Victory Day

May 9 is Victory Day here, a national holiday celebrating the fall of Berlin. It is huge. There were organized celebrations and concerts at seemingly every city park. We went to Victory Park along with tens of thousands of others. The weather was perfectly cool and sunny with the sky looking like a matte painting from some romantic 50s movie. The crowds were thick, but well mannered and orderly. At no point did I feel threatened - especially when there were uniformed police, soldiers, riot police and park guards everywhere.

At Victory Park they weren't selling beer yet and I think that had something to do with my comfort level. The beer coolers were there, but they were locked and shuttered. We didn't need to wait until beer sales began before heading home.

Because of the numbers of people arriving at the park, we were directed to walk to the next metro stop. People are lined up to get in, six or so wide and we're funneled into a single door. The Moscow metro is the most adept I've seen at crowd management. You enter at one door and you exit at another for major stations.

The metro was amazing. It was almost as if I were picked up and carried in and out of the train by the crowds, but no painful elbowing or angry exclamations from the folks around me. It's just how it is. Muscovites seem to be accustomed to crowded metros. Rush hour is a fascinating example of humans adapting to city situations; before you reach the escalators, there are metal railings set up to funnel people onto the escalator. A hundred or more people will be waddling like penguins with baby steps and full body contact on all sides towards the escalator. Often, I'm mooing in my head for it is very much a cattle round up each time we get off a train, rush hour or not. Astounding to me is that most always people will line up single file on the right, leaving the left side open for people who feel like climbing up or going down the minute long ride. This kind of public self-discipline surprises and fascinates me.