Russia Part One: Moscow Does Not Disappoint – Even on the Fourth of July

JULY 9, 2019 BY ZEPHYR CARLYLE

Section One: Russia does not disappoint! We are all Comrades now, even on the Fourth of July.

Executive Summary: I am having a great time! This place is the bomb but without any incendiary devices: Just to clarify.

July, 2019 This photo above tries to convince you that travelogue author Zephyr Carlyle is on the Moscow River. Sure enough, on the left bank is the Kremlin and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. It all checks out. This photo is up-loaded, up-front right here to confirm that Zephyr is in fact, …. very good at photoshop. I (Zephyr) raise this point as some people still believe I am making up all these stories. On my last trip to South America, a friend wrote back suggesting I was hallucinating about my experiences. His claim was that I never left San Diego, but rather had a psychotic break, before I even got on the plane. My friend posited that I was quivering under the table at a Lindbergh Field bar while writing of confused travels through an unknown land. In reality, I was in Argentina writing about my total confusion and inability to deal with Buenos Aires. Oddly enough my friend’s claim had a certain appeal to me like “oh yeah, that might happen.” In that vein: is this travelogue a photoshop experience; or am I really in Moscow; or is reality somewhere in between? See my essay in this literary journal, “On the Nature of Delusion” for some amplification.

Here is my testimony: I, Zephyr Carlyle, had a twenty-four hour experience of planes and airports just to get to Russia. I left San Diego, CA on July 2; and a full day later, I landed in one of Moscow’s three main airports. There was my first clue about the size and scope of Russia: Moscow has three main, HUGE airports. Everything in Russia is expansive. — they do not believe in small, except for their jewel-encrusted, Faberge eggs. I landed in Moscow in the middle of the night at o’dark hundred on July 3rd. I checked into my hotel room. Once safe in my own room, I closed the curtains to protect against the coming dawn; hurled my body onto the bed. I moaned softly to myself: “Why did I think this was a good idea?”

What a difference a day makes! On the morning of July 4th, I reanimated brain and body tissue. I splashed some coffee on my face, took a shower, and prepared to stare down Moscow. I finally pulled back the curtains and saw from my room the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. My trip had now started.

Cathedral of Christ the Savior Built 1897. Destroyed by Stalin 1937. Rebuilt in the last 20 years. Full reconstruction not complete yet.

The static picture below of me in front of St. Basil Cathedral in Red Square is obligatory. Every visitor to Russia sends this photo. However, this photo does not convey the scope and scale of Red Square, built by Ivan the Terrible and completed in 1561

I am wearing a T shirt that has Putin saying all decisions are made in a snap. The word “snap” in Russian is the nickname for the MiG fighter jets. This shirt is an ambiguity. Is Putin making decisions at the snap of the fingers generally; or is he making snap decisions to use the MiG fighter jets? I got a lot of low-level attention in Russia wearing this shirt — everything from thumbs-up to laughs to puzzled looks.

The photo above shows off the St. Basil Cathedral nicely but does not do justice to Red Square. Below is a photo that gives you the true milieu of the hustle and bustle amidst the beauty of Red Square.

In fact, Red Square and the very accesible next-door neighbor, the Kremlin, is lousy with beautiful Cathedrals. Note: the Kremlin is a huge, walled multi-acre facilities crammed filled with Cathedrals, public museum, leafy gardens AND a heavily militarized compound defended by lots of ammo. The compound contains the the nerve center of Russia’s federal government – Putin’s command center and military H.Q, for example. Hard to believe but I toured the public areas in the Kremlin along with throngs of other visitors.Below are just some of the Red Square and Kremlin Cathedrals, but not all the other Kremlin public facilities – museums, stores, ice skating rink, etc. St Basil Cathedral in Red Square has lots of Cathedral neighbors just in Red Square and the Kremlin.

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We are leaving the Kremlin and now walking back to adjacent Red Square:

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Part One: An American in Moscow …. on the 4th of July.

I only had one goal for my first day in Moscow, July 4. — find out what Americans do in Moscow on the Fourth of July. That combines with my usual, daily goal of not getting arrested. I then had two goals. And of course, not to get robbed. So I really had three goals. Plus, if you add the goal of not….. Let’s just focus on the first goal: An American experience of the 4th in Moscow. To that end, I scoured the local papers, the internet, and importuned the hotel clerks and came up with …. nothing. No event at the American Embassy, no Ruso-American Friendship Society Annual Borscht BBQ, no American bar in Moscow — nothing! I then did the most Russian patriotic thing possible. I paid a visit to Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square. Then I found a IPA craft beer spot.

I toured Lenin’s tomb along with a throng of thousands, as there is always a HUGE line to visit Lenin. The mausoleum is only open three hours a day, five days a week, as excessive light and human breathing will somehow damage the pickled patriarch of Bolshevism. No photos allowed. My favorite part of the tour, after Lenin himself, is the serious metal detectors and TSA level security at the entrance. Apparently the big concern is guns. Pray tell, who is going to smuggle in a gun to shoot a man who has been dead for ninety five years?

Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square is in the background of the photograph below. At the top of the mausoleum is a roof ornament shaped like the Parthenon in Athens. The Kremlin wall is behind the mausoleum One of the Kremlin’s Cathedrals is visible on the left. Please expand this photograph to get the full sense of this mausoleum.

After suffering enough with Lenin, I did find a craft-beer surf bar in the upscale older Moscow neighborhood of Kitay-Gorod. The bar is called Jawsspot, which may be a reference in English to drinking or sharks. I have no idea and neither do the patrons. Jawsspot is on the sixth floor of a trendy shopping mall and overlooks the neighborhood. The bar is stocked with local IPA’s and other regional craft beers. The top-brand upscale beer is Siberian Corona and taste nothing like its Mexican counterpart. This one is good!

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The surf bar Jawsspot was pretty good, but it lacked one thing: surfboards. I did find a surfboard coffee shop the next day, fully kitted out with a surfboard. ّIn fact, Moscovites are enamored with surfing. When I told the locals I was from California, a common, excited response was either: “Do you surf?” or “California? I want to go to California and learn to surf”

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Surf Coffee next to a tobacco shop. Located in the trendy, leafy historic neighborhood of Arbat. My original hotel was at the entrance to Red Square and great for a couple days of early sightseeing. I moved to a less expensive hotel that was, by coincidence, around the corner from one of the best neighborhoods in Moscow for locals and tourists to visit: Old Arbat. I could not have planned this better and I was just winging it on my own. Below is Old Arbat and the great staff at my lodging, the Penta Hotel. The Penta Hotel is in the famous “book buildings” in New Arbat, on a busy main around the corner from Old Arbat, in a quiet, side-street neighborhood. These three huge modern buildings look like open books. At night, they are lit up like something out of “Blade Runner. Everything about the hotel is modern beauty in action, down to the hotel staff. Please expand the photographs to appreciate them better.

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Part II: Moscow Whimsy

Below are photos of the Moscow comical or queer. I include them just for grins. Please expand on the upper left photograph to get how better see this surreal little addition to the urban

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And of course the obligatory collision of American rampaging corporate hegemony meeting Russian corpulence:

2021 Postscript. Travelogue author Zephyr Carlyle has lost a LOT of weight since these photos were taken in July, 2019. Can this Moscow mule above say the same thing? We do not know.