Moscow - Red Square

Red Square - once on par with the White House or the Pentagon as a symbol of world power - is now available for wedding rentals. This I found out, much to my dismay, on my last day in Moscow when I trekked my way over to Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral to take the obligatory "Ooh! I'm in Moscow!" photos.

So the USSR was communist for all these years, right, and totally anti-capitalist? Well, now you can buy a pair of Nikes at the six-story shopping mall that descends downward into the ground underneath the northernmost tip of the Kremlin and Red Square. Lenin would be rolling in his grave, except he's not in one: his freakishly preserved body (how they did that is a Soviet state secret, but it's kind of worked since he died in the twenties but his body, or at least a very convincing wax approximation of it, is still on display).

There's a Sbarro pizza place outside of the Kremlin, near the McDonalds, but at least Starbucks doesn't appear to have made any inroads here yet. but back to the story: imagine having your wedding in Red Square.

After a long day of walking around the Kremlin (lots of churches and frescoes and Japanese tour groups) and then eating pizza and salad at the aforementioned Sbarro's, I walked down to Red Square at about 8 p.m. The side entrances were all closed, so I went all the way to the southern end, but found that one guarded by a handful of bored teenaged-looking Russian cops and soldiers.

All day long in the Kremlin and while eating pizza we'd seen a wedding of some sort going on in the garden that caps off the top half of the Kremlin grounds; apparently all that was the pre-wedding, as the real thing was going on as I leaned against a railing in the shadow of St. Basil's Cathedral at the south end of Red Squared. I could hear different people going up to the mik, probably to give toasts or congratulations, because everyone cheered whenever someone stopped talking. I leaned against the railing and asked the soldier when the ceremony would be over and if Red Square would re-open at that point, but, not to my surprise, the only English he spoke was "Go Away!" which he told me twice, sterner the second time.

I meandered over to the other side of the square. There was a pathway up onto the hillside and I contemplated taking it in order to at least get a better view of the square than the one I'd been afforded, but my eyesight caught hold of another gun-toting guard strolling the path. I stuck where I was for a while before going over to the group of policemen standing boredly agianst the fence. I didn't know how to say "please consider this a gift on behalf of my appreciation," so I just kind of inched a 100-ruble ($4) note from my pocket so the policeman could see it. I figured that would do the trick -- I heard you can get out of most anything in this country with bribes -- but he didn't respond. Just for a minute, I contemplated making a run for it past the batrriers to where the weding party was chillin', but then remembered that I'd promised my dear mom that I wouldn't cause any international incidents, so I kept quiet and stll. I took some photos, which came out cool because I waited and took one of the multi-colored onion domes every few minutes as the sun went down.

By half past ten, it was obvious that the wedding would be going on all night. The guests had left and come back changed out of their formal wear, and were now dancing to some thumping Russian house music. I wondered if I could sneak in with a group of them, like in a Mentos commercial, but thought better of it and got up to leave.

Comrade, a voice called from behind me.

It was the soldier up on the hill. Maybe he was going to let me in after all. I hoped so. I really wanted to take some better pictures of Red Square.

"You forgot something," I assume he said in Russian, motioning to the low brick wall where I'd been sitting. There lay my videocamera, with which I had taken many cool shots of Red Square, the wedding, and St. Basil's Cathedral, but which had not found its way back to my backpack.

My heart skipped a beat as I ran back to gather my video camera. I thanked the soldier, saluted him, and was on my way back to the apartment while he went back to keeping crazy foreigners out of the wedding of whoevoer was getting married there that evening in Red Square.