Moscow Guide
Zamoskvareche and the south
Gorky Park (Park Kultury)
Opening time: Daily 10am–10pm
Price: R50
Moscow's riverside Gorky Park is known to Muscovites as Park Kultury and famous abroad due to Martin Cruz Smith's 1980s thriller, which opens with the discovery of three faceless corpses in snowbound Gorky Park. The reality is less sinister but still a bit creepy in another way, as Pepsi culture flourishes amid the relics of a totalitarian regime's fun side.
Nowadays, three funfairs constitute the main attraction, though very few rides operate over winter. Thrill-seekers go for the funfair beside the river, with bungee-jumping, two roller coasters and a water chute, whose rides are more exciting than a "flight" in the Buryan, a retired Soviet space shuttle linked to a series of domes offering a "cosmic experience". The build-up to the ride is fun, but its gyroscopic chairs do a poor job of simulating zero gravity, so you basically pay to see thirty minutes of videos, and some spacesuits. It seems an ignominious end for the Buryan, which made a trial orbit of the earth under remote control in 1988 and might have carried cosmonauts into space, had not the Soviet space programme virtually collapsed a few years later.
In summer kids can enjoy the Wondertown and Fantastic Journey fun houses; the carousels and electronic games work all year; and rollerbladers turn out in force whenever the weather's fine. Nor does winter dampen spirits: the ice disco is jumping at weekends and most evenings, and in February the park hosts a festival of ice sculptures.