If you really want to get to know a place, ask a local ? and in Red Square, Moscow that means taking tips from Uncle JoeThere are places that you've never seen, but you still know them ? places familiar from the Ten O'clock News, from the Guardian, from the movies. Brooklyn Bridge, the Grand Canal, the Strip in Las Vegas: all are as familiar as the street outside your door. But all (of course) have secrets that only being there can reveal. Take Moscow's Red Square. The May Day processions, the Politburo stiffs with their overcoats and hats, Lenin in his tomb: this is what we know. This is what I knew. But did you know (I didn't) that if you lay down in Red Square at one corner and rest your chin on the cobbles you'll find that the place is so vast that you can actually see the curvature of the earth? Or that, if you stand in the centre and raise your sights above the dark red Kremlin walls, there in the distance is the apartment belonging to Roman Abramovich (the very presence of which tells you something of his influence in the new faux democratic Russia), or to stand on the brass plaque set into the cobbles is to stand in the very centre of the square, the nation, the world?Every city, then, has secrets and every language a language of its own. Stand in line to get a ticket to gawp at Lenin in his tomb (the man is yellow and waxen and, some say, a replica) and if the guard says "No, no visiting today", then for sure you'll be in in 10 minutes ? for in Russia, no means yes and yes mean maybe and maybe means well, it depends on the dollars. And every city, too, is a mix of what has been and what is ? a work in perpetual progress. Across Red Square, opposite the Kremlin stands GUM, the vast and famous "people's store", now the home of Armani, McCartney and Klein, but once and briefly the mausoleum of Nadezdha, the wife of Joseph Stalin, who was murdered (allegedly by Uncle Joe in a fit of rage).Ah, Stalin. For a man not even Russian (but then Napoleon wasn't really French, nor Hitler, of course, German), the nation and its capital is still his; he is everywhere ? in thought and in fact. Stand on that plaque in the centre of the square and who will you see? Uncle Joe, is who, more often than not in the company of Tsar Nicholas II and Lenin in his thick, crumbled suit. Here, a few near-worthless notes will buy you a pose and a picture; a few more and Uncle Joe will embrace you, squeezing all the air from your body as once and for so long he'd gripped to near extinction the country.But, then, even a fake Stalin has his uses for, on my last night in Moscow, I settled on a bottle of vodka as a souvenir. But which bottle? Standing, late at night, in a Dmitrovsky district supermarket, there was too much choice to choose (there were more than 500 brands) until, at my shoulder, help arrived. The uniform, the thick neck, the flamboyant moustache ? Stalin, of course. I watched him. He watched me watching him. I watched him watching me watching him. Then, slyly, he selected a bottle ? a picture of a snow-swept Siberia on the label. When he was gone, I selected the same. I have it still. Whenever I look at it I see that cobbled square and hear the cries of the long disappeared. People admire it. It's my new party piece. If it was good enough for Stalin, I tell people, it was certainly good enough for me.MoscowRussiaEuropeShort breaksCity breaksguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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