thanks for being with us at half past the hour i'm karen taraji with a quick look at your headlines when words don't match our actions in washington confirms the pentagon is considering military action in syria despite president obama's dismissal of using america's unilateral air strikes. exporting revolutionaries libya's accused of running guerrilla training camps for foreign militants as nato comes under fire at the un for refusing to investigate civilian deaths during its air raids against gadhafi. and nuclear talks on iran are due to

restart after a year in limbo but warrants a bell be futile as world powers stop piling on even more sanctions on its economy . like any big city moscow has some must see destinations on familiar even to locals coming out party talks to feed the top len all there of the moscow walks guidebook that's in spotlight next. how again a welcome to spotlight the interview show on our i'm al green hour and today my

guest in the studio is levy tapped the kremlin the bolshoi are among moscow's greatest but like any other big city moscow has its secrets as its place is unfamiliar even to natives not to mention tourists and yet many of them are a true must see this nation's for all the out of interest in the russian capital so where do you find goods sacred mosque where i ask the woman who has walked around virtually the whole city author of the must call your sky t.v. talk. to taplin is a renowned journalist and traveler who has been exploring the world of food for more than forty years she worked in england germany and india before finally moving to moscow in two thousand and seven here she's written a weekly column in english language newspaper and guided walking groups the real

crown provide the material for how moscow walks guidebook is divided into seasonal volumes at the moment autumn and winter have been published. in welcome to the show thank you very much it's a pleasure having you with us let's bring in. the first time before visiting most of the for coming to moscow did you were you looking to. what was the line. oh you were the questions are. you did you have any silly walking spirits before coming to me as i did actually yes i did it all in all those city walking isn't necessarily what i call it we lived in berlin before for four years or came to moscow and a. great bear that kind of took off so we walked.

in the end almost every day because i got so into it around the parks around the lakes sometimes in the city forests wherever we could find so yeah that was that was a great great experience and so i already had it in my head when i came to moscow that i definitely wanted to do some more and if there'd been a walking guide like the one i written then i would have just bought it and got on with walking them and then maybe done something else but i couldn't find anything i couldn't find any kind of guide like the ones that there are lots of in germany lots of in britain and so i had to write you. choose your roots were simply simply talking to people simply looking at what you did have some knowledge of in history we're here through a. bit of both about you know on the whole looking at the map and not what i did was i just got to sit here and i open it up and i don't look is a big green area that looked interesting let's go and see what's there it's obvious you probably will be a pirate. probably although if you're quite right it actually katie i turned up and it was actually

a building site because that wasn't totally up to date or whatever but secretly to be installation drawn as a map. exactly it's just that that was the worry and there were always there were a lot of there were there were a lot of. amusing disasters but a lot of the time as well it would be something incredible and using design as this is good if you give me an example of those amusing designs well there was one time a little of that quite so much that the part was actually got to it as such but we were exploring in is my last. over towards the kind of east. so it gets quite wild you kind of surprised how lost you can get lost is the wrong word. actually it's probably largest in forest in the world but anyway we were walking along and we got to the river and we were exploring i mean that was the whole point i didn't have a definite route in mind and i was trying to see if there were parts that weren't on the map that might take us through this area and there was a log across the river and we went over this log and we had a whole load of kids because we had one lady in

a mini skirt and heels and we got to the other side and it was a swamp and we just went trading through this one we went on because when we go back over the log and we got very very wet and muddy and we ended some people carrying their shoes they had all over them it was we all thought it was great the kids loved it. and they wanted me to come to their birthday parties and then this same adventure the funny thing about like a tourist impression was for me was a friend of mine who's in london he took his mead to moscow and she's from sri lanka and she he took her to moscow and showed a row and when she saw the moscow river we have to look into the moscow who should prove duty and so very dangerous what there is in this should be a lot of crocodile. was clearly. swimming in the last period was one of the things i greatly enjoyed people first to know that actually this must be clean enough and there are those who. actually listen. when you you get that information about the

