I can't get a feeling about Moscow. Big, overcast, cold but not a clean bracing crystalline cold. The concrete sidewalks seem extra hard & punishing on the feet; the air makes skin dry, with a thirst that moisturizers don't solve.
Religion & war are always a dynamic duo
Everyone rushing, rushing, rushing. The subway, which is extensive & highly efficient, has long LONG vertiginous escalators filled with people dressed in black streaming past, looking very homogenous, with no break or end. It reminded me a little of the great silent futuristic movie "Metropolis," by Fritz Lang.
Walking around town, I have the sense of going in circles. Certain places I would find interesting, though right there on maps & websites, no longer exist, which I discovered only after much seeking & wandering & not finding -- the Gulag Museum, the Museum of Communism. Apparently Putin had them shut down. As the doorman of an upscale hotel told me about the Gulag Museum (with a slicing motion across his throat), "Kaput."
The Kremlin, with its many churches & treasures...they feel empty somehow.
There's a lot of posh in Moscow, both in its history & present. The monarchs of the past were quite ostentatious & flamboyant in their lives, their accoutrements & monuments.
In more modern times, Russian art encompassed many of the movements going on elsewhere -- cubism, expressionism, abstraction, free use of color.
Then, a shocking change in Soviet times -- stark, no-frills, all in support of the forming of a new society. Olga, my dear Moscow guide, said that these works were not created as social or political critiques....they believed & supported the totality of communism, which artistically meant dictated subject matter, glorification of collective labor & athletic achievement.
Olga, excellent Moscow guide & all-around angelic person (wearing one of my Underground Beads necklaces)
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