A Day in Moscow... Not Enough Time At All!!!

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After four nights and four days on the train from Irkutsk, having travelled around 7000 kms and having crossed 5 time zones, we have finally arrived in Moscow - stinky, overfed and showing early but distinct signs of cabin fever, but incredibly excited to be here!

Thanks to our previous train trips, we all felt as if we had got our ‘train legs’ - and it was with this new confidence that we boarded the lengthiest leg of our Trans Mongolian/Siberian journey. Informed by the successes and lessons of the previous trips, we had hit the supermarkets on our departure day and topped up our remaining food supplies with some essentials (and some goodies too!). Once boarded, we went about making the kupe (compartment) our ‘home’ for the next four days - bags packed neatly away, our daypacks (which contained our four-day clothing, reading and toiletry essentials) out of the way but easily accessible, and our food and drink supplies systematically organised… and, as eating and drinking were two of our five main activities for the trip (the others being reading, playing cards & dice, and sleeping), we made sure that they were on-hand at any given moment! And so the next four days passed in enjoyably relaxing bouts of each of these activities, made all the more satisfying by the beautiful and varied scenery that filled the windows on both sides of the train. Massive pine forests, rolling hills, fields of sunflowers, glittering lakes and rivers, strips of wildflowers lining the train tracks, spectacular sunsets and sunrises, and the gorgeous little Russian log houses with their brightly painted blue and green window frames and funny shaped roofs… it was easy for an hour to pass by as we soaked up the beauty of our surroundings and let ourselves be carried along in time by the soothing and monotonous rocking of the train and our steady progress across the Russian landscape. We also enjoyed the short stops at various train stations along the way, where we could buy bottles of water (and sometimes beer!), chocolate, fresh raspberries, as well as tomatoes and cucumbers from the various shops or babushkas selling their goods on the platforms. The delights of which we enjoyed over boisterous games of yahtzee, zilch and 500, or quietly as we read our books before drifting off to sleep with bellies full of yummy treats.

All in all, it seems that we are quite well-suited to long-distance train travel… and we were sad to realise that our Trans-Mongolian/Siberian journey was, with every rock of the train, coming to a close. This realisation however didn’t stop us enjoying it right up until our early start this morning (3 am), when we were woken by our Providnista (Sp??) informing us that we were nearing Moscow and needed to get up, strip our sheets and go to the toilet for the last time if we needed to (the toilets closed 2 hours before arrival)… at least that is how we interpreted it, because she didn’t really speak any English and our Russian is absolutely terrible! We’ve only really learned how to say ‘thankyou’ (which we try to use as much as possible… to try and prove (without much success) that we are not completely culturally and linguistically arrogant…) and we rely on Crysee’s use of Croatian to try and get us through the tough times… with sporadic success. So we arrived at 5 o’clock, to a pre-dawn Moscow station, complete with beer-drinking drunks lying around in various stages of consciousness and the stench of cigarette smoke and urine filling our nostrils. Nice. But still, it did little to dampen our excitement at arriving in Europe’s biggest and fastest growing city… our bags were heavy though, so before hitting the streets to explore, we searched out a left-luggage place to take our big packs for the day so that we could be more mobile before we board the train to St Petersburg late tonight. Successful, we deposited our bags, went back up to the main station to grab some sustenance and then we emerged out onto the completely Russian-speaking streets of Moscow… scary and exciting all at once. The station and its surrounding buildings mobilised our excitement - old and beautiful architecture characterised by spires, towers, marble and stone… all of which helped the reality of our location set in, as we let our bleary sleepy eyes swivel around us, soaking up the already buzzing streets of Moscow. Woooohoooo!!

