VICTORY PARK

I went on a nice outing on Saturday, to Victory Park in the far west of Moscow. It's the place where a lot of the city's parades, celebrations and demonstrations are held. There's a parade ground, the obligatory military museum or two, and some park (unsurprisingly).

The metro station to Victory Park is brand new - it only opened this year - and it's good to see that the city is still being creative in the design of the metro stations. Victory Park metro has all the usual marble as well as two fantastically shoddy murals, one to celebrate Hitler's defeat and the other to celebrate Napoleon's. Even though I thought it was a draw. Never mind.

Anyway, the mural of Napoleon has to be seen - he's surrounded by his cronies, with cannon balls scattered at his feet, but the artist got the proportions wrong and it looks like he's enjoying a fun game of ten-pin bowling. It's even better than the statue of Pin-head Peter in St. Petersburg.

Sad fact. The metro station is the deepest in the world (it was built underneath wetland), and so it also has the longest escalator in the world.

Another great thing about Victory Park on a Saturday is that it is a traditional place for wedding parties to come to have their photo taken. Actually, I couldn't move for brides when I was there. Must have seen at least a hundred. Bizarrely, there was a man with a falcon who let brides take their pictures with the bird for a few roubles. There's one for the photo album - 'me in my wedding dress with a falcon on my arm in the middle of the park'.