Red Square, GUM, Tretyakovskaya...

As we were getting to Red Square yesterday, Dima pointed to a golden circle in the ground and told me this was the place the city was laid out from. I know there is an English word for this, but for the life of me I can’t remember it. Anyway, you stand in the middle of it, and toss a coin over your left shoulder and make a wish, then the beggars come and pick up the loose change. I said something about not being able to think up a good wish, and Dima said, “It’s not going to come true anyway—it’s not like it works.” Healthy dose of realism? Lol

We walked across the square, passed Lenin’s Tomb—we’d both been inside before, so decided to pass. He then pointed out a structure at the far end of the square, across from the Kremlin and told me, “That’s where they would cut off people’s heads. Chop off their heads. What do you call that?” “Beheadings.”

Just passed that is St. Basil’s cathedral that I know you have all seen pictures of. We asked a girl nearby to take our picture in front of a statue that we were both sure had some kind of significance, but neither of us quite knew about what…I’m gonna have to brush up on this before my mom comes in to town! We decided we would be cheap tourists, and decided to skip the tour of the cathedral.

We took off for the GUM, which Dima said stood for the State Universal Store. I was like, “Oh, I was just reading about this in my book (Resurrection)! This was where all of the really rich (usually corrupt) people shopped in the ‘90s—I didn’t know that’s what it stood for!” “I just made that up—but it sounds like it works, doesn’t it?” He told me a joke about the GUM—a man went to a nice store inside the GUM to buy a tie. He couldn’t find a price tag, so he went up to the clerk to ask how much it was. The clerk told him it was written there on a piece of paper on the tie. Oh, the man replied, I thought that was a phone number of some kind. Obviously neither of us ended up buying anything there. It was fun to walk around the different levels, though. It’s gorgeous!

We decided to go to the Tretyakovskaya gallery next where they have famous art. Dima and I had joked at every place that we could have taken a tour that they would say, “It’s 200 rubles, 500 for the American.” Well, here there really was a sign saying 150 rubles for adults, 250 for foreigners. We laughed, and ended up getting in at the student price of 70 rubles. A steal if you ask me!

There was a cute group of school children on a field trip with their teacher. They were discussing a painting of Christ, and Dima and I looked at each other with big eyes—“Is she a member or something,” he asked. “It sounds like the first lesson,” I replied. Crazy to think that this would have been unheard of 20 years ago in Russia, but today school children can openly talk about religion.

After the gallery, we went to McDonald’s (which is better somehow in Russia J). We then tried to go to Angels and Demons (“Are you prepared to watch a whole movie in Russian?” Dima asked), but it was sold out, and the French film started too late. On our way there, we ran into Vasya from Saratov. By this point, I had grown tired of my high heels and was walking barefoot around the city (which is completely absurd to Russians…and maybe everyone else, too, but I just couldn’t take it anymore). I was definitely getting some weird looks, and Vasya (all bundled up—it was a cold day), said it was cold just looking at me (When he called me later that night, he asked if my feet were still frozen haha)!
After the movie was sold out, Dima and I tried to walk to the next movie theater. We were both pretty tired from walking around the city at this point, and decided we would buy his train ticket back to Saratov and call it a night.