet relics that seems more like…
The magic is still going strong, and is best appreciated after dark.
“Denis Ovechkin, please return to the spot where you forgot your granny!” This quaint call booms over a massive, boat-and-duck-peppered reservoir. The female announcer’s voice is strangely soft and personal, nothing at all like the detached manner in which a shop’s manager might ask “the owner of a red Toyota Corolla to come to the…
Parks, forests and other green spaces take up more than one third of Moscow’s territory. So it is to be expected that, to the delight of everyone but the most severe allergy sufferers, May in Moscow is all about tulip beds and dandelion meadows, fragrant lilac bushes and blossoming chestnut trees.
Moscow is one of those truly dynamic, diverse, cosmopolitan cities where the options of how to spend your time are virtually endless. The city is world-renown for its classical theater and especially ballet, but there are also countless museums and galleries for art connoisseurs, sprawling parks for nature lovers, concerts big and small, dancing, bowling,…
Lack of a personal palace is one of my life’s greatest deficiencies. So thank goodness there are plenty of gorgeous 18th and 19th century grand estates in Moscow and its close surroundings to chose from should I find myself in possession of a couple of spare billions or an oil field in my backyard. The…
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