Neskuchny Garden

Neskuchny Garden
Subway station «Shabolovskaya»
Bulgakov enjoyed skiing. At the end of the 1920s, he took great pleasure in skiing with his actor friends from the Moscow Art Theatre. The route through Neskuchny Garden was one of the writer’s favourites.
Neskuchny Garden appears in Bulgakov’s essays about Moscow, for instance in The Golden City. Sergey Ermolinsky remembered skiing with Bulgakov: ‘And along the well-used piste, powdered with snow at night, you could quickly and nimbly ski to Vorobyovy Hills. We wandered around on these hills or in Neskuchny sad without haste. Usually it was a weekday; there were few people – usually kids. Sometimes just one dedicated sportsman would fly past; there would be the flash of a red jumper and he wouldn’t notice us. Mikhail Afanasevich skied better than I did. Heading down a slightly steeper slope, I couldn’t hold out, my skis went in opposite directions and I collapsed on my side. This always happened when we returned, heading down from Neskuchny or Vorobyovy to the river.’