According to Wiki : Every 9th of May, Russia celebrates the victory over Nazi Germany, while remembering those who fell in order to achieve it. 9 May was chosen, since in the night from 8th to 9th 1945 the German military surrendered to the Soviet Union and its Allies in Berlin (Karlshorst), for people in Russia this happened on the 9th (time change). A military parade is usually held in Moscow to celebrate the day.
I have never been to the parade; when we first came to Russia, we were advised to stay indoors during public holidays, for our safety. This year, however, my friend 'pujuk-ed' me with 'this is the last chance' and 'next year we wont be here anymore' and in the end, I decided to go for the parade. It was agreed last night that we would leave the hostel at 8am so as to be at the place where the parade was supposed to take place at 9am (the parade was supposed to start at 10am). Quite a number of people said that they would like to go and as usual, we agreed to meet at the 1st floor corridor.
8.30am this morning, it was clear that only 12 of us were going for the parade. Some guys were too hungover after a night spent with 4 vodka bottles, some guys were not feeling well after a barbeque they had yesterday. So, the trip today comprised of Puspha, Von Yen, Swee Hung, Yee Gin, Hajar, Natiara, Shilpa, Huey Yin, Chun Lin, Chin Keat, Ker Hsin and I - 11 gals and 1 guy.
We reached the Mayakovskaya metro station (the nearest metro station to the center which is not closed today) by about 9am, and chose a spot where we thought we would have a good view of the parade. Along both sides of the road, you could see many people starting to gather in to watch the parade.
After a while of waiting in
the cold (weird weather), we asked a lady who was standing next to us about the parade, and the told us that the parade towards the Red Square was earlier in the day, and we are waiting for the parade moving away from the Red Square which will be at about 11am. What??!! It was cold, and we had about 2 hours to wait! After a while of fooling around with the camera and taking pictures, a few of us decided to warm ourselves up with tea and approached a nearby kiosk.
The hot tea helped, and after that, we huddled close together, not just to keep ourselves warm, but also because there were more and more people gathering up. We waited and waited and waited. First we heard some music, but no one knew where it was originating from. And then we heard some helicopters and there they were, 3 helicopters carrying 3 different flags- one is the Russian flag, don't know what the other 2 are. It was followed by few fly-overs by few different planes (fighter jets?).
A few minutes later, it was the tanks and missiles that were paraded. I never knew that SO many different kinds of tanks even existed, and I certainly didn't know that missiles were so HUGE!! I can just imagine how many thousands of people can be killed with just 1 missile. (The video doesn't do the parade justice, but then I've uploaded 1 video anyway.)
The parade lasted about half an hour, after which we took a few more pictures with the Victory Day banner and then headed off back home, mainly because they started cleaning up the road and we didn't want to get wet. On the way to the metro, we managed to take a couple of pictures with a few war veterans. They were sweet enough to agree to pose with us for the photos.
My last Victory Day holiday in Moscow. The most memorable one.
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