Moscow has around one crore residents, one-third of the entire population of Kerala! However, the urban centres appear less crowded and roads are not congested. So where exactly are the city dwellers? It is a "hidden" secret.
Moscow’s metro network is one of the busiest and most efficient underground systems in the world. On an average, it carries up to 67 lakh passengers through more than 200 stations every day. If you notice a sudden gush of people from nowhere while walking along the deserted streets, it means there is a metro station nearby.
As part of the host cities tour, we were taken by the organising committee to Park Pobedy (Victory Park) on Monday. Buried almost 85 metres underground, it is one of the deepest stations in the world and is by far the deepest station in the Moscow metro system.
It also contains the longest escalators in Europe, at 126 metres long and has 740 steps. The ride to the surface takes approximately three minutes. The huge walls are adorned with paintings and curious artefacts and the warm yellow glow of the lights create a cozy atmosphere that set the mood for the strains of music that fill the air inside the subway. There are musicians at every corner playing beautiful numbers on their piano, violin or accordion, providing the commuters some good musical accompaniment. When you finish the walk and reach the station, you might feel that you are coming out of a music concert!
The Moscow Metro is a 364.9 km long vast inter-linked subway that consists of 12 lines and 214 stations. The metro system was established in 1934 during the Stalin era. One among the many urban legends about its construction says it was not constructed according to the original metro plan that was brought to Joseph Stalin by Soviet engineers. As the leader was going through the blueprints one by one, he inadvertently placed his tea cup on top of one of the proposals, leaving a brown ring stain on the metro lines’ outline, which engineers, upon consideration, found quite a smart addition!
The Moscow Metro was once a strategic asset for civil defense as well. During World War II, when German troops were within sight of Moscow, it was actively used as a bomb shelter. As the Germans attacked their city with frequent airstrikes, about half-a-million people moved underground and there were shops and hairdressing salons in operation at the stations. In all, 217 babies were born underground during air raids in the 1941-42 period! Unable to break the defiant Russian defence and withstand the inclement weather conditions, Hitler was forced to withdraw his army and return without realising his capstone objective, Moscow. That was the major turning point of World War II.
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Recently, the Moscow Metro was in news for some strange reasons. There are supposedly 500 dogs living in the subway, and 20 of them are daily "commuters". It is a miracle how they managed to learn to get from one station to the another by hopping on the city’s public transit system with complex transport maps, which can be quite confusing even for human brains.
According to author Eugene Linden, who has been writing about animal intelligence for 40 years, the subway dogs' behaviour exhibits ‘flexible open-ended reasoning and conscious thought’. Linden cites three reasons that enable the canines move around the city, using the underground. Their ability to judge the length of time spent on the train in between stations and the time intervals, recognition of the place names announced over their train's loudspeaker, and the scents of particular stations.
As I strolled along the subway corridors leisurely, enjoying the spectacular views around, a sturdily-built man accidentally bumped into me. I lost balance and almost fell on the floor, but he extended a hand to help me get up and apologised.
We shook hands and introduced ourselves to each other. His name was David Neyler, an Australian. When I told him I’m from India, his face glowed with excitement. “Oh, so you are from Virat Kohli’s land. What a wonderful player he is,” was his first reaction. He told me that former Australian wicketkeeper Brad Haddin is his neighbour back in Australia.
When I asked him about the ball-tampering scandal involving Steve Smith and David Warner, he dodged the question and walked away, seemingly irritated. The revenge for knocking me down was swift and merciless!