Go on a pub crawl
January seems like it is four months long. It snows every day. It’s cold. The big holidays are over, and the next little holiday won’t be for weeks. You’ve been to the malls, gone tubing and ice-skating, made snowmen, and admired ice sculptures. What else is there to do? How about trying a pub crawl? We haven’t test-driven this yet, but you go to four bars in the evening, throw down some shots, meet some new people — up to 20 in a group — and hopefully find some bars you’ll want to come back to. If you’re feeling safe Covid-wise, you might want to try it. If not, keep it in mind for the Covid-free future. More information and tickets here.
Enjoy the Four Seasons in a glorious mansion
There is nothing more magical than entering a museum after hours for a concert. On Saturday the Pushkin Museum (the museum dedicated to writer Alexander Pushkin) is hosting a concert of Antonio Vivaldi’s "Four Seasons" in its beautiful blue hall. The concert will be performed by the string quartet Capriccio, which happens to be an all-woman musical group that has won accolades, awards and devoted audiences in Russia and Europe. Tickets are a modest 1,100 rubles, and the 65-minute concert begins at 6 p.m. Since you will be in the heart of Moscow on Ulitsa Prechistinka, when it's over and you are refreshed by music, you can saunter off to a restaurant for an after-concert repast. For information and tickets, see the site here.
See how the Tretyakov brothers lived
A new museum opening in Moscow is a grand event, and this one is the result of many years of work and is therefore especially grand. On Saturday the Museum of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov opens in the house where the two brothers were born. Tucked behind the New Tretyakov Gallery, the two-story merchant-style house — stone first floor, wooden second floor — was purchased by the Tretyakov ancestor Zakhar, a Merchant of the Third Guild, at the end of the 18th century. It remained in the family until it was nationalized in 1918, and then was used for communal housing until 1975. It was given to the Tretyakov Gallery in 1997, and after much work, has been turned into a museum of the two brothers whose collection is the basis of the Tretyakov Gallery. The interior was changed as little as possible, and the few extant possessions of the Tretyakov family have been placed in the house. Objects that are typical of the time period but did not belong to the family are painted gray to distinguish them from family heirlooms. The exhibition covers their family history, their work, and their glorious collection. To read and see more about the museum and purchase tickets, see the Tretyakov Gallery site here.
Go see a movie, silly scary or serious
Moscow’s many theaters showing foreign language films in the original languages have something for everyone this weekend. For kids and kids-at-heart (or anyone who needs a break from reality), you can see “Spiderman: No Way Home”or “Sing 2”. Slightly older folks might want to check out the charming “Licorice Pizza”; and if you didn’t get enough of Timothée Chalamet in “Dune” — and let’s be honest, no one did — you can check out “Call My By Your Name." If you want to be terrified, you might enjoy “Nightmare Alley” with an all-star cast including Bradley Cooper, Kate Blanchett, Toni Collette and Willem Dafoe, or the rollicking “King’s Man.” For more serious fare, consider “The Champion,” the story of a pre-war boxing champion who arrives with the first transport of prisoners to the newly created Auschwitz concentration camp in 1940 (in Polish and German with Russian subtitles at Pioner Theater) or the very moving Sergei Loznitsa film, “Babi Yar. Context” on Saturday afternoon the House of Journalists.
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