Being the fifth part of The Moscow Chronicles! Follow the links for Part 1 - Moscow Calling, Part 2 - Taksi! Part 3 - Night in the City and Part 4 - The Road to Red Square
Having singularly failed to get
into Red Square and see the Kremlin, and having been frightened out of my skin
by a young couple who just wanted me to take their picture, I decided it was
time to head back to the relative safety of my hotel. To add a little variety to the journey (and
hopefully find more reliable footpaths) I decided to head down the other side
of the Moskva river and then cross the bridge before my hotel (see map below).
Tourist Map of Moscow - my hotel is circled in the bottom right corner
My journey back was relatively
uneventful until I came to the bridge I had intended to cross to get back to
the side on which my hotel stood. I
climbed up the steps and was more than a little surprised to find that the
bridge was under repair and had no roadway at all, just the girders of the
bridge itself. If there were any signs
warning about this, I didn’t see them.
It was apparent that this wasn’t a big concern to the Muscovites as one
or two of them were picking their way across the bridge along the girders. For a mad few moments I considered this
option. I was getting tired and this
bridge was my last opportunity to cross before I reached my hotel, the next
bridge would require me to walk past my hotel to get to it. Then, I looked down into the blackness of the
river far below and considered just how likely it would be that anyone would
notice, or for that matter, care, if I fell to my doom? I decided that discretion was the better part
of valour and headed back down the steps.
By and large I decided I had more
than had my fill of hiking along the river and would be glad to get back to my
room. My route took me past a small park
with a lake (see map) and I thought it might be nice to sit for a while in the
sunshine and contemplate the water. I
found a nice spot and rested my weary feet.
Despite the -5C temperature, there were quite a few people in the park,
particularly mothers with children feeding the ducks (which goes to show that
things are the same the whole world over).
I particularly noticed a scruffy bloke standing a few yards away from me
in the trees. He was standing with his
dog (equally scruffy) which he had on a length of rope. He was staring intently at the water and kept
rubbing his unshaven chin, as if deep in thought. I was a bit worried about what he might be
contemplating and whether it would involve something deeply unsavoury happening
to the dog (look, I’m British, we have our priorities, ok?)
Quite a few minutes elapsed with
the scruffy man staring at the water, rubbing his chin, looking down at the dog
and so on. I tried not to stare but it
was difficult to avoid doing so. I don’t
know why, but I became convinced that he was thinking about going in for a
swim. This seemed an unlikely prospect
as the lake was half-covered in pretty thick ice. I had just about decided I was seeing things
that simply weren’t there, when he suddenly came to a conclusion. He tied his dog to the nearest tree and then
methodically began to undress. First his
flat cap and jacket were neatly hung on a tree branch, then his trousers and
shirt and, finally, his vest and socks.
Now clad in some rather grey-but-once-were-white underpants, he pottered
down to the lake and waded in.
You have to say, he must have
been made of rather stern stuff. No
power on this Earth would have convinced me to part with as much as my
overcoat, let alone strip down to my underpants and I dread to think what the
water would have felt like at that temperature.
What really amused me was that the ducks, most of whom were wandering
about on the ice, pottered over to watch him breast-stroking his way across the
lake from their frozen vantage point. I
tried to capture the moment on camera but I don’t think I really got the best
of it
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