Our beloved Mads Holger is writing to Hejven.se, live from Moscow!

This time around I have the undivided pleasure of writing home from Moscow. Since the fall of communism two decades ago this city has held the supreme place of the moon upon the heaven of night. To the best of my knowledge absolutely nothing can compare to the splendour of this by the way also immensely beautiful city in the East. Especially not when it comes to nightlife, which I dare say it often does here.

I am staying at the Royal Ukraine Hotel situated in one of Stalin’s so called Seven Sisters. These skyscrapers are seven completely identical palaces placed on different locations in central Moscow. However in many regards they are to be considered different than the American versions known from primarily Manhattan, which moved Stalin to take up the competition by building his own in the year 1953. They are far more decorated and resemble traditional palaces more than the modern look of the American ones.

Local people refer to the architectonical style as “repressionism” but more than anything the cast their dramatic shades over Moscow offering it a more than slight resemblance of Gotham City, the allegedly fictional home of Batman. From fall of darkness (a phrase that covers Moscow if any) these buildings are highly illuminated just like every other building in the centre of this city with the only exception being that of the FSB headquarter which slumbers in darkness among these impressive works of decorative architecture in their homogeneous style. It reminds us the importance for every great city to have bowed down for its enemies in the correct period of time.

When Napoleon burned the city in 1812, it could yet consider itself lucky since the rebuilding process then were to take place in Europe’s splendid romantic era, in which almost Moscow’s entire city centre is build. In the course of history defeat to even the greatest seems inevitable at one point of time, so we most merely ask that it be at the right time where the pallet is still so graciously full of colour and humidity. If we desire to see the opposite example we need only to turn our eyes to Berlin or Oslo, which suffered their defeats in modern times with the sad result of the rebuilding being laboured of this uninspired and useless modern spirit.

I am not far away from the Bolshoi theatre, the Red Square, or the Kremlins equally illuminated buildings along the Moscow River, which is frozen for the next half a year. On the inside the hotel is furnished and decorated more or less like something from a Disney movie or perhaps more likely a Tchaikovsky ballet, enormous chandeliers, huge gold frame paintings and maids in traditional French costumes running around on the thick Persian rugs.

I imagine that most of the other guests I here meet in the halls and aromatic lobby must be dead people who have lived good and honourable lives and been awarded with an eternal stay here. However more likely they are living people who have lived dubious lifestyles and have been awarded their stay I believe. Surely if one has lived a good life a superior room should be reserved for an afterlife in The Royal Ukraine Hotel whereas if one has lived a bad life eternal studies at Roskilde University may be in store.

To be continued tomorrow..