AFP, Moscow :
A quiet pedestrian street leading off from Red Square, Moscow’s Nikolskaya Street has unexpectedly become the party zone of choice for thousands of international World Cup fans, to the bemusement of locals.
During the day but even more so at night, the 700-metre-long street with elegant stucco facades is packed to bursting. Walking through, a passerby has to squeeze past ubiquitous groups of Argentinean supporters, pass a cafe taken over entirely by Tunisians and shake hands with innumerable Mexican fans, all of them wearing sombreros. “Normally, Nikolskaya Street is very quiet,” said Armen, an Armenian student living in Moscow who was watching highlights of the Croatia-Argentina match.
The street is usually more of a shopping destination with some luxury boutiques, especially since it was pedestrianised five years ago. But for some reason, fans have chosen this particular street as their main hangout.
Colombian Harold Castillo, a 22-year-old student, puts its popularity down to the spectacular curtain of lights that hangs over the street. “I came here by chance. I’ve been walking all over Moscow using TripAdvisor and I just saw the lights. There are other pedestrian streets but it’s wonderful here.”
Multiple garlands of lights hang over most of the street, giving it a festive air as soon as night falls. Even before the World Cup kicked off, Iranian fans were rubbing shoulders with Saudis here and flag-draped fans from each South American country colonised a part of the street. Fans are travelling great distances across Russia to follow teams – the Peruvians went to see their team lose to France in Yekaterinburg in the Urals and the Tunisians have left for southern Volgograd to watch Saturday’s game with Belgium. Yet while fans come and go, Nikolskaya has retained its vibrancy.
“This is the fans’ street,” said Mohamed Chaaben, a 28-year-old Tunisian engineer sitting on the terrace of a cafe with his friends, a national flag wrapped round his shoulders.
“It has the best atmosphere, it’s a pedestrian street and it feels safe, there’s no risk.” He and his friends were amused at the interest from locals in their national Tunisian headgear, round red caps with tassels known as chechias. Plenty of Russians are coming to stroll on Nikolskaya Street too, eyeing the exuberant fans with a mixture of surprise and amusement. Argentineans have nicknamed the party-zone street the “house of lights,” said Santiago Saltiva from Argentina’s city of Cordoba. He said that’s how he was directed there by a WhatsApp group of Argentinean fans as soon as he landed in Moscow, while he has not heard of the street’s real name.
