Walk on the Wild Side

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Moscow is a city of extremes — gaudy and sedate, sleazy and refined, the sort of place where you can spend $50 to get into a striptease club or $6 for the best seats at a concert in the Conservatory. The brashness of post-Soviet Moscow, combined with venal officials and long immigration lines at the airport, put off many first-time visitors. Don't let them. Moscow is one of the most unusual and atmospheric cities you will ever visit. You just need to get under its skin.

One way is to dump the guidebooks and read Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, a mix of black humor, satire and mild erotica set in Moscow in the '20s, a time not so different from now. Apart from the traffic — cars are strangling Moscow, and should be avoided as much as possible. So choose an area and walk.

First, do the obvious,

STREETWISE Jogging: You usually need to drive to the best spots. One of the nicest is along the Moscow River by the Sparrow Hills — start where the embankment road runs into Kosygina. You can either run by the river or venture into woods. Dining With A View: Bosco overlooks Red Square; try to get an outside table in warm weather. You enter from the GUM department store via several of the fashionable women's shops — don't be intimidated by sales staff. Lunch without wine is about $25. Tel. 929 3182. The National on the second floor of the National Hotel looks toward the Kremlin (and the Moskva Hotel). Good, though expensive, Russian food. Tel. 258 7148. Excursion: Abramtsevo, the estate of Savva Mamontov, 19th century industrialist and patron of the arts. It's 80 minutes by local train (elektrichka) from the Yaroslav Station, then a 10-to-20-minute walk through pleasant woods. Price around $3.50. Closed, like nearly all museums, on Mondays. Don't Miss: Pelmeny: steamed dumplings, traditionally stuffed with meat, now branching out even into smoked salmon, and eaten with broth, sour cream and chopped garlic. A plate in one of the small stand-up eateries costs around $1.

and spend a few hours in the Kremlin, a complex of palaces, cathedrals and gardens spanning five centuries (ending with the undistinguished Palace of Congresses from the early 1960s). Beautiful and quintessentially Russian, much of the Kremlin was constructed or laid out by Italian builders at the end of the 15th century. After your tour, walk across Red Square to the massive gum shopping center, one of the many self-confident edifices built during the last Rus-sian economic boom — at the beginning of the 20th century. In Soviet times a slightly furtive place, it now offers a crash course in the lifestyles of the "new Russians." Wander down the trading row nearest Red Square, past Kenzo and Boss, perhaps have lunch in Bosco (see box). Then get out fast, to one of the less fashionable areas.

My favorite is the Zamoskvoreche, literally the area across the Moscow River — from the Kremlin, that is. It's a slightly rundown district of old churches, 18th century noble residences and the odd basement "intellectual bookstore," but it can be full of fascinating little finds, like a lovely white stone church with a dark green cupola, behind a wall on Bolshaya Ordynka (No. 38). It looks medieval but was built in 1912 by Alexei Shchusev, one of the most prolific architects of his time. He later designed Lenin's mausoleum and the hideous Moskva Hotel near Red Square, with its asymmetrical façade. Shchusev's career embodies the compromises that many intellectuals made during the Soviet period. And the church, now an icon-restoration workshop not officially open to the public, has its own tragic history. It was closely associated with the charities founded by Grand Duchess Elizabeth, Nicholas II's half-English sister-in-law. The day after the Czar and his family were murdered, Elizabeth and other members of the royal family were thrown down a mine shaft in Siberia.

Another foot-powered option is to walk along the Boulevard Ring, the sliver of park that encircles much of the center of Moscow. At night the city is awash with restaurants, many of them much more expensive than in London or Paris, though often of lesser quality. But there are also bargains, such as the concerts in the Conservatory, in small palaces, and even occasionally in the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum or the Tretyakov Gallery. All cost pennies. If you speak Russian, the superb plays directed by Kama Ginkas at the Young Spectators' Theater are another perfect way to get under this city's skin.