Cost: Free
Additional costs for several pavilions.
Additional costs for several pavilions.
VDNKh (ВДНХ)
Referred to by locals as vee-dee-an-ha, its full name being Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva which literally means
‘Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy’, this massive site is a
permanent trade show and amusement park. Imagine the World Expo but this time
filled only with pavilions related to Russia. With an illustrious history such
as Russia, it is thus to no surprise that it would require a massive site such
as this to display all her past achievements.
In this site you will find all sorts of
pavilions; buildings with their own unique concepts and architecture dedicated
to a certain theme related to Russia. Hence, you will find a mish mash of
pavilions dedicated to cosmonauts, the military, the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) and even Russian football for example located
side-by-side in this open-concept site. Walking through this site will make you
feel like walking through a Disneyland with so much interesting sites to see
and discover! Apart from the pavilions, you will also find open air museums
featuring military vehicles and a space shuttle, museums such as the Illusion
Museum and also the Moskvarium; a building featuring an aquarium, water show
and pool for swimming with dolphins.
A large fountain is situated in the middle of
this site, called the Fountain of Friendship, a fountain dedicated to the
former Soviet Republic states, now the countries within the CIS. The fountain
acts as a point of reference in the park so that one does not travel too far to
the east or west as this place is indeed enormous and I am not too sure where
the site actually ends. (See story below!)
The site has a few fast food restaurants near
the entrance but also many other high-end restaurants within the grounds
itself. If one wants more variety of food or more affordable food, one can also
head to a nearby shopping mall next to the entrance of VDNKh called the VDNKh Shopping
Mall. There, you can find a couple of other restaurants, fast food outlets and
a food court.
Experience
Before arriving in Moscow, I have not heard of VDNKh.
However, during my stay in Moscow when the subject of places to visit came up,
VDNKh was often mentioned by both Russian and other exchange students. I
eventually made plans with Marvin, a fellow exchange student from Hong Kong, to
visit the site one day with Desirae, a Singaporean exchange student. Hence,
after class with Marvin one afternoon, we went straight from our campus near
Lubyanka Station to VDNKh, located along Prospekt Mira to the north, nearer to our
dormitory which was also located in Prospekt Mira.
From Lubyanka Station, we took the red line to Christie
Prudie and walked a little to transfer to the orange line from Turgenevskaya
Station. After 5 stops, we reached the VDNKh Station, the nearest station to VDNKh.
We walked out of the train station and was met with two famous buildings in Moscow,
the Hotel Cosmos and the Museum of Cosmonautics; the former being the largest
and most famous hotel in Russia with the most popular night club - a towering
building built during the Soviet era - and the latter being one of the must-see
museums if you were to visit Moscow. After all, the former Soviet Union
constitutes one half of the space race and the massive technological
advancements the world has seen! To get to VDNKh, one has to walk towards and
past the Museum of Cosmonautics which was closed during the summer of 2018 due
to renovations.
The entrance of VDNKh is hard to miss – a massive gateway
arch greets visitors into the open space grounds. Passing the arch, we found
ourselves in an open paved square with water features and some fast food
restaurants to our right. As we were waiting for Desirae who was coming from a
ballet class, we went to have a meal at the McDonalds first. After our friend
came along, we headed to explore this lovely enchanting space.
Walking inwards, the first landmark we saw was a monument of
Lenin, the Father of Soviet Russia, which was also under construction that day.
(It became a running joke by then that wherever I went, the attractions would
be closed due to some reason or another.) Walking past the statue and a
building structure located behind the statue, we came across the Fountain of
Friendship with its golden statues in the middle of a large manmade water
feature. Flanked on every corner of the fountain are various pavilions with
their unique architectural designs.
i.Zi App
I used the i.Zi App, a free app I was introduced to by some
Russians when I went to visit the Banksy Exhibition, that gave me an English audio
tour of most of the pavilions that are at VDNKh. As most of the signs are in
Russian, the app allows me to at least understand what the purpose of the pavilion
was. Slowly, we walked from one pavilion to another. We did not enter most of
the pavilions as some of them were closed, some of them were restaurants while
others simply did not interest all of us. Some pavilions that you can find here
was a pavilion on Russian football for example where you had to pay, I think it
was 50 roubles.
Pavilions &
Pavilions
We walked along the water feature while admiring both the
water features and the pavilions. All this while it is also possible for us to
turn away from the water feature and venture outwards to other buildings or pavilions
behind the pavilions flanking the water features, but assessing the size of the
place from our initial impression, we thought we should follow the general
route so that we would not get lost. After a while, we reached the end of the
water feature and had to choose to take the path on the left or right. We
picked the right and walked to an area with a lot less people and less frequent
pavilions in sight. There are still pavilions, some of them unmanned, but after
a little bit of walking, we reached a point where we could only see some
workers and we were walking on gravel. There were still pavilions, however,
which was reflected in the i.zi app. We thus turned a path and headed leftwards
where we found ourselves in a sort of like an open air museum.
