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Serednikovo is north of Moscow airport. It was built by ... who was the successor of the more easily remembered architect Dimitov. It was occupied by the Lermontov family until it was converted to a sanatorium during Soviet times. Now it is being restored and again in part lived in by Mikahil Lermontov and his family. They are using the large building to host seminars on intellectual subjects, and it was as part of the first seminar given in the renovated main building that I was invited to speak.

Moscow's Red Square needs no description. The Kremlin is on one side, and the famed State Department store (GUM) on the other side. Red Square is small! At one end is the cathedral of St Basil with its ornate towers, built by Ivan the Terrible on a special plan which is the superposition of two squares, one with the bigger towers on its corners and one rotated 45 degrees with the smaller towers on its corners. Finally, Lenin's mausoleum is against one of the Kremlin walls.

Moscow State University is housed in one of the five large buildings that Stalin erected in Moscow and who are charcteristic of the architecture of that period. This CD ROM has no views of it.

The train to St Petersburg was very comfortable: the compartments have two beds each, breakfast is served airline style, and guards are present in every car. It takes about 8 hours between the two cities.

St Petersburg is built on a number of islands in the estuary of the Neva river. It was the capital during Peter the Great's time. The city and its inhabitants suffered enormously during the second world war (siege of Leningrad). But St Petersburg did not exist until Peter the Great built the Peter & Paul fortress there in 1703.

Peter the Great built himself a pleasure residence somewhat to the west along the shore of the estuary, known as "Peterhof".