{"id":291,"date":"2016-10-21T18:03:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T18:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bravenewclassics.info\/?p=291"},"modified":"2016-10-22T11:48:58","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T11:48:58","slug":"and-my-story-begins-in-russia-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bravenewclassics.info\/index.php\/2016\/10\/21\/and-my-story-begins-in-russia-2\/","title":{"rendered":"and my story begins in Russia… #2"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the \u2018Red Arrow\u2019 — a famous Soviet-period overnight train between St Petersburg and Moscow — I shared a cabin with a kindly man named\u00a0Igor. His English vocabulary extended to the words \u2018dog\u2019 and \u2018bed\u2019, which got\u00a0us only so far. The crowning moment of our communication came when he showed me a photo on his phone of an ‘Angliski dog’, which appeared to be some kind of\u00a0spaniel. \"1990201\"<\/a>Since he had little patience for my schoolboy Russian we spent a quiet time together. Igor\u00a0turned out, however, to be an expert in erecting the stowed-away bunks we were to sleep on, and no less\u00a0adept at hanging trousers on the special trouser\u00a0hangers. As kilometers of Russian forest sped\u00a0across\u00a0the dark window between\u00a0our bunks, Igor and I were lulled asleep by\u00a0the gentle chuckle of the rails and dreamt of what might lie in store for us in the capital.<\/p>\n

When we pulled into Moscow we\u00a0smoked on the platform then went our separate ways. I don’t know where Igor was heading, but I took the metro North to Tsvetnoy Bulvar and eventually hauled my heavy bag to\u00a0the Airbnb room I\u2019d booked for\u00a0the week.<\/p>\n

\"unspecified-3\"Three days I spent in the slightly intimidating and enormously\u00a0confusing Biblioteka Lenina, or Russian State Library<\/a>. On my first visit\u00a0I signed up to become a reader, acclimatised myself to the no-frills canteen in the basement, and scoured the electronic catalogue for early Soviet translations of the classics. The following two days I consulted those books in various rooms, becoming increasingly familiar with and increasingly fond of this strange public\u00a0library, with its\u00a0gloomy canteen and the Soviet time-warp that is its\u00a0special collections wing.<\/p>\n

One afternoon, as a break from the library, I took a long walk around the All-Russian Exhibition Centre. It’s basically an enormous park with fountains, museums, pavilions, massive\u00a0bronze statues, a fairground, candy-floss, and\u00a0a hammer and sickle\u00a0proudly\u00a0emblazoned on every surface.\u00a0But, for me, it\u00a0was\u00a0the music (and the gold) that really set it apart. There are lampposts with blaring speakers all over the place, pumping out stirring patriotic music mixed with lesser-known-but-still-somehow-familiar power ballads of yesteryear… I took a few photos and a little audio:<\/p>\n