Despite the opulence of the surrounding buildings, however, we were confronted by the poverty and alcoholism that was so apparent in the blocks around the station. There was desperation and an air of malevolence lurking underneath the grandeur of the tall and picturesque station buildings…

After heading to Leningradsky station and successfully purchasing our tickets for St Petersburg later tonight, and negotiating our way through the Metro system to the centre of town, the signs of poverty and homelessness were replaced by equally visible signs of wealth and decadence, both old and new… the colourful domes of St Basil’s cathedral, and the gilded domes of all the other amazing cathedrals, the stateliness of Lenin’s mausoleum, the high stone walls of the Kremlin and the well-manicured lawns and flower-beds of Alexandrovsy Sad garden juxtaposed against the incredibly modern and flashy boutique shopping centres housed in beautiful and ornate old buildings with shiny windows and marble steps, sporting brands such as Dior, Boss, Rolex and the like, which lined the clean, cosmopolitan and chic streets… we felt like we could have been in the richest suburb of any European city, with all the familiar English brands and the street signs being the only things in Russian.

Hero grabbed a cappuccino from one of the nice little Italian looking cafes and enjoyed the taste of something familiar, while we hunted down the vegetarian restaurant ‘Jaggernath’ that we had read about in the Lonely Planet. Russia so far (apart from the tomatoes and cucumbers that we have been purchasing from the sellers on the train stations and turning into simple salads) has not been favourable to us in terms of providing us with meat-free culinary delights… so we were anxious to find this treasure trove of vegetarian goodness… To our greatest pleasure, we ended up finding Jaggernath not too far from the Kremlin and Red Square precinct… and what’s more - they have free wireless!!! Yay! So we hooked into some vege samosas and checked our email with the remaining battery on our computer… the only bad thing was that they wouldn’t let us plug our charger in, so we only had about 10 minutes to play with… So we ate and then set off in search of another internet café that would allow us to charge our laptop, which is where we are now. However, the wireless here at Time Online is really expensive so we thought that rather than use the internet here, we would just use their electricity and write our blog offline and then head back to Jaggernath for dinner (once our laptop has been fully charged) and upload our travel stories and photos.

In the meantime, we plan to head back to the Red Square and the Kremlin to explore the amazing sights in more detail… Will write again soon!

Later that day…

Back at Jagannath, we have just fed ourselves some DECENT VEGETARIAN FOOD!!! Dhal, a vege curry and another samosa... Yum. And the best part is that Carly and Crysee are not here yet, so there is bound to be another round once they arrive. So far vegetarian restaurants have been hard (read: impossible) to find, so we are making the most of it while we are here. Unfortunately, the wireless is no longer available. Apparently, they only offer wireless until 3pm. Bastards. Oh well. We’ll just sit here, eating their yummy food and keep typing our blog in the hopes of one day finding some wifi, when we have battery, so that we can upload all of our ‘gold’ onto our blog. We hope it will happen soon.

Meanwhile, what an amazing day we have had in Moscow! We had spent the first part of the day on a reconnaissance mission - a quick tour of the Red Square, and the exterior of the Kremlin, as well as checking out the underground Okhotny Ryad shopping mall which is supposedly awesome. It was okay. Still a shopping mall, so not that exciting. Once we got outside, however, after writing the first part of our blog, we discovered the sun was shining over Alexandrovsky garden (beside the Kremlin). We had an ice cream each while we strolled through the beautiful gardens, enjoying the green of the lawn and the colours of the flowers and the general happiness that pervaded the atmosphere. It felt like summer. We checked out a section of the Kremlin wall that is in its original state, then followed our eyes along and over the walls where we could see tempting glimpses of the architecture within, including the dazzling golden domes that top some of the Kremlin’s cathedrals. We then debated whether or not to pay the big ticket price to cross over into the interior section of the Kremlin and after brief consideration, we decided that we couldn’t come to Moscow without going in - and are we glad we did! The cathedrals in the Kremlin are incredible - the gold and silver domes made us instantly happy to have entered the grounds, but the insides of the cathedrals absolutely blew us away. Stunning frescoes covered every inch of the walls and ceilings with a beauty that rendered us speechless apart from our rather inadequate ‘wows.’ We felt and were awed by their age and the age of the buildings, as well as the imagination and talent of the architects and artists. We took so many photos inside the Kremlin (and outside!) that Hero finally, to my astonishment and amusement, declared that she was “photoed out.” For someone who can snap 100 photos before breakfast (though I’m not one to talk), that was saying something!

Anyway, Carly and Crysee have just arrived to have dinner with us, so we'd better head off. See you in St Petersburg!

Please see more photos at our Flickr site.

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