Moscow , a GRIZ, and Lenin?

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We arrived in Moscow at 6am. We locked up our luggage and decided that we should call a hostel first before we go there. We were informed that all the places that we wanted to stay were full. So instead of staying a night in Moscow we instead got tickets out for a night train to Kiev, Urkraine. After we got our train tickets, we hit the metro to go to the Kremlin and the red square. Moscow is really nice. The buildings were so impressive! Even the metro stations felt like they were a museum in themselves because everything was so nice. On a side note, the lonely planet guidebook recommends that you miss rush hour in the metro station because in during this time 4.9 million people are using the metro. Wouldn't you know it we hit rush hour to get to the train station that we needed for our Kiev tickets! The stations were very packed and I def. felt like a cow being herded around!
Once we hit the Kremlin station, we walked around some buildings and found a good spot to get to the red square. There are only certain times and certain days that you can view Lenin's tomb, and we made the right day to be there, we wanted to make sure that we made it in time to see him. As we checked our cameras, (not allowed to have them in the tomb) I noticed that there was a man that was sporting a University of Montana sweatshirt! After Corey and Mike noticed this as well, we decided that once we were done seeing Lenin we would go be friendly and Chant "Go Bobcats!" to him.
Lenin's Tomb
As you walk up to the tomb, you have to go through a metal detector. Some security agents also try to go through your coats making sure that you do not have a camera or a phone with a camera. It was kind of intense being patted down! After this is done you walk into a very dark building and cannot say a word while you are in there. There was a very old woman that was having issues walking down the dark stairs, (she could not see them very well). I quickly jumped up and helped her with another man get down the stairs and into the viewing room. Seeing Lenin was pretty interesting. To walk past and see a man that has made so much history was quite powerful! It was crazy, after all these years learning about him in college and high school, to actually walk past and view his body. It was neat. Mike stopped for 2 seconds (literally) and a guard ushered him along. Once we were out of the room we walked out of the building and into an area that had other tombs of leaders and officials like Stalin and such. Overall this experience was awesome!
Red Square
As we walked out of Lenin's tomb, we walked around the Red Square and took some pictures. The Kremlin and St. basils cathedral are all very close so it was great to walk around and get pictures of all these places. Although I though some of the buildings would have been much bigger, I never realized the size of the Kremlin until you standing next to it. It is gigantic! After we took a bunch of pictures we found the man with the sweatshirt. Turns out that he and his sister were born in Sidney and grew up in Lambert. He was a doctor and she was a nurse, and now they are retired and live in Western Mt, close to thier families. It was really fun to talk with them about thier travels and ours. I was told that I was very brave to be traveling with Mike and Corey! It was a riot! After our visit the boys and I did some shopping in the market and had a bite to eat before we went in search of yet another internet cafe. This time we were very unsuccessful finding a cafe, but we did find a place that we could make international phone calls. We managed to buy our erail passes and with the help of Cortney and Chase we were able to have them sent to Vienna, Austria. We should be there in a few days, so it was successful!
When we were done with the phone calls, we headed back to the main train station, got our bags and headed for the Kiev station. Once there we walked around got some snacks and boarded a train to the Ukraine!
This whole traveling process I have really learned a lot about packing and leaving bags and such. It has been a blast! Moscow is a wonderful place and I am really glad that we hit it up! All three of us felt like we saw everything we wanted to see in Moscow except a Russian ballet. Next time I hope to see that.

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