Virtually everywhere I’ve been in Russia there are likely to be a few street performers. Whether they’re playing the violin along the streets of Suzdal, a flute next to Catherine’s Palace in St. Petersburg, or a trumpet in a subway car, I’ve seen it all.
 
Naturally, one wonders if this sort of activity is discouraged as it is in many cities in the United States. As it turns out, there is even an association that many of these people belong to: the Moscow Union of Independent Artists. If one of the street performers is hassled, or even has to appear in court, the Union will be there to help them with any legal trouble that they may face.
 
As a result, one can see quite a few street players unabashedly playing their music for the world, and here’s a fantastic example of a violinist and a cellist doing just that in an underground street crossing:
 

So it was. It was our first day here in Moscow, and we were to be riding the metro all day, in an attempt to become more familiar with it. Due to jet lag and general lack of sleep, I did find that it was a bit difficult to understand at first, especially as we were weaving through crowds, looking at the design of various stations, and making transfers across the metro on the VERY LOUD subway cars.
 
After our trek on the metro we headed back to our dorms, and tried to get some rest.
Eventually, after a few trips, I started to get how the metro functioned, and how I could get from place to place. It became a necessity soon afterward, and is easily one of the most efficient methods to get around the city.
 
Not only that, but the web that is the Moscow Metro often becomes so much a part of one’s mental map of the city that the scale of the city shrinks, and getting from point A to point B becomes defined by how many stops on the metro are required get there. Occasionally, I notice the actual, much larger, scale of the city. One of these instances came when a group of us got lost somewhere between Парк Културы and Фрунзенская metro stations. Suddenly, the distance between stations on the same line seemed a bit longer than it did within the safety of the metro.
 
Another instance of a similar vein occurred during the time I rode a bike with Kaylin and some Kazakhstani students to Victory Park, which you can read about here.
 
However, sometimes these realizations overemphasize the scale of this city, particularly when getting closer to the city center, where there are more metro stations around and about. It is a very short walk to get to the Old Arbat from the Kremlin, for example, and the fact that I often traverse through the metro to these places separately means that the distance between them was distorted in my mind before I tried the walk there.
 
As of now, my mental map has become somewhat of a potpourri of random places, all connected by a web, but not necessarily connected to each other on the surface. It’s really a strange feeling, and definitely not something you experience in smaller towns in the United States.
 
Also, as a bonus, here’s a video of a typical trip through the metro! Enjoy!