No Paris? No problem! Russian tourists holiday in the homeland this summer.
Each day, people from all over Russia tramp up several flights of stairs in an old apartment building in central Moscow. On the way, they often stop to gawk at the thick layers of fantastic, metaphysically themed graffiti, much of it dating from the Soviet era, scrawled by generations of Muscovites.
At the top of the stairwell is one of Moscow’s most popular tourist destinations, the memorabilia-stuffed former communal apartment where the author Mikhail Bulgakov lived and worked a century ago. Today it is a state museum, the graffiti on the stairs a sign of locals’ appreciation for Bulgakov’s beloved, sometimes absurdist, philosophical writings.
And there’s been a significant surge in