places you should go or what the world should know or. you prefer talking to people you prefer reading words. i think probably read it all. ok do i basically have a lot of what would you recommend to people i read both i mean i have a lot of books about moscow they are very very useful some of them an out of print but there are some really great books out there some books about the kind of hidden corners in moscow and. one so i bought all of those and i look up military details i look up you know where the museums are all about but then talking to people particular museums they give you a lot of details going out to the little villages and talking if you like what's interesting in this area and they'll say you can go there you go the reason i'm asking because in your books you're sure would really knowledge of russian history so you do. definitely i mean i did not great detail i haven't done a degree in it or anything but it's so interesting that one thing leads to another . oh very much so very much so i would never play i would never claim to be

a scholar i'm very much an amateur. absolutely no i'm very much an amateur and i do it for fun i mean the history of it is kind of fun you know up to a point so i'll point out this is this and it's built then if people are interested but i try and keep that to some extent. i don't want to overdo the information because really the emphasis is on enjoying it having a good time there's quite a lot there about the world. and you can translate from. there what's your favorite. thing about most. of the people always ask me that that's crazy is always the one i've just been to i would go somewhere and then i go that was the most fantastic day we had such a good day today it's very very hard to pinpoint because i really i love a lot of places in moscow and sometimes i say comments sometimes i say very and

sometimes i'll say so-called village it depends where we've just been but i don't know where people ask you because it's probably people probably russians because because well for a person like me who was born right he probably would have a favorite place yet because it's your it's your turn. and the words from the. that's interesting the question ok what do you dislike of those. ok well no it does . not there should be no traffic it's the thing i dislike most that i have so you can't buy that cut the number of cars here and i think it's kind of killing the city i think it's a shame. but that's my comfort i transferred me a funny thing you started a while ago the use these. tools yet in moscow it was a period when the so these two are are really upset with the car yeah they want to watch everything even one russian goes to rome paris he hires

a car and he looks at the city through the car window has loomed so so so are you trying to the. yes this was exactly you know actually this is go for you i mean this is not the way this is but this is not the way to to to to to also get into. you know this is exactly what i mean i remember a bar called we were going once down a bit of odds and all the traffic was going to first snow of the year it was beautiful it was like a light flakes falling and the yellow light and it was just strolling along the moscow that i love and the cars were completely stopped because it was the first moment everyone got stuck they weren't moving and we were walking down the. hall but i didn't think that i mean i think it's crazy to get in a car my spare time here many of my friends still can't understand why i never went cause when i go abroad with my family to. go the usual explanation now underpaid well. not just going on foot but i love what i do think is

a really good public transport system and i think it's really the best in the world i mean i think it's you know i haven't been everywhere i think it's a really good system. speaking about the prudish language with english adjectives to describe my needs of which is ok. yes. wow. various contrasting eclectic. incredible. yeah. breathtaking sometimes other times quite frustrating. actually it's not that i never thought of that before. i mean it's a i've used a lot about it in the book probably too many but ecliptic has a good almost always been a clear yes for from the. times so in.

the previous year. well. luckily luck has started a new thing in london acceptors are you also were you were starting the this new construction movement so well it has always been eclectic and i mean making it even more eclectic but many must call it a ringing bells now yes i'm saying it's too much of a good thing and i mean i mean moscow is losing its heritage do you agree do do. i do i do i work a lot and i'm very worried about it i took a tour on friday morning around sokol village which is where we used to live and several more of the little old wooden cottages that are really the charm of that place have gone have just disappeared and it's very distressing because those irreplaceable there are nineteen twenty's experiments in social housing that is going to be rebuilt anywhere else in quite the same way and so on having said that i mean i agree about eclecticism i love the fact that you get a skyscraper next to an old seventeenth century church next to a kind of eighteenth century mansion and here you've got all that stuff i mean i

love the fact that around every corner there's something different different eras and so on but i do think. we need to be careful that things aren't it happens everywhere but i think it happened very fast here and very furiously and there are some very big projects like this palace i'm sorry if i'm speaking out of line that seem to have taken a lot of money when other buildings could have used it for real restoration so as the author of the school. walks guy. will be back shortly after a break so stay with us then you. won't believe. science technology and innovation all the rest of elements from around russia we've got those huge earth covered. for.

