Mayakovskaya

Written for Spotted By Locals in Sp. Pete



My favorite subway stations in Moscow and St. Petersburg have the same name: Mayakovskaya. The great revolutionary poet, one of the first brilliant advertising copywriters in soviet Russia, the strong man and free soul Vladimir Mayakovsky deserves this honor.
In Moscow the subway station ceiling is covered with Alexander Deyneka’s soviet mosaics, connected with airplanes and happiness. In St. Petersburg the entire station is red, covered in mosaics and bright. I think I’ve been in love with this design since I was 6 and came to St. Petersburg with my mom for the first time.
Another nice piece of art is at the entrance to the station, it is a wall picture of the huge poet. Nice pictures could be taken here. He had a sense of humor, this poet.
The curious difference between Moscow and St. Pete’s subway stations is that people use different meeting points when they say “meet you at this metro station”. Be careful with this! In Moscow you are supposed to meet everyone at the station directly, preferably in the centre of the station hall between the trains. In St. Petersburg you must be at the top of the escalator instead.
The cause of this is that in St. Pete stations rarely have more than one way out and some people do not want to pay for a ticket to get to the meeting point, and in Moscow everyone arrives by metro and there are too many ways out you can easily get lost.

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