Moscow Musings: Easter Saturday Moscow

Another lovely day, and Cindy, being moved by my blog yesterday, demanded to be taken to the Vagankovo Cemetery. There were about a million people there, most of them in a non-moving line to enter the very small church on the cemetery grounds. We don’t know what the tradition is; I assume it is to bless things, but there were at least a thousand people waiting to get in. This article might shed some light as to why there were so many people. The line went clear out the gate and across the street, fortunately the streets have been blocked until after Easter.

We walked completely around the cemetery and enjoyed watching everyone cleaning and decorating the gravesites. Some of the gravesites are very simple and some are very, very elaborate as you can see from these photos.

One long part of the cemetery borders the railway tracks that serve Beloruskya Station. There is a three-car train, all in red that is parked near the cemetery. After lots of research using Google Language we translated it as the Fire Train Headquarters. It seems that they have several of these trains that can be taken to remote fire areas that trucks can’t reach. The train has the HQ car, a large armored car for personnel and equipment, and a huge tanker car for water. Quite the setup.

We walked from the cemetery to the park that Cindy runs in. We wanted to take photos of a statue with some poems on either side of the marble block and translate them, which took us lots of time. Anyway, they are interesting but not that interesting. I suppose you had to be there when he was reciting them. Right behind the park is a museum, which I call the Museum of Funny Art. There are some rather whimsical statues out front but every time we go there the joint is closed so we have to try and figure out what everything is all about. Some of the photos are attached in the above link.

Since Easter Week and Passover share a lot of days, I thought you might enjoy this cartoon.

Here are some picture postcards of Moscow in the 60’s. Only the buses are the same today!

Happy Easter Saturday, Cindy and Wm