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Published: September 29th 2008
We arrived in Moscow to be greated by an Mancunian like autumnal drizzle, "Fancy a brew lucy" I said thinking it would be a great idea as it was 6:45, nice brew it was too Tea with milk is such a treat but unfortunately We ended up having to negotiate the moscow metro at rush hour with our big rucksacks. Perhaps not such a great idea after all!
Anyway after we checked into our hostel, full of aussie backpackers, we visited Red square in the rain and managed to see Lenin in what lucy thought was moscows equivalent to madame tussards
Moscow has changed dramatically since my previous visits in 2000/01, it has become distinctly trendy, with designer shops such as Gucci, Chloe and Versace well represented in all the city shopping centres, along with this are trendy bars and cafes with prices to match, more expensive than central London. Even the old GUM on red square has not been spared, replacing the old queues for bread and other staples is a luxury food centre, selling large parma hams, caviar, fine european wines and cheeses and other imported goods!
At the same time old ladies line the metros and underpasses looking
for a few roubles to help them survive, Moscow has more billionaires then any other city in europe, unfortunately this is matched by a large amounts of people well below the poverty line.
We spent our second day looking around the Kremlin in the rain and then searching unsuccessfully for an internet cafe before checking out our local bar, which turned out to a european beer pub, with Newcastle brown on tap and bottles of english real ale!, it put a smile on a rather wet englishmans face!
On our last day, the rain relented so Lucy managed to see Red Square in all its glory, it still is in my opinion one of the most magnificent places in the world. We also went out of town to the Soviet Exhibition of Economic achievements, which was built to the 60s to commerate Soviet superiority, its a 1x2km concrete jungle with monuments and the shut Cosmonaut museum, surrounded by fairground rides and bars!
Capitalism has seemed to succeeded where both Napoleon and Hitler failed; