Photos - metro special

I've raved on about the wonders and terrors of the metro many a time, so I now bring you the metro photo gallery. Enjoy!

'Remont' - repair - your quintessential Russian sign. And yes, it's on an escalator.


The dog that lived at our local metro station - NOT one of the touristy ones!





Statue at Partisanskaya




View of the ceiling at Komsomol'skaya






Yet another ode to the wonders of the Soviet Union - also Komsomol'skaya (perehod) I think



Mural at Komsomol'skaya


A 'futuristic' station for a futurist poet - Mayakovskaya

Ceiling mosaic at Mayakovskaya (with the somewhat later addition of Patrick Star)

A potential gulag victim if ever I saw one - one of the statues at Ploshchad' Revolutsii

If fighting really isn't your bag, you can always dreamily contemplate some wheat

All good Soviet women know how to handle a weapon - one more reason not to piss off a babushka

The puppy whose nose you're meant to rub for good luck - obviously frequently practiced

Soviet men - guard your genitals with learning!

My personal favourite amongst the metro statues. In the perehod between Chekhovskaya and Tverskaya, so maybe it's Chekhov.

I believe Reagan claimed that there was no word for 'peace' in Russian. Not for the only time, he was wrong - and here it is, 'mir' (M-backwards N-P), better known as that space station thingy. Actually, it also means 'world'. And you thought you wouldn't learn anything here.

A Soviet writer/man of science (?) honoured in a window at Novoslobodskaya

One of the many beautiful stained glass 'windows' at Novoslobodskaya

Soviet 'realism' on the ceiling at Belorusskaya

Happy Soviet cows adorn the ceiling at Belorusskaya

Lenin looms in the darkness at Komsomol'skaya

One of the ceiling mosaics at Komsomol'skaya

For my money, the loveliest station of them all - Komsomol'skaya. It's a Sunday - usually wouldn't be this empty, I'm sure. Unfortunately not one that was one of my usual routes.

While I'm blast-from-the-past-ing, I should mention a couple of other things about Moscow I haven't managed to get in before.

Don't miss:

• Ever-present metal detectors. At the Kremlin - fine. At the movies - okay, maybe it's an anti-piracy measure (although, bizarrely, you have to put your bag on a table before you walk through the metal detector, and then they don't even look in it - huh?) But going into the food court of a shopping mall? That's just ridiculous!
• Ultra-thin walls. Wouldn't be so bad if my neighbours hadn't had an insane predilection for dance music. I can only tolerate dance music if I'm well and truly smashed, and unfortunately most of the time that doesn't include first thing in the morning. The thing is, I don't even think they played it particularly loud, it was just the extreme crappiness of Soviet construction.

Do miss:

• Snow! There was, in fact, a tiny amount of snow last week, but it's not the same if you can't crunch it underfoot. Although I did see a reading of -15 for Moscow in the paper this morning - that might be pushing it a bit!

Once again, there's bound to be other things I'm forgetting, I'll keep you updated.

I have added new photos to many posts below - of St Petersburg, New Years, Christmas etc. Go back into the archives for Dec & Jan & you'll find them.