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Published: April 12th 2011
Moscow, ridiculous prices, riddled with corruption and filled with new Russian millionaires. These thoughts fade away while standing in the grand space that is Red Square. The Kremlin, the Apex of Russian political power dominates one side of the square, the huge ornate GUM shopping centre graces the opposing side and at the far end with its distinctive architecture, the colourful domes of St Basils Cathedral keep drawing your attention. These landmarks scream Russia more than anything else we've seen.
The sky darkens and the blue skies fade away, the wind whips around our legs rapidly gaining force and a few snowflakes begin to fall, is this the start of something that will make, such a beautiful sight even more magical?
The few flakes rapidly turn into a blizzard, the wind forces them horizontally into our faces stinging with an intensity never felt before. Visibility drops to a mere couple of meters destroying any hope of a fairytale scene emerging, maybe it's time to join the masses and find shelter, maybe THIS screams Russia more than anything we've experienced before.
We arrived on an overnight train from St Petersburg where we travelled 3rd class Platzcartny, with an open
dorm style sleeping arrangement. This class was described as for the seriously budget conscious or adventurous traveller, we don't think we fit into either of these categories and found it a perfectly acceptable way to travel. It was just like pretty much every other sleeper train in every other country we've travelled in. In was only for one night though, maybe after a few days the constant movement gets tiring, we'll upgrade to 2nd class for the rest of journey across this vast land.
We found the 'hostel' which we'd prebooked online and realised that it wasn't much of a hostel at all, it was just some dudes apartment that he'd filled with Ikea furniture and the description of the place online was all complete bullish*t. We booked an entire 4 bed dorm to ourselves; it didn't exist so we ended up sharing a dorm with other people. OK, this isn't really a problem for us; we're the ones who make all the noise, two young children and silence never go hand in hand, it was the other people we were concerned for. It apparently had English speaking staff that could provide help if required. This turned out to
be a surly teenager who couldn't utter a single word in English. He could use Google Translate though, which we found at the best of times could only produce lines of gibberish. Security was non-existent as we were given no key to either our room or the hostel; lockers were for ornamental use only. Russian pancakes and caviar for breakfast, mmmmmm sounded delicious but sadly didn't exist, we went to McDonalds for breakfast, one of the few places we could afford to eat in the city.
We decided to stay though for two reasons. 1. It was really cheap by Moscow standards and 2. Location, it was only a 5 minute walk to Red Square. We regretted this decision later that night though when we received a phone call from the owner who did happen to speak perfect English, he told us that if we didn't pay the full amount now (we'd paid a deposit online so 'only' paid the remaining balance when we arrived) we would have to leave. It was really late so I asked if we could sort it out in the morning but was told that if we didn't pay immediately we'd be forcibly ejected.
Anyone who thinks it's reasonable to throw a family with two babies out on the street at 11pm in winter is clearly an arsehole of epic proportions. We paid what he believed we owed because we had little choice and sadly this experience tainted our view of Moscow a little. We decided to cut short our stay in the city short and only stayed two nights. With difficulty we managed to book our onward train journey and was thankful the experience was going to be behind us sooner rather than later.
All being said other than the experience with the hostel our two days in Moscow were fairly pleasant, we had terrible weather one day with biting cold, and snow storms and a day with some sunshine and blue skies. Red Square is truly magnificent, St Basils is breathtaking to look at from the outside, the Kremlin with its imposing fortress like walls is amazing and even the GUM shopping centre is worth a look inside.
St Basils turned out to be a big disappointment on the inside. After viewing the interior of Our Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg, a very similar church
in appearance, it contained very little of interest. And looked a little like a building site so not worth the entrance fee at all.
All in all Moscow, was a bit of a let down, maybe this was due to just how much we loved St Petersburg so our expectations were a little high. It just didn't seem to impress as much. That, coupled with the price of things (honestly how do people afford to eat in this city?) meant that we were glad to leave, even though once we'd get on the train we wouldn't be getting off until four days later.
The train was fairly uneventful at first as we set ourselves up for the daily routine of keeping the boys occupied and trying to keep a normal bed time, moving it as we crossed time zones (5 in all). We had a few interesting characters drift in and out of our cabin over the course of the journey. Most notable was Rufus who was supposed to be sharing our cabin with us, but moved to another allowing us to have it all to ourselves. He left all his stuff in our cabin though and once
when he came back in, we assumed to get something from his stuff, he dropped his pants and produced a bottle of vodka from within. It had a broken lid and he just wanted help undoing it. Once it was open he left grinning, swigging from the bottle. That was the last we saw of Rufus, which was odd as it was also the last time his stuff saw him too. At some point during the night he'd vanished (we can only assume he got off the train and was too drunk to figure out how to get back on), the provodnitsas (carriage attendants) cleared away his bags and filled out some forms and that was that, Rufus was gone.
On our final night on the train we had an influx of new passengers and in the course of wandering up and down the carriage I was invited in for some drinks by a guy called Andre. After a couple I left feeling quite buzzy and I wondered what the hell they'd just given me, it was pretty strong stuff. Later that evening I made the mistake of once again accepting the offer of more drinks and after only
three toasts, my world slowly spiralled into oblivion. I only have a blurry, vague recollection of the rest of that night. All I know is it involved a lot of vomit, (over myself and everything and everyone else) and a lot of drifting in and out if consciousness. Really not a pleasant experience at all, not a great way to end the train trip and something I definitely won't be repeating.
So, hungover and still nauseous we pulled into Irkutsk, a pretty nondescript city in the centre of Siberia. It's a popular stop on the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian route, not for the town but for the lake that lays an hours drive outside of the city.
Lake Baikal is the world’s oldest and deepest freshwater lake and holds a fifth of the entire world’s unfrozen fresh water. Although smaller to look at on a map it holds more fresh water than all of North Americas great lakes combined. It is crystal clear, drinkably pure and has some unique wildlife including a freshwater seal which is only found here.
At this time of year though, the lake is frozen solid. It didn't stop us from going to visit it, but
it did stop us from going for a refreshing swim. We were quite content with being able to walk over it though and it was quite busy with snow mobiles and ATV's speeding all over it, cars using it as a quick way to get around and hundreds of people strolling around laughing and enjoying themselves. We even took a hovercraft ride over it, briefly leaving the ice to ride across the water where the river runs out of the lake. Although not ideal, the pictures of the lake in summer do look beautiful, it was good fun and pretty interesting to see such a large body of water frozen enough to support a regular stream of traffic and people.
For now though the journey continues, we're leaving Russia to move on to our next country. The next leg of our train journey takes us from Irkustk and two nights later deposits us in Ulan-Bator the capital of Mongolia. So long Russia, so long ridiculous prices…
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Beata and Tomek
us At Home Abroad
Again amazing photos of the Red Square;-)