{"id":305,"date":"2014-05-23T19:29:59","date_gmt":"2014-05-24T02:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transitophile.com\/chango\/?p=305"},"modified":"2019-07-12T08:52:11","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T06:52:11","slug":"moscow-metro-guide-for-english-speakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transitophile.com\/chango\/moscow-metro-guide-for-english-speakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Moscow Metro guide for English speakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The free, pdf’d, certified-as-official-and-requested-by-absolutely-no-one transitophile guide for English speakers navigating the Moscow Metro<\/a> is online at:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/transitophile.com\/chango\/files\/moscowmetroguide.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

The 200+ mile Moscow Metro carries more yearly riders than any earthly subway system outside of Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul. \u00a0The lion’s share of construction credit has to go to the maniacally paranoid Stalin, who masterminded a propaganda showcase for the dizziest fantasies of utopian Communism — the baroque grandeur of the Komsomolskaya station, the other worldly beauty of Mayakovskaya — even as millions rotted in his gulags.<\/p>\n

\"Mayakovskaya<\/a>
Mayakovskaya station in the Moscow Metro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I know of no other transit system as magnificent, or any that sprang from such a brutal past. \u00a0The American press had little reason to publicize a Communist country subway at the height of the Cold War, no matter how spectacular; many Americans have never heard of it.<\/p>\n

Anyone with a fleeting interest in twentieth century history would want a look. \u00a0For a transit geek, it’s close to a holy grail.<\/p>\n

But there’s a problem.<\/p>\n

The Moscow Metro’s signage is in Cyrillic. \u00a0Cyrillic, as in:\u00a0\u041f\u0415\u0420E\u0425\u041e\u0414 \u041d\u0410 \u041a\u041e\u041b\u042c\u0426\u0415\u0412\u0423\u042e \u041b\u0418\u041d\u0418\u042e<\/span>. \u00a0Or maybe\u00a0\u041f\u0415\u0420\u0415\u0425\u041e\u0414 \u041f\u0420\u0415\u041a\u0420\u0410\u0429\u0410\u0415\u0422\u0421\u042f \u0412 1 \u0427\u0410\u0421 \u041d\u041e\u0427\u0418<\/span>, if\u00a0\u041f\u0415\u0420E\u0425\u041e\u0414 \u041d\u0410 \u041a\u041e\u041b\u042c\u0426\u0415\u0412\u0423\u042e \u041b\u0418\u041d\u0418\u042e<\/span> didn’t quite skip off the tip of your tongue. I wanted to see it, but not if I had to learn to read Brothers Karamazov<\/em> in the original just to get around.<\/p>\n

Last month I visited Europe partly to see if any of the transit meccas I’d read about in years past lived up to their billing. \u00a0(Zurich and Copenhagen certainly did, and Stockholm came close, but that’s the stuff of another post.) \u00a0Moscow is only nine hundred miles southeast of Stockholm. \u00a0I wasn’t planning to return to that neck-of-the-world anytime soon. \u00a0It wasn’t necessarily ‘Moscow Metro now or never,’ but it was close.<\/p>\n

I decided to take the chance. \u00a0Maybe I’d get hopelessly lost, wander the city for hours, fall into the hands of the KGB and be interrogated for fomenting unrest in the Ukraine. \u00a0So what? \u00a0Hadn’t I spent decades working with small children who think anyone over thirty is ready for the coffin anyway? \u00a0I’m retired. \u00a0I’d lived long enough to see the original episodes of Mr. Ed<\/a>, hadn’t I? Who could ask more of life than that? Let the KGB do what they would!<\/p>\n

I applied for my visa and dove into online research. \u00a0Many web sites were eager to tell me about Moscow Metro architecture, but I found only one —\u00a0http:\/\/bridgetomoscow.com\/moscow-by-metro<\/a> — that tackled the challenge of Cyrillic signage. I pored over posts in travel forums, and made two judgment calls before I left that I became immensely grateful for once in Russia:<\/p>\n