In my early morning post today when I added the new video clips page, I made reference to a “huge store in Red Square in Moscow”. I thought it would be nice to more properly define “huge”, so here’s a photo of quite a bit of the building’s facade. There’s a lot more of it on the right side of this picture. It’s a good bet that the person in the foreground is photographing St. Basil’s Cathedral which is located at the far end of the GUM.
I refer to it as “the GUM” because the name means “Main Universal Store”, and this one is the most famous in Russia. It’s privately owned and contains roughly 200 stores, many of which sell high fashion goods. There’s an interesting article with more info about its’ history and lots of photos on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Universal_Store.
For those that appreciate the ironic, on the other side of Red Square, across from the GUM, is Lenin’s Tomb. As Lenin sleeps, capitalism marches on.
And while I’m at it, here’s another tidbit for your next game of Trivia Pursuit. Read the rest of this entry »
