My original plan today was to explore Red Square and The Kremlin, However that changed and I will do that tomorrow now.
This morning at breakfast, when I learnt that what I thought was milk, was in fact a Russian form of sour yoghurt as it splodged on to my Corn flakes, Dr. tom said he was visiting a couple of Modern and Contemporary art galleries today. I decided to go along too.
The Garage Gallery located in Gorky Park (see rare photo me above in Gorky Park) had an amazing display by a Japanese artist called Yayoi Kusama. She really likes spots. Here she had two interesting installations – The Dots Obsession and The Infinity Room which were both surreal, however for me the The Infinity Room really lived up to its name. The room felt huge when inside for 45 seconds.
We then went to the New Tretyakov Gallery which had many Russian art pieces, one shown above (click image above to see the image gallery) of the cosmonauts which to me looks like a bad piece of photoshopping with light sources from lots of different angles. The guy on the far left of the painting looks like he has been added in at a later date. Also you may like the USA vs Soviet Comic Propoganda image, if so you can read it here.
Then while wandering back to the hostel we stopped at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour which interestingly I found out was demolished by Stalin in the 1930’s
The current church is the second to stand on this site. The original church, built during the 19th century, took more than 40 years to build. It was destroyed in 1931 during the Communist rule of Joseph Stalin. The demolition was supposed to make way for a colossal Palace of the Soviets that was never built, so the church was reconstructed in the 1990s on the same site.
Source – Wikipedia
Arriving back at the hostel we had a new person in the 8 berth room. An Irish guy called Morris who has been travelling the world on his motorbike for the last two years. He plans to visit red square tomorrow too, so we are going to leave in the morning to start our exploration.
