An Amazing Place with Weird Acronyms

привет, my friend!

This will be a long post, but there will be tons of pictures! So it may be worth reading :-)

Today I finally went to the VVTs, which stands for 'Vserossiyskiy Vystavochny Centr' or 'All-Russian Exhibition Center'. So far, this has been my favorite place in Moscow due to its magnificence and oddity.

Anyway, the complex was originally built in 1939 as VSKhV, 'Vsesoyuznaya Selsko-Khozyaystvennaya Vystavka' or 'All-Union Agricultural Exhibition', in order to host an Agricultural fair in Moscow with farmers from all over the Soviet Union. This is the map from its original opening:

In 1959, the megalomaniac Soviets expanded it and renamed the name place VDNKh, 'Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva' or 'Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy'. The new pavillions then described each of the great Soviet achievements in different areas, such as Electronic, Agriculculture, Television, Biology, etc.

Nowadays the whole thing has changed, as the Soviet achievements were... err... a failure. The pavillions now feature small booths selling random stuff, such as pirate DVDs, natural honey, military paraphernalia, more pirate DVDs, regular clothes, and then some more pirate DVDs. Like a Promocenter in Brazil or one of those street fairs in Manhattan.

The VVTs also serves as family hang-out for Muscovites, so there were tons of families with kids (there is small circus and plenty of kiddie rides) and many people riding bikes and rollerblading.

Fortunately, the architecture of the pavillions remains untainted!

Here are is a pic of the entrance:

As soon as I entered, I went for a ride on the Ferris Wheel:

From the Ferris Wheel I could take great pictures. Here are some, the large obelisk being the Cosmonauts Museum.

This a close-up of the Great Pavillion, which was also on the picture above. Note the white scar on Lenin's forehead... well, that's not a scar, it's just bird shit.

Here's an elephant in front of the circus.

Most of the original pavillions were named after the republics that belonged to the USSR. Here are two of them: Karelia and Uzbekistan (my favorite).

Then some monuments highlighting the achievements of the USSR: some successful such as a rocket (they were first in space) and others rather unsuccessful like the Yakovlev-42 plane (equivalent to a Boeing 727, but it was poorly designed and had many accidents in the early 80's).

This is one of the original buildings, which was huge:

This is the main boulevard, with a couple of large beautiful fountains.

Last, most buildings still feature the original communist symbols, like the one below:

As I was leaving the VVTs, I went to see the Hotel Cosmos. It's a huge and extremely outrageously lavishly cheesy place. Here's a pic of the outside, but I couldn't take a pic inside because I'd run out of batteries for my camera.

I ended up not going to the Cosmonauts Museum because I didn't realize it was at the base of the rocket (it seemed too small to be a museum). Since I had time to spare, I walked about 3 kilometers to the movie theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean (see post 'Movies in Russia'). On the way, the sky cleared -- if only I had juice in my camera, I'd have come back to take more pics.

I'm now exhausted, will probably crash 'til tomorrow.

пока!