Russia is getting ready to celebrate Maslenitsa, the week-long bliny binge that precedes Veliky Post, or the Orthodox Great Lent.

This year Maslenitsa runs from February 20 to 26. The most colourful holiday of the year, it traditionally features much pancake-eating not only in homes and in restaurants but also in parks and squares, where bliny stands offer piping-hot pancakes with a range of toppings, to be enjoyed along with live folk singing and dancing, traditional games and other festivities.

While Moscow’s main celebrations have previously been at Vasilyevsky Spusk, beind St. Basil’s Cathedral, this year there will be no Maslenitsa at that location. Instead the main celebrations will be in Gorky Park, a larger venue allowing a much larger-scale party – compressed into just three days, February 24-26. The second major Maslentisa party will be on Red Square on February 26 only, with a live video linkup with London’s celebrations on Trafalgar Square. Hundreds of smaller Maslenitsa celebrations will be taking place in parks all over Moscow – for the full program see www.maslenitsa2012.ru.

The official logo is a smiling sun, referring to the feast’s pagan origins as a sun festival; bliny are seen as a symbol of the sun.

Moscow city authorities are in the process of developing a “tourist card” to take some of the headaches out of sightseeing and getting around town.

In an interview with the Izvestia newspaper, tourism committee head Sergei Shpilko said the card would cover public transport and museum entrance. It would also include discounts in certain shops and restaurants, RIA Novosti reported.

Shpilko added that other problems that needed to be addressed included the city’s lack of tourist information offices as well as the lack of English-language skills among law enforcement officers, transport workers and ticket sellers. He said the committee was considering various proposals to resolve these issues.

A new gallery devoted to Russian and Soviet realist art has opened in Moscow.

Occupying 4,000 square metres in a gleamingly renovated 19th-century former cotton print factory, the Institute of Russian Realist Art displays 500 works from the collection of businessman Alexei Ananyev.

Representing just a fraction of the Technoserv advisory board head’s thousands-strong collection, the exposition spans the scope of Russian and Soviet realist art from the 20th and 21st centuries, from Impressionism to Socialist Realism and contemporary styles.

Read more about it here.

The All-Russia Exhibition Centre, or VVTs, opened a retro-styled ice-skating rink on Jan. 28.

Called “Tot samy katok” or “That very rink,” it aims to transport skaters back to the USSR with retro pop music and Soviet-style snacks in a buffet decorated with photos of Soviet-era skating rinks at the centre.

The rink is located between the main entrance and Tsentralny pavilion No. 1, occupying 4,500 square metres. It’s open from noon to 11 pm on weekdays and 10 to 11 pm on weekends, costing 150 rubles on weekdays and 200 rubles on weekends. Skate rental and a cloakroom are among the extra services offered.

The All-Russia Exhibition Centre, or VVTs, is launching an excursion service, with a diverse range of guided tours around the exhibition centre itself as well as around the city.

Excursions in and around Moscow begin on February 4 with the tours including “Our Ancient Capital”, “Secrets of the Stalinist Skyscrapers”, “World Religions”, “Secrets of the House on the Embankment”, and “The Magic of Cinema”.

VVTs excursions begin in March – “Preserved Masterpieces of VVTs”, “Legends and Myths of VDNKh”, “Heart of the ‘Stone Flower’”, and “Gastronomic Tour of VVTs”, among others.

Excursions within VVTs last one-and-a-half to two hours and cost 200-350 roubles, while city excursions run four to seven hours and cost 750-1,000 roubles.

Ticket offices are to open at the main entrance of VVTs on February 15.

Freezing winter temperatures don’t deter Russian Orthodox believers from taking a dip in an icy pond for Epiphany, which falls on Jan. 19.

And while city authorities are preparing 45 swimming holes around the city especially for the occasion – with Serebryany Bor traditionally being a popular Epiphany bathing spot – this year there will be a new ice pool right near Red Square and the Bolshoi Theatre.

“According to tradition, Epiphany bathing will take place at Ploshchad Revolyutsii on Jan. 19,” RIA Novosti quoted a Moscow Central Administrative District spokesman as saying on Monday. “This year, for the first time, beside a wooden pool there will be a pool made of blocks of ice.”

The ice pool’s walls will be 1 1/2 meters high and 30 centimeters thick, the spokesman said, adding that those afraid to bathe in the ice pool can still take a dip in the wooden one.

The weather forecast is for temperatures of minus 10 to minus 15 degrees Celsius on Epiphany night, Jan. 18-19. More than 60,000 people are expected to take a dip in icy pools all over the city.

If you spot an elk in one of Moscow’s parks, don’t take fright – it’s likely to be just one of the city’s 17 new moose monuments.

City authorities started installing the statues in late December, RIA Novosti reported, quoting a spokesman from the capital’s natural resources and environmental protection department as saying they had already been erected in Vorobyovy Gory, Troparyovo-Streshnevo and Setun River Valley parks. He added that soon the statues would appear in Moskvoretsky Park as well, and that the full-sized monuments are located near walking tracks so that park visitors can see them.

The elk is the symbol of Moscow wildlife and nature, having once been widespread in the area’s forests. Now the animals can be seen only in the Losiny Ostrov (’Elk Island’) national park in the city’s north.

Reaching St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum just got easier, with the opening of Admiralteiskaya metro station.

The new station, on the purple line between the Sadovaya and Sportivnaya stations, is Russia’s deepest, at 102 metres below the ground. Located on the corner of Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa and Kirpichny Pereulok, it is close to Nevsky Prospekt, Dvortsovaya Ploshchad (Palace Square) and the Admiralty.

The official opening was on December 28, after 14 years of construction.

It’s the end of an era for the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, which on Dec. 20 closed its doors at the Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage in northern Moscow.

Daria Zhukova’s contemporary art museum had operated in Konstantin Melnikov’s 1926 Constructivist bus depot since 2008, hosting dozens of exhibitions by Russian and foreign artists.

In 2012 Garage is moving to Gorky Park, where two currently derelict buildings – the 1960s Vremena Goda restaurant and the 1923 Shestigrannik pavilion – are to be restored to accommodate the art center.

In the meantime, Garage is to function from a temporary pavilion in Gorky Park, with Japanese architect Shigeri Ban enlisted to construct it.

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