A rocket stood impressively in this area, as with other
Russian military vehicles. After taking some pictures, we explored the nearby
buildings. There were several museums such as the Illusion museum and Space
Pavilion, although some of them were closed, and we did manage to find the
Moskvarium which was a short walk away from the open air museum. The Moskvarium
stood apart from the other pavilions with its flashing electronic billboards
and signs. We entered and made some enquiries about ticket prices. Unfortunately,
the water show was sold out for that hour and we did not really fancy going to
the aquarium because there are attractions such as those in Singapore and Hong
Kong, hence we left and made our way to the Space Pavilion.
Space Pavilion
A definite must-go place is the Space Pavilion. From the
outside, you could catch a glimpse of what was inside and the place seems
really huge. We were initially sceptical of this pavilion as there were hardly
anybody entering the pavilion and the entrance too were hard to find (I thought
it was a restricted area!). But we entered and asked a staff if we could enter
and the staff inside said yes and led us to the ticketing counter. We bought
our tickets, 250 roubles if you have an ISIC card or student pass (about 5
Singapore dollars) and entered this massive pavilion. We were instantly greeted
by an enormous Earth model that was actually also a 4D theatre ride. Walking
past the Earth model, you will come across the part-interactive-part-display
Space museum that teaches and introduces visitors to complex things learnt
about space. One of the interactive exhibits allows visitors to launch a rocket
into space whereby failure to choose the correct components of the rocket will
result in the rocket not being able to take off. In others, visitors could play
games related to space on touch screen panels that also teaches stuff such as
the speed of rockets and sustainability in space.
In this Pavilion, there were sufficient English translation
provided in the exhibits, hence it was a really helped us enjoy the displays
more. Here I learnt about the difficulties of space exploration, the space
rocket models built by the Soviets and general facts about space that I was
previously oblivious about. (For example, did you know that most of Space is
covered in a tendril-like Dark Matter? Or that scientists figured out that the
universe is expanding by observing and measuring the distance of light from
objects in space?).
For about 5 dollars, it was a really worth experience and it
made me wonder, “If this is just a Space Pavilion, what else would be in the
Museum of Cosmonautics?!” For 5 dollars, this was a worth-it experience to
enjoy. Coming from Singapore where there are no such museums here, it was a
fascinating experience for me and, perhaps, if I had been immersed in this Space
culture when I was growing up, I may have just had decided to build a career on
this fascinating subject!
We made a mistake when we entered the pavilion. We were
actually supposed to take the 4D simulation ride first before entering the
museum, but we skipped past it. As we were leaving the museum, we remembered
about it but the next timing was in 30 minutes. We were a little tired from all
the walking, so we just hung around the museum and talked about life and stuff.
There were a couple of comfortable bean bag seats or sofa near the entrance of
the museum where we plopped down to just have a chat. After waiting the entire
30 minutes, we went into the Earth model for the ride, and enjoyed a 4D ride
that turned out to be just about 5 minutes long!
Lost in VDNKh
Afterwards, we went out of the museum and headed to explore
a little more of VDNKh. It was slowly growing darker by the minute by then. We
walked to the area where we thought we were lost at the very beginning of our
exploration and continued that path. We saw several really cute smaller
pavilions such as the Pavilion dedicated to meat and the pavilion dedicated to
rabbits. All this while the number of people around us thinned until it was
just us. After a while we decided to head back and that was when we realised,
we were lost.
We took a couple of turns when we explored this massive area
and the path is not just one linear path, there are several paths heading to
different directions. We initially thought we were tracing back our steps but
the pavilions we encountered were different. I did not remember encountering a
Pavilion dedicated to Smart City on the way down this path. Hence, we were
essentially lost and it was getting dark. The lights in the site started to go
on. Eventually, we simply used GPS to find our way back and to our horror, we
were a good 15 minutes’ walk away from the centre of VDNKh (the fountains
area). It was, however, a pleasant walk back as I had good company and lots of
things to see.
After a while, we re-entered the fountain area and knew our
paths back to the entrance of VDNKh. Walking past the McDonalds to our right
and the fountain on the left, we exited the area and decided to have dinner at
the VDNKh Shopping Mall to our right. In the mall, most of the shops had
already closed but the food court at the top level of the mall was open. There,
I bought a really delicious chicken shawarma meal which was huge and affordable.
After the hearty meal, me and Marvin parted ways with Desirae while we went
back to our dormitory near Prospekt Mira. (We took the wrong bus, going in the
wrong direction and went into a suburb area of Moscow. But upon realising our
mistake, we got off, crossed the road and took the right bus back. It was
practically night, around 10pm when we finally reached our dormitory to call
off an incredibly satisfying visit.)
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