Welcome to Moscow Comrade

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Moscow comrade!!!!!!!!

We arrive into Moscow's 'St. Petersburg' train station in the morning and wander towards the Moscow metro with in trepidation; we have heard various stories about how difficult the Moscow metro is to navigate. We purchase our tickets and head down, the first thing that hits you is the glass / crystal chandeliers that line the ceiling of the station, each station is different with differing mosaics and chandeliers, you don't get them on the London Underground! We studied our maps and the metro map and match up the various words to identify the correct station to alight, we gamble on the train and it pays off, we get the intersection station and off we walk to find the next platform for our final trip. Again we are there books in hand; matching up station names and board the train and bingo we arrive feeling rather smug that we achieve our goal.

We arrive at our hostel - Godzilla’s (50 euro for 2 people), lovely little place about a 20 minute walk from the Kremlin. We finally get our visas registered and part with another tenner each and head off to restaurant to eat on the hostel dudes recommendation. We hit a quaint little place a couple of minutes down the road and enjoy a lovely meal of Kiev chicken, we wait nervously for the big bill, voices of every person I have ever spoken to swirling around in my head of how expensive Moscow is, we were expecting a good rogering from the waiter - but to surprise it cost about 16 quid - 2 meals with 2 extra sides and 2 large beers!!!!

We wander down towards the Kremlin - the seat of Russian power for centuries and to our dismay it coincided with a visiting US president, of all the weeks!!!!!!! We visited the Red Square which is huge; T recalls a photograph in a book from University featuring the Red Square full of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles as a show of power towards the west. At the south side is St Basils Cathedral, this is the picturesque, colourful building you see when the Kremlin is ever shown, incidentally, Kremlin means a walled city! But the Kremlin was closed in preparation for Mr Obama and we were too late to visit Lenin's mausoleum as it only open a few hours per day, so we ventured into a buffet establishment for lunch and a beer and decided to walk up to take a sneaky picture of the KGB building and afterwards we sit in the grounds of the Kremlin enjoying a large beer in the sun - It cost 1 pound of the queens currency per pint - astounded at these costs we started worrying we had the exchange rate wrong and was peering through semi closed eyes when I looked at my bank account online, but no it was 50 roubles to the pound!!!!

We arrived in the early morning to visit Lenin, it was a very strange experience you are ushered in to the mausoleum in silence and police and soldiers prevent you from loitering and silently and firmly point to the direction in which to travel, we walked in there and in a glass vampire type case was Lenin's body, eyes are sawn together, apparently he gets washed down every couple of days and enjoys a chemical bath once a week (I think) to prevent his body from decaying. His dying wish was to be buried next to his mother in St Petersburg, but on seeing the vast number of people - pilgrims of a sort braving the freezing conditions to visit Lenin whilst he was lying in state and the overall effect it had on the Soviet people Stalin decide to ignore the wishes of Lenin and his grieving widow and have him lying in the mausoleum as his is today. Teams of scientists were instructed by Stalin to find away to stop the body from decaying. We finally get into the Kremlin and it’s a mix of churches, armoury (closed because of these darn tour groups blocking all the tickets!!), lots of green and still the working government of Russia, if you stray too far from the allotted walk ways you got a firm whistle from the police to correct your wayward wandering

We visit yet another museum this time the State Museum which sits to the north of red square, then head in search for a bar we heard about - the 'big mug' bar with its orange door. On spotting this orange door leading down into a cellar T performs a reccie and discovers it the pub we are looking for and enter 55 roubles a pint (1 pound sterling) and full of Russians and not a tourist in sight. It reminds me of a type of Wetherspoons in the UK!!!!!

We have a few beers and head back to the hostel, by chance we wander off to the nearby park which has a strange Karaoke type thing occurring in this large tent in the park's bar, they sold a relatively large and cheap and tasty Merlot (160 roubles - 3 pounds of the Queens English) and we laughed at this chaps awful singing voice - not that either of us can sing a note!!!

On reflection of Moscow, it was nowhere as expensive as we were led to believe, it was far friendly, helpful and in our opinion much more interesting than St Petersburg. However, Moscow does have money, the blokes tend to walk around wearing smart clothes and designer suits - we fitted right in, in our combat shorts from burtons, t-shirt and flip flops and the women all appear to be sporting Christian Dior dresses, Louis Vutton Bags. The gum shopping centre in one of the old palaces on Red square would rival Bond Street in London for its designer label stores, we could see the imagine of Lenin turning in his mausoleum at this capitalist invasion.

Our first Trans-Siberian Journey was about to begin with a 30 hour train journey to Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. After a few relaxing beers to kill time and a final stroll we head via the metro towards the correct train station, we board our train the number 2 train towards Vladivostok- the original Trans-Siberian train. It was one of the newer rolling stock and was spotless and our 4 birth second class cabin that donned a TV, all programmes were in Russian but a TV none the less. With our cabin buddies refusing my offer of wine and going to sleep, we enjoyed a sofa picnic of salami, cheese and bread a few red wines followed by numbers card games and then went to bed!

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