The Moscow Metro (Subway) in images
The subway system in Moscow, the Moscow Metro, is not only highly well-organized. It has a set of stunning stations. If you’re visiting Moscow, it’s worth spending half a day in the metro. Go from station to station, and look at how incredibly beautiful it is.
During my stay in Moscow, I had some days with pretty bad weather. The subway is the perfect rain activity in this extraordinary city. And having wifi and cell phone reception in the system is something we in New York still dream about in 2016…
Access to the Moscow railway system will cost you 50 Russian Ruble. That’s about 0.8 US$ today. Getting tickets will need you to stand in line at a the “KACCA“, and order the amount of rides you need. The universal language of holding up as many fingers as you need rides will do the trick. Slide over the corresponding money, and you’ll get the tickets. The gates system is pretty interesting: the gates are open by default. I mostly see systems with closed gates, only to open when you show your token and/or pay. This system will stay open, unless you try to pass without paying. In that case the doors will shut down when you try to pass.
In the depth
When you enter the subway, be ready to descend. The Moscow subway is the deepest subway system I’ve used till this day.
There is a strict one-way system in place across all halls and doors of the subway system. It makes the system pretty smooth to navigate. Transfer stations are nicely indicated. The only flaw` in the plan is when you haven’t memorized the cyclic names of the stations. In the first days, till I got used to the letters, I used the dashes to find them. Not many stations have double names, and the dash is universal Cyrillic and English. Finding stations on the map such as Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya (Арбатско-Покровская) make your life a bit easier.
Center line
Line 5 is a center line, that makes a circle around Moscow. As most (all?) stations on this line serve the 5 line itself as well as the line they cross, some have two stunning sets of platforms. There is a story in Moscow that the circle line wasn’t on the map, but that Stalin had put his cup of coffee on the subway map, leaving a brown ring on it. He allegedly told his architects that’s how he wanted this extra subway line, and that’s according to the story why this line is brown on the map.
Moscow Metro Images
You may take images in the Moscow Metro. (not video…) So you’ll have to use a camera that looks like a still camera if you would like some moving images. When I started taking pictures, some police officers, patrolling military or some metro employees would typically start watching me when I arrived, but as I acknowledged their presence and not stopped, they let me continue. The most trouble I had in the Moscow Metro to take pictures was with Argentinian tourists who asked me to step aside so they could take a picture as well.
Whenever I make it back to Moscow, taking a day the tine to get some better shots that do this artwork justice, will be in the planning.
Koen Blanquart is a strategy consultant, journalist, and author.
Wanderlust is one of his driving factors, and he shares his travels here on Boarding Today. Koen is also the skipper of SV Bagabonda, a sailing vessel making a slow circumvention of the globe..
Koen recently published a book on how to manage a remote team: The Suitcase Office.
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