Shampanskoye, Police and Home-made Explosives

Hi Everyone!!

This is our (maybe belated) blog from Moscow, we leave early on friday 5th. Its been great; the atmosphere is very different here than in St Petersburg, and it has been nice to see another side of Russian culture.

We have spent most of our time wandering around the tourist areas. The Hostel is great, right in the center of town and full of people all the time. Very cosy, and it has meant that we have spent alot of our time with other travellers. There are alot of people who really know moscow and so we have got to see lots of places we probably wouldnt have if we hadnt been taken there!

The streets here are quite heavily policed, to the point that we were expecting to have alot of trouble getting around. So far, we have managed to avoid this (or we have been lucky!!); it seems to be the people who look foreign that get hassled. Even Russians who are obviously from the east, and certainly dark skinned people. We seem to get by by avoiding speaking English when we pass the police!

Our Russian is getting much better. We can (pretty much) read out loud now, even if we cant understand what it says. This is more use than it sounds as most of the signs you see around are actually English words written in cyrillic script. Getting train tickets is still a nightmare but i dont think that will change!

We spent news years with some Brits from Birmingham, went for a meal and then headed to Red Square. This is nothing like how we imagined it; everything looks new, and to a certain extent, fake! This "Disneyland" feeling isnt helped by the cheesy christmas music that they play out!! Still, it is really pretty and we have ended up going almost everyday. On NYE they had a big stage with some entertainment, a speech from President Putin, and fireworks. The Police presence was way over the top, it was as if an old Soviet had planned for a riot. Getting into red square involved three rows of metal detectors, being frisked twice, and several rounds of the "Okay-Kokey" with police cordons. In the end, the square itself was pretty quite for new years and it was a really nice night. Fireworks over the top of St. Basils cathedral was amazing.

Outside the square, on the other hand, looked to the outsider like total chaos! The Russian traditions for NYE doesnt seem to be lots of drinking (surprisingly),rather to buy/make illegal fireworks and use them to remove the tarmac from the roads. The streets surrounding Red square and our hostel were filled with explosions all night, it looked and sounded amazing but made the walk home quite scary. You would hear a woosh and the maybe 2 seconds later a HUGE bang. We got back to the hostel around 2 and after some Shampanskoye (Russian Champagne, mass produced to fulfill the Soviet dream of every person being able to drink chapagne) went to bed.

We have arranged to head to a small village outside Moscow for christmas (Russian chrimble is 7th January). There will be very little to do but we are really looking forward to it. We are staying in a hostel in the grounds of a Monastary and we have a couple of days of walking in the country in mind. After this, we head back to Moscow and climb onto our first Trans Siberian train to Perm. We have 2 nights slightly outside perm where we will treck to some ice caves (quite famous, ie touristy), then we head on to Lake Baikal. This is the first long leg on the train - about 60 hours. We have arranged to stay with a Russian family in a small town called Lystvanyanka. After that we dont know what we will do.

So tomorrow is our last day in Moscow. We have booked Opera tickets (3 GBP each - should be good!) as we are starting to feel abit citied out - 3 weeks of walking from church to museam to church is starting to wear thin!! Been such an amazing start to our trip, and we are looking forward to doing something different now!!

Lots of love to everyone,

Jim and Claire

xxx

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