they are. walking back to the spotlight robin just a reminder my guest on the show today is phoebe tab the author of the moscow walks guide book c.b. you've been watching. two thousand and seven to two thousand and eleven is that why those right the period displayed in moscow. can you say well you just mentioned

a minute ago that moscow is really changing too fast can you see that that you will leaving a different city from the city you came to five years ago yes yes i think in a lot of ways that's true i mean there are a whole moscow changes fast and anywhere i know and it's one of things that's very difficult to write a guide book actually is that is that everything changes actually funnily enough we met for a walk on wednesday. palace and the cafe that i remember being nice little cafe called metro it was like a metric laugh it lets me clarify it's still there and it's not only was the cafe not there but building that the cafe had been in wasn't there so it was quite hard to mentor and we found a nice big new place and it was all fine in the end but it's a frightening how fast things move the best thing is that you come in a couple of months and you don't find me but the good thing is good news is that you find two other. than you are that you are good at it is more is what i said in

the book i said look you can expect it will be the same but you know you'll find something and it'll be fun it's always fun it's always interesting it's great exploring the ways in which the city of changed our mix i don't think it's all bad i mean i think some of the developments going on is actually very interesting one of my favorites is the alexy of family factory. and that's a beautiful place beautiful building very very elegant and it's just been renovated in a very tasteful very understated kind of way the whole area is bigger. nicely developed i don't know he's doing it i haven't really looked into it but whatever they're doing and doing a great job and there's a cafe inside and it kind of picks up the it picks up the heritage of the factory because they used to make gold and silver thread so they've got these like light shapes that are like reels of thread well on their first visit to moscow tourists usually rushed to the major must see sites like the kremlin or the treasure of gallery but none conventional to reserve the city again in popularity spotlights you know the new there are reports from the inside of the russian capital. see in

the postcard views of moscow something you can't and shouldn't escape in the russian capital the kremlin is surely the man magnet for tourists a very careful site and also a place which contains centuries of russian history but at a point you will surely feel like leaving all the grandeur behind and go in search of the warmth and tenderness of the old moscow the best ways to start a more intimate acquaintance with the city is who by bring it to a chain of ten who have arts which embrace the center of the russian capital it's nine kilometers long so walking alone if you have twenty of interesting things to see and also plenty of time to feel the spirit of moscow decides the boulevard ring is not actually a ring it's more of a horseshoe if you look at the map which guarantees good luck to those strong

enough to walk away however there's no need to do that turning off a boulevard into one of the smallest streets in the center he's very much worth if as you're bound to stumble upon something interesting like this group through us building with dragons and golden squashed in between somewhere more typical moscow architecture it was built one hundred twenty years ago by it we were trained and proud over turbulent me which passed since that time he has remained an island of stability as he has always been told here and it's just one of bizarre houses in moscow you might also come across a far better average wehling or a portuguese castle. and it's. almost all a. girl. and it's just as close as you. will

be like. took part in those guided tours you know you talk about what they mainly foreigners are experts or maybe even russians but it was a mixture mainly foreigners it was a very very international group there weren't there were russians most definitely including some people who were actually born here and who used to say yes i have a favorite place and that's where i go just like you were saying but i'd like to see more of it and that was quite magical that they would come and have never been here literally my life i've never been to this place and i well i guy when i was a kid at school like i worked as a guide muscular night and they used to joke because well. no it is pretty pretty pretty clean. and i love to say that my favorite time to show moscow to foreigners is jury in the right here in the winter after a snow fall it's. ever so what's your favorite

season all because you got your book yes for your season yeah well it's a moment because we're talking in the winter i'd have to say it was one time i just written a whole load of features and winter magic of moscow winter wonderland in moscow and all this kind of thing and i'm loving it the photos we've got the last few days i've been quite lucky with the weather i think so used to it nights i love the snow for it so it's nasal but i like sunrise sunrise in winter is very pretty but you see i'll be coming back in march april for the next book i hope and then again may june and i'm sure i'll think of a time those are my favorites and actually autumn is very beautiful someplace in. the limited. absolutely no i think very much so he preferred autumn in the country so you never go to live in moscow to think about questions or to muse it's not a very pretty short and i mean what he described in the poem is the bare trees and frozen. which is kind of what we think of as winter but. could you know

