Red Square of Moscow

There are places that smack you in the face the moment you set foot in them. Red Square is one of those places. Less a tourist attraction, more a stone colossus of history staring you down. Welcome to Moscow, comrade. This isn’t Paris, and it sure as hell isn’t Disneyland.

Red Square is where Russia flexes. A vast, cold slab of power, memory, and blood. The cobblestones feel like they’ve seen things: czars, Bolsheviks, tanks, riots, coronations, executions. All of it soaked into the granite, waiting for your boots to join the chorus.

As I walked across the cold cobblestones, I looked around. The onion domes of St Basil’s Cathedral and the walls of the Kremlin are well-known symbols of Russia. The star on top of the Spasskaja tower shines an eerie red light, staring down on us like the eye of Sauron glowing with quiet menace.

Church and state on the Red Square.

It was not without irony I noticed that the tomb of Lenin is located opposite the ultra-capitalistic luxury store GUM. I wend down in the marble shoebox where I saw the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin, which has been on display since his death in 1924, but it rather felt like visiting a heavily guarded section of Madame Tussauds.

Further down the wall are the tombs of Stalin and the rest of the gang. Stalin’s embalmed body once shared a spot next to Lenin but was removed during the “Khrushchev Thaw” in 1961.

Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin.

The mission of next morning was to get into the Kremlin, the walled area where decades ago an invitation was akin to receiving a death sentence. The hill of Borovitskij has been a settlement for two millennia and the first fortification was constructed there in the 12th century. The fortress of Moscow has endured great fires, careless sacking from the Golden Horde and greedy plundering from Napoleon’s army. But I bet it wouldn’t survive having a Starbucks. The cathedral square boosts no less than three different cathedrals, where the onion domes glisters like gold in the morning sun.

I escaped from the cold daylight down into subterranean tunnels, where impressive artifacts are on display in the halls. I especially liked the beautiful Fabergé eggs, but I didn’t dare to do the switch pulled off by James Bond during the first scenes in the movie “Octopussy” from 1983.

And as night falls and the lights illuminate the Red Square in ghostly hues, you can almost hear the ghosts whispering through the frostbitten air.