Procedural hurdling at the Olympic pool


Posted by Patrick Okens

Dec. 14 – Moscow

The Luzhniki sport complex looks tired anyway. But add wet snow and gloomy skies above, and take away all the people, and it’s a completely somnolent landscape. Big structures all hunkered down for the winter. At the entrance, I guessed right (which was wrong) and went past the Ice Palace where the 1972 Summit Series took place, past soccer pitches, running tracks, a driving range. I crossed vast, empty parking lots and then back around the big, beige Olympic Stadium before finally getting to the Olympic pool.

Here is how the pre-swim went:

  1. Go to the window to pay. Clerk scribbles “11:40”. A ten-minute wait.
  2. At 11:40, go back to pay, slide my passport and 300 Rubles ($10) through the slot. Clerks says “spravka”. I shrug my shoulders, she gives my back my passport and money. Nyet so far.
  3. I remember that at many Russian pools, swimmers must present some kind of certificate of physical fitness, and that this can be obtained on site.
  4. I wander the halls, and find a door with a red cross on it. Inside is an idle old man (a physician? a nurse?) in a white smock. I say “spravka?” hopefully. He nods wearily, looks at my passport, asks me some questions I don’t understand. I respond in English anyway. He takes a slip of paper, stamps and signs it, and gives it to me.
  5. Back at the window for a third time, I slide money, passport and oh-so-important “spravka” in. Success! I’m given a plastic claim tag.
  6. Across from the cash is a coat check. I leave my jacket there and get another plastic claim tag.
  7. I enter a corridor looking for the men’s changeroom, but find only the ladies’. At length, I’m directed to the other side of the pool.
  8. Before entering the changeroom, I’m made to remove my boots and put them in a plastic bag. Then, in exchange for the first claim tag, I get a locker key from yet another attendant.

About to swim towards the light.

The pool is being renovated, and the change and shower facilities are clean and new.  Access to the pool itself requires a baptism of sorts. Down some steps into the water, then underwater through a small gate and channel. A bit freaky, but keeps people from getting cold – it is an outdoor pool. Steam rises from the water as I swim, looking at the tiles on the bottom. It’s not crowded. Women and men stick to separate halves. Between lengths, I look up at the empty grandstands, and beyond at the Olympic Stadium’s roof. I decide not to put myself through a virtual challenge against the 1980 East German women’s swim team. Swim over, I go through the multiple-tag-returning procedure in reverse.

I walk along the silent, dark Moskva to the Novodevichy convent and cemetery. A UNESCO site, the convent is high-density worship. Inside the walls are four onion-domed churches, and one cathedral. The cemetery is the final resting place for Russian notables. Khrushchev and Yeltsin, not considered worthy of burial in the Kremlin, are here. Tourists enter, camera at the ready, as if they’re on some kind of famous, dead Russian safari. But it’s much too miserable and soggy to spend much time among tombstones. I’d rather be buying groceries, and leave.


The Great Patriotic Walk


Posted by Patrick Okens

Dec. 13 – Moscow

Today, I went west of the Moskva with no map. I had a place to stay, and plenty of time, so I could afford to get lost. I’m a connoisseur of intentional blundering rambles – it’s a way to guarantee you go off the beaten path. And besides, my objectives were hard to miss on the skyline.

I stepped off the Metro at Vorobevy Gory (Sparrow Hills). A wooded area on a steep embankment along the river, with its own ski jumping hills, the park’s sudden stillness excited me. Since leaving Vancouver, I had spent no time in a forest. The snow-covered paths were slippery, and I cautiously made my way up the slope to level ground and broad boulevards.

Above the trees, I could see the summit of my first destination; Moscow State University. Despite visual contact, it wasn’t close and I had to backtrack after entering a low-rise apartment complex cul-de-sac. MSU’s style is called “Stalinist Gothic”, and you don’t need a degree in architecture to imagine the grandiose brutality of such a structure. For nearly forty years, the University was once Europe’s tallest building. Its massive concrete wings reaching out, I could not get the whole edifice in one camera shot. I approached the front entrance, which had curiously few people around. Hoping to get a sense of campus life inside, I was turned away by two security guards who were only too pleased to wave me off with a “Turist? Nyet, nyet!” Walking off, I calculated it would take me about 15 minutes to stroll around MSU’s perimeter.

To the north were my next landmarks; a tall black obelisk alongside a spike-topped dome. More wandering in the generally correct direction. Through quiet apartment complexes where mothers pushed prams, across broad, busy avenues, and finally a secluded industrial area deserted enough to stop for a discreet pee. As I approached a railway yard, a pack of four stray dogs looked in my direction and started barking. I would not be able to outrun them, and kept going. I had recently heard that the best countermeasure to aggressive dogs is to, literally, bark like mad. Supposedly, this signals to the animal that you are dangerously unstable and should not be approached. But it turned out the dogs were greeting a canine friend behind me, and ran off to lick and sniff. And so we shall never know what would have happened had I let loose with a spittle-flecked doggie equivalent of “back off, bitches.”

Built on the hill where Napoleon waited in vain for Moscow’s surrender, the Great Patriotic War Museum pays homage to the U.S.S.R’s victory over Germany, which cost the lives of 27 million people of the Soviet Union. As befits the sacrifice, the place has an austere elegance. Polished marble and granite everywhere, making steps echo. Red and gold banners and carpets. The moving Hall of Remembrance, millions of bronze pendants hanging from the ceiling, representing tears. Dioramas, paintings and statues of soldiers in heroic, hawk-eyed poses. An endless array of artifacts; steel, wood, cloth, and paper relics of the war preserved behind glass. And as I walked at that measured, museum pace, I saw there were few visitors on a Tuesday afternoon. The exhibit attendants, older women mostly, loitered without much to do. I wondered what they thought about, sitting there for hours among vivid reminders of a shattered history.

It had started to snow as I exited the museum, heading past the eternal flame and the obelisk, onto the broad and long Park Pobedy (Victory Park). In keeping with the day’s martial theme, I had wanted to see the nearby panorama of the Battle of Borodino. But closed off with tarps and plywood, it was undergoing repairs in advance of next year’s bicentennial of the bloody 1812 battle that stalled the Grande Armee at Moscow’s gates. It was gloomy and the snowfall wasn’t pretty – soggy white precipitation that large, colorfully lit Christmas trees could not cheer up. I took the Metro home.