Getting off at Kropotkinskaya Metro, me and Jamie inadvertently find ourselves visiting the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Stalin destroyed the original 19th century version in 1933 to build a massive Empire State-beating skybusting palace which was going to be topped with a hundred-metre statue of Lenin whose eyes would emit an evil bright red beam. It never happened – instead, they built a swimming pool. That was a bit crap, so in the mid-1990s, they rebuilt the old church, to exactly the same design.
"And what did you do in the mid-90s?"
"I built this, what did you do?"
"I built this, what did you do?"
"So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine"
Just across the river is the statue of Peter the Great. My potted Russian history tells me that PtG banned beards in Russian society (later imposing a beard tax), worked incognito in the dockyards of England and Holland to learn a few shipbuilding skills, and had a disproportionately small head. I think he was “great” thanks to the combination of progressive reforms and only torturing and massacring a small proportion of the population, unusual for Russian leaders, it seems. Anyway, here he is, on his boat:
Happy Peter
Then onto the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Private Collections. Both were amazingly empty – at one stage I found myself completely alone in a room of five Van Goghs and three Sisleys. They had three Henri Rousseaus too – I LOVE HIM - and this miniature by Rodin (Eternal Spring) which was so amazing I almost cried. Contents clearly not very Russian, but NONETHELESS TOTALLY SWEET.
***
In the evening, we have a late dinner at a Georgian restaurant which features the grumpiest waitress in the world. A few people are dancing too, with a certain degree of skilll. The waitress is annoyed by this, particularly after one couple nearly knock her over as she tries to show us to our table.
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