Blogs from Moscow, Northwest, Russia, Europe - page 63

Our train left Moscow at 21.36 on Tuesday 10th October. Ours was the last carriage on the train, although we'd walked half the length of it (10 carriages) before figuring this out! Cabins are pretty compact to say the least. A cabin consists of 4 bunks, a tiny table and some storage space bags and not much else. We settled in and tried to make a conversation with our Russian cabin mate, Denis, a Russian car salesman who told us he had very good English. His favourite sentence turned out to be: "I don't understand."! It really was very relaxing being on the train and knowing that we didn't need to move anywhere for the next four days. Quite a welcome change after the madness navigating the Moscow subway. The train stopped probably 3 times a ... read more

I arrived into Moscow on Saturday by myself as the other two lads were arriving on Sunday and Monday. The plane arrived without any delays at all but after that things started to take a little longer. They're all Russian but nobody is rushing... After a long scrutiny in passport control, they let me in. I pushed past the many taxi drivers swarming the arrivals hall and hop onto a bus to the metro. It took about an hour in total which wasnt bad. I was amazed I didn't get lost because the only signs are all in cyrillic - no English to be found anywhere. I ended up just counting down the stops til my station. By the time Gordon had arrived on Monday, Johnny and I had collected the train tickets from across town ... read more

Today Liz went with me to Izmaylovskii park to buy a Russian coat. When we got there they were having a huge festival to celebrate "Gold October". They had a stage with Russians dressed up in the traditional clothes of old Moskovy. They sang, played an accordian, and danced. It was really fun to watch. Once I picked out the coat I wanted, we half an hour bargining for it. They originally wanted 8,000 roubles for the coat but we managed to bargin it down to 2,200 ($85). It's called a dublanka, is extremely warm, and comes down to my knees. It's gray leather with white lining and a huge hood. You can't buy anything like it in America. Liz did most of the bargining. She is almost fluent in Russian and is sooo good at ... read more

Tuesday Oct 3rd 2006 This evening is the start of our LONG train trek across the vast expanses of Russia. We have a “soft sleeper” which refers to a cabin with 4 bunks in it that are about as wide as a gym stretching mat with far less padding. Sam and I are allocated the top bunks and meet the two ladies that are going to be our cabin mates for the next 6 days and nights. Sabrina, a PHD student on her way to Beijing for a Robotics conference is from Germany who, thank God, spent time studying in China and can speak the language and Hilda from Belgium will have to put up with us to the trip. We have discovered that there are no showers in the cheap section we occupy and the ... read more

Hallo Leute, Kurze Beschreibung der Situation: Fit und Gesund trotz Schlafdefizit… Ich geniesse das Leben hier, finde mich super zurecht und so langsam bekomme ich auch die finanzielle Lage in den Griff. Was ich in den letzten Wochen so erlebt habe? Also nichts was fuer das Internet geeignet waere;) Doch zum Alltagsgeschehen. Wir haben eine neue Mitbewohnerin. Anna (aus Polen) ist gestern ausgezogen. Schade, war eine echt coole Zeit und man lag auf einer Wellenlaenge. Vielleicht sieht man sich mal irgendwo wieder... ...und somit hatten wir die letzte Woche Vorstellungsgespraeche. Jeden Abend tanzten Frauen bei uns an und Peter, Masha und ich stellten die Jury. Klingt alles sehr offiziell, aber lief ganz geschmeidig. Wir stellten ein paar Fragen ueber sie, tranken Tee zusammen und versuchten uns ein Bild zu machen (Peter und ich im woertlichen Sinne ... read more