The Victory Day Parade outskirts. The city center is empty. Nobody and nothing is allowed inside. Usually this is a crazy and busy street.
Quite a crowd. The house which looks painted is a special net to cover the reconstruction works. Usually it repeats the original building design.
The “orange color” represents cleaning people. After enjoying the parade among the crowd they started to clean the streets which were not that bad. Nowadays, that is the job for those who came from “our” Mid-East, which is southern former soviet republics (like Uzbekistan). Just for the record, as far as I understand, Tajikistan provides labor for construction sites, Kirgizstan – for other low-qualified jobs such as carrying things when moving. Being the capital Moscow always was quite international. Now it is becoming more brown-eyed, black-haired and Turkic-languages-spoken (nothing to do with Slavic. If being an English speaker you are interested, then it is the same as French and Arabic, for example).
Others and me on the fence. Better view obviously.
Helicopters to start with
Military cars and tanks near the Kremlin wall – after exiting the Red Square and finishing parading. Looks a bit surreal – peacefully moving in the town, and no other cars.
The final salute
Continuing holiday walks.
The pedestrian bridge with metal trees. People put locks there to celebrate weddings (hum...). Nice tradition, but sometimes a bit aggressive, when promoting “love for always”, “love forever” – when it is written together with certain (wedding) dates it looks a bit too pre-determined to me. And like nothing can be changed after, which is a bit sad to some extent. What about surprises which might happen? (*promising not to start reflecting about modern love and relationship). The most heavy trees were transported to the quay this year, and a couple of new ones appeared. Temporarily decorated with flags.
The cleaning technique already working. The picture is also about fancy fountains.
The Red Square
The shopping center full of boutiques inside. The first mall perhaps – it was built in the end of the 19th century. Decorated for the Victory day.
This year the Eurovision song contest takes place in Moscow. The town is decorated with banners, there are Euro-café and Euro-buses. The Euro-House is organized in the large exhibition hall near the Kremlin wall – so called Manege. Being a French enthusiast I am excited to report that last Sunday, while having a lovely sunny promenade with Slava, we met Patricia Kaas on the street who was going to rehearsal in the Olympysky hall. For those unlucky who is not informed, she is one of those several (very few) French personalities well-known in Russia. And more important, she was the first person from whom I started to be interested in French (modern and not) culture. We made a small but nice chat with her and wished her "bon courage". The final competition will be tonight by the way.
The rest of the holidays was also quite a fun. I had an acquaintant of mine from Novosibirsk visiting Moscow (one day between the plane to south). We met in the musical theatre (she wanted to see "Maugli"), and we both really enjoyed this modern musical with several crazy in a nice way twists (I totally fell in love with Baloo the Bear as a rap singer) . More interestingly, unexpectedly we met other girls we know in the theatre, and had a great walk afterwards. Sunny weather, crazy laughs, funny memories.
Then the working week started which partially decreased all fun mentioned above, but which was not too bad. I managed to get my new Shengen visa (always handy to have), so quite pleased about that. My landladies are going out of the town for three summer months, which is a good news and a source for some plans. Yesterday I also had a meeting with the editor of Russian online magazine writing about French cinema, so start collaborating there (as a volunteer and will see later).
There is also a film festival in Moscow now, called ExpoCinema - to celebrate 100 years of Russian-French relations in cinema business. Good old classics and a few modern films. On that cheerful note I will stop today. Have fun and take care.
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