couple of places in moscow. in guidebooks. yes interesting never mention of a challenge. but certainly there's a lot of little house museums and things like that that i absolutely love and i can't guarantee that they're not i think the rough guide is pretty comprehensive may well come of them but for instance we were at a polling ari doesn't it solve house obviously his big brother house picked as next of house a lot of people know about but the younger brother has this amazing little flat just energy security area and it's full of paintings that's kind of charming antique furniture from the promise of a workshop and so on it's a great place and lots of little places like that i'm a big big fan of house so so so so you describe the. interior. is what it is not only the exterior and oh yeah very much so yeah i mean i love the kind of

again it's the eclecticism it's the fact that you can find all these little places that are completely different styles and you said you mentioned. the thing and yes yes you do. i am doing it now in london. that's it pretty much. london delhi before the end of the really difficult place to walk and i love delhi it's very interesting it's a fantastic beautiful city not easy to walk around on the whole because the pavements until they were married and walking and i mean you can you can but i found it problematic in its own huge traffic problem because we were high heels. are you planning to do something something like. i would love to do the same thing in london. i would that put me that would be that would be it was my dream job actually writing books for the moscow news i did crazy considering how little i was paid but it was actually the best job probably that i ever will have so. you had a problem with high heels in berlin you had a language program was asleep but you won so i did not.

you once in a moscow must be my favorite city to walk oh i love moscow why not arts for your boy and learned what wonders of london is a great place and actually of course forty nine hour loving it it's great it's really great but the reason tomatoes exactly describe that it's that it's a collective and that you don't know what you're going to find around any given corner and i just think if you were interior rooms british interior is a very eclectic. no no of course of course but it's so unexpected here and a lot of it is so crazy you see if there was some are as good as most of those house museums in london you probably have to pay fortunes go in and here it will be forty rubles sixty roubles and all these little parks and gardens the churches i mean monasteries markets the next everything i think it's amazing and amazing city what's your opinion of the russians are russians. a lot different from from from the oh yeah for sure. there are there are things that

a lot of my working group when they first arrive some people join the group a lot when they feel just right they want to explore and they say why does no one smile why. i just said no it's slightly different cultural thing i don't really namely all the time like we do but that doesn't actually mean anything and in fact russian three grams who used to be cool to me as coolly. but also actually you walk into a shop and people might say no and they look and help and then he warm up and they start and the bloody end of the you having coffee and you know i mean i've found people here to be very very friendly especially we get out of town and people start you know asking well if it's incredible it's five foreigners one in. yes mostly in the moscow area i mean i mean. obviously a schism as far as east as i call her and you have been. yeah we went out into the upton of petersburg obviously places around quite

a lot but most of my exploration has been immediately around moscow and one of the things that i feel are these are things that definitely won't be in the guide books are some of the little towns and this is this will be an absolute top tip asking for top tips the town of colombia i mean you probably quite well know now among russian tourists but foreigners haven't heard of it it's not in any guidebook any english language guidebook that i know what it's going to be my next but first. i think i know the answer but i want to hear yours do you believe the russians from russia are really different from aggressions from the from from from moscow it's. interesting definitely we've had a different reaction going out of the city and definitely people are a little bit harder a little bit kind little bit less cool we've had people being very very friendly and some little villages and also quite surprised and i've met quite a few people i mean out of town and they say i've never spoken to a foreigner and for things like that i mean that amazes me it's damage but yeah it

is definitely different not complete you know they are saying it's very cosmopolitan everybody knows their local people speak english that's something that's changed and the great thing was different about russians they tried to speak english well you will when you when you walk into a store or something they try to speak your language they try to make yourself for . themselves understood absolutely i like the french. or the english. language is english for giving you right if you walk into a store and you and you and you speak speak english and english is very poor they are amazed by the fact that you can at least learn something new. in a foreign language which they can never do but usually i don't know the people i think we're more forgiving about and so one thing people struggle with here is you don't say something in fact the right people might understand you were is in english we just thank you thank you very much for being with us so just to remind that my guest from the show today was even talking to or three of you to moscow

what's going on and that's it for now from all of us here if you want to have your sales problem or if you have someone in mind if you think patiently next time you drop me a line of how good our bad parties that are you have not seen spotlight until after we'll be back with more from the commons on what's going on in and outside russia until then stay on our team and take it.

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