Unexpected Amusement

Want to know how to get to the most creepy, grand, historic, random, and all out fun amusement park ever? Just take Line 6 to VDNKh - six stops north of Red Square in Moscow. The All-Russia Exhibition Center has everything from a giant missile to miniature pony rides; from Soviet Realist statues of heroic farmers crumbling atop the boarded-up Ukrainian Pavilion (the place used to be All-Soviet) to inflatable hamster balls floating in kiddie pools for your children to play in; go-kart racetracks; a monorail; an old jet painted with triumphant soviet youths and red stars with a "Freezelight" display inside (I didn't feel like paying ten bucks to find out what that was, so your guess is as good as mine); a radioelectric pavilion that once housed the world's fastest supercomputer, now filled with schlocky camera stores; a fountain with a gilded figure for each Soviet Republic; a monorail; a machine for stringing high tension power lines; a 78 ft tall statue - Worker and Kolkhoz Woman - that originally stood facing the Nazi Pavilion at the 1937 Worlds Fair in Paris. You can buy pizza from a vending machine and fur coats and a portable personal sauna to take with you to work (if you're imagining a brightly colored human-sized garbage bag with a hair dryer attached, you wouldn't be too far off). And even on a Tuesday with rain threatening, thousands of Russians had turned out to take it all in.  By a happy google maps user error, we came upon the Exhibition Center through it's neglected back entrance. From the rear, the Music Pavilion seemed closed. We swore we saw two men go inside, but when we tried the door it was locked. Perseverance paid of though, as the front not only had a glittery hammer and sickle over the unlocked door, but also led us inside to the English-fluent and enthusiastic curator. For half an hour he taught is about Russian Bard Music, and it's biggest star, Vladimir Vysotsky, who looks eerily like Paul Simon. About how after "Comrade Stalin died, people began to play guitar and and write songs in their kitchens without going to jail." About tens of thousands gathering in the woods to camp and play and sing. There was even an example tent set up in one corner against a photo of lakes and mountains with two mannequins wearing uniforms and vests displaying patches from the festivals they had attended. Kind of hippie and kind of Boy Scout. The curator turned on the lights in the back room too to show us a historic music bus, photos of a famous Russian Jewish poet he had known, and a map of the world with pins of all the sites explored by Russia's Jacques Cousteau. Finding such a warm and personal and quirky connection in such a bizarre place in the harsh urban jungle of Moscow is what keeps me traveling.