SPECIAL PROJECT A story of a young Moscovite who exchanged a weekend in Paris for Sanduny baths and a tram route

Moscow City’s Viewing Platform

Because of the Moscow City skyscrapers, the night city looks like Ridley Scott’s dystopia. I knew that the “Oko” tower (reminding of the tower that sucks hobbits in) has a viewing platform but have never visited it. However, today we — a group of Chinese tourists and I — are skyrocketing up to the 84th floor while trying to protect our ears from the pressure change. I go out under the spring Moscovite sun that shines even brighter here at 354 meters high. At once I want to compare the view to other vantage points I’ve visited: Eiffel tower and Burj Khalifa. While in Paris you look at a harmonious and pedantic city and in Dubai at piles of metal structures, here in Moscow you see everything: Stalin’s skyscrapers, Khrushchev's panel buildings, factories, smoke, soccer fields. It’s a meditation, actually, you can stay there and look at it forever.

Gorky’s Apartment

It’s one of those rare mansions in Arbat neighborhood that wasn’t taken by some state agency or a small African country’s embassy. What strikes me most, though, is that duality that I see in most of the places of my pseudo-tourist route, this absurd mix of something old and a new power that tried to destroy it. Imagine this: a Modernist building with a spiral staircase, stained-glass windows, and an Old Belief church; and under those ceiling sits a proletarian writer who cringes, suffers from inner class struggle but still works on The Life of Klim Samgin. My inner discord is amplified by somber museum attendants, obviously women of hard luck: they won’t let me to the first floor and won’t allow taking pictures. Maybe that’s for the best, and at least this once I switch off my clip perception and enjoy what I see.

The Sanduny Bath House

The first visit to the Russian bath is probably similar only to the baptizing: such things stay with you forever, and after them, a lot of things are not scary anymore. At least things about yourself. I’ve been to the Russian baths many times but still feel nervous about it: how to act, what fancy towel to take from home, who will be hitting me with a sauna switch and, more importantly, why. When you enter the ladies’ classes (department) the first thing you see is Soviet-style plaques saying “Take off your galoshes” and “Cash desk”. Obeying, I pass a plaster Venus statue, change and enter the first class (the less fancy one). The first things I sense are the imperial spirit, oak scent, and loneliness; apparently, people also go to the baths to talk to each other: there are women sitting in small groups and playing dominoes. I enter the steam room with a new sauna switch. Don’t think I have to describe the process; it’ll suffice to say that I returned home a new person, the one who went for a museum tour and had a bath at the same time.

“Pushkin”

Everybody has their own set of stereotypes about “Pushkin” restaurant: too expensive, the waiters see right away that you can’t afford to order this complicated grilled meat with brut in the frozen glasses and being snobbish to you and your mass market turtleneck, and so on. All these are, of course, urban myths. That’s why, following the idea that showing off is more valuable than money, I go to the “Pushkin” restaurant on an opera night. Right at the entrance, you feel like the main character of the Ivan Bunin’s Clean Monday, the one who doesn’t want to accept the revolution and, in her grief for Tsarist Russia, eats pancakes with caviar while drinking champagne. Besides, the waiters call you ‘madam’ so naturally as if they were speaking this way after work as well. I order a salad and a borsch with smoked goose. After the meal, I realize I was wrong neglecting Russian and Ukrainian cuisine. Also, now I’m not surprised there are more locals than tourists here: we all miss Russia.

Opera

Honestly, I’ve always thought it’s difficult to love the opera and even more difficult to understand the plot, especially when you are not an expert in musical theater’s nuances. That’s why I chose the one that I know and love: The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky. I expected to see camp, glamour, and drag, from women with elbow-long earrings in the foyer to the singers. For better or for worse, these expectations weren’t met. Instead, I was offered a modern version of the classical 1930 production that takes place in the First World War years rather than Pushkin's Petersburg. At the same time, the production is as full of decadent hints to modern Russia as an indie-theater one would be. I hit a metaphorical Like button and ask myself why didn’t I go to the opera sooner.

Botanical Garden

My target is the Fund Greenhouse with its collection of tropical and subtropical plants. This is a part of my staycation idea since I’m not going for a vacation to Bali or at least Sochi. I pass two huge greenhouses cram-full with plants like a parsley package and approach an old mansion with a proletarian-style lettering saying “Fund Greenhouse” at the entrance. The time here stopped about 50 years ago: the deteriorating pictures of the rare plants on the walls, the old signs and an atmosphere of professor Preobrazhensky’s study have a time-machine effect. It’s sultry inside, just like in Thailand, and the exuberant gorgeous green distracts from the thoughts of the upcoming closeness. I spend 40 minutes there, thinking of how wonderful it is to visit a place where orchids are blooming without even crossing the Moscow Ring Road.

Tram Route 39

Tram route number 39 is one of the longest: 17 kilometers. Moreover, each and every one of these kilometers between the Chistye Prudy and the Universitet subway stations is like a tour around the historical center showing Moscow’s history in all its diversity. I choose a weekend day for the trip. After exiting the subway at the Chistye Prudy station, I wait for the tram near the Griboyedov’s statue. There it is at last. I go in and take my favorite seat at the back. During this long, more than an hour, trip I see everything: Stalin’s skyscrapers, Zamoskvorechye, Danilov convent — and instantly feel and let inside me Esenin’s ‘golden dormant Asia’, Moscow that ‘doesn’t believe tears’, and all the other cliches. Maybe because of the typical view from the window, maybe because I see everything at once, but I get a feeling that I’m in a tourist bus on a tour around the city, only a much hearty one, without the cold voice of a guide.