Some excursions

The first museum I visited in Moscow was a museum about the history of books.  It is inside the Russian State library (a.k.a. Lenin library), just a stone's throw from the Kremlin, and is called музей книги, which was translated awkwardly on the sign out front:

Inside there were many displays showing how the production of books developed from ancient to modern times.  Cameras were not permitted.  Sorry.

The next museum I visited that day was really amazing: the museum of Soviet arcade games. When you buy a ticket they give you a cup of Soviet-era coins which you can use to play any arcade game that is there (a few do not work).

The game I am playing below is called Gorodki, which in real-life is a game where you throw long rods to knock down a configuration of smaller cylindrical pins (a video can be seen here).  There is a large Gorodki playing area in St. Petersburg by the Peter and Paul Fortress where others can sit and watch. The relation between the video game and the real game is like Pong vs. tennis.

Here are some military games: Torpedo Attack and Air Battle.

The hunting game below, Ni Puha Ni Pera, has a joke title. The phrase is meant to wish someone good luck, although it is literally wishing they don't hunt well at all.  It would be like a video game about actors called "Break a Leg".

Besides the shoot 'em up games that are a common theme everywhere, there was a really unexpected arcade game about traffic signs, called Victorina.  The goal was to quickly match traffic signs and their meaning.  I don't think that will be appearing on Playstation anytime soon.

I arrived at the arcade game museum when the place opened, and for the first hour there were no other groups there.  About an hour after I arrived a lot more people came, which meant you sometimes had to wait to play anything.  So if you want to visit, arrive right at the opening time.

At the museum of retro automobiles you will see cars from all earlier eras.  Outside are Russian cars and under the roof is a mix of Russian and other automobiles.

I visited the Moscow zoo on a rainy day, so there were not that many people but also not that many animals.  A lot of cages were simply empty.  I guess those animals decided not to come to work that day. The first interesting animal at the zoo was a capybara, which to me seemed like a huge rat.  Both parent and child(ren) are in the photos.

Then there were some ducks:

Nearby were some polar bears getting used to global warming:

In the primate hall (indoors, a relief from the rain) was an inspiring evolutionary chart. Check out the "high point" of evolution on the right, smiling with hand on hip.

Some monkeys were monkeying around across from the evolutionary tree:

The primate in the next photo was doing some shooting of his own while I was shooting photos.  Click on the photo if you want to see more detail.

Moving on to reptiles, here is the head of a snake:

And here is the rest of it (yikes!):

Actually, this part of the zoo made me feel particularly sorry for the animals.  The snake was completely motionless and crocodiles in other displays were in their own zombie-like trances (one just stood with its mouth open in a fixed position).  They didn't seem to have much to do, unlike the monkeys, so they could've just been bored out of their minds.