in search of the arts (part 1): saturday, the metro and the arbat

On Saturday, we decided that the time had come to start exploring Moscow properly, especially while the weather was still friendly. Yeah that's right Moscow. I know what you're about. Yes, the sun is shining and the sky is blue. Yes, I have been uncomfortably hot in my coat every day since I arrived here, no-one else is even wearing a jacket, and carrying an umbrella around in my handbag has so far been entirely pointless. But I refuse to be fooled. The blizzards are coming. THE BLIZZARDS I TELL YOU.

The guide book told us of a magical place near the river: 'the Arbat'. Popular with tourists, it boasted market stalls! Street artists! Crafts! Cafes! Interesting little shops with Things in! A place for the arts, it promised, and as it happened Philip and I were feeling quite self-important, so, after about four hours of studying the Metro map and some google maps online, we were off. Sort of. The only street map we own is so enormous that it takes two people to fold it out and hold it up (and preferably a third person to actually examine it), which means that every time we go anywhere we have to put on a humiliating street performance of unfolding, refolding, rotating and accidentally tearing. We're feckless tourists, in other words.

Luckily, people are kind here. An old Russian man with mostly gold teeth and no English language skills shuffled up to us and offered help by pointing in various directions and looking very earnest. I think he was trying to help anyway. Either that or he was trying to distract us by pointing at random in the most half-arsed mugging attempt ever. But either way, friendly.

Oh my god, though. The Moscow Metro (pronounced myet-RO) is absolutely incredible. Metro stations here are all about palatial high ceilings, mosaics, chandeliers, trains arriving on time, Muscovites looking smug. It's so reliable that the Russian police travel around on it and reformate into army lines on the platforms, and so classy that you can hire out whole stations for corporate functions and wedding receptions*. It puts the dingy, shambling, broken old London tube to shame.

The Arbat, on the other hand, was horrendous. So much for the arts: just shop after shop of lurid arcades, cheap souvenirs, hundreds and hundreds of painted Russian dolls with wide eyelashioed - I know this isn't a word - eyes in ever-diminishing sizes, Soviet-style military hats for all our Communist role-playing needs, hideous puppets in traditional Russian dress hanging limply from walls, rows of small dead weasels and foxes marketed as fur scarves, and 'antique'.. crap. 'Street artists' turned out to be the shifty-looking people standing next to stalls displaying weird pictures of boggle-eyed animals or washed-out celebrity portrait sketches. It was like Blackpool had decided to throw a Soviet-themed party and no-one had turned up.

Bewildered and faintly disgusted, we saw a MOO-MOO cafe replete with cowprint sofas, cows all over the walls and even a big toy cow looming over the dining area. In we went. A world-famous milkshake, please, to lift our spirits! Philip said. Milk-what? they replied, looking utterly baffled, and thrust a bottle of very dark Czech beer at him. He accepted it as a plausible alternative, drank the first half and then just stared at the second half. We went home.

And that. Was the Arbat.

That evening, we watched 'A Single Man' while making raspberry jelly and drinking port. Not sure why I have either of these things in my flat (as opposed to basic necessities like bread and clean water) but whatever.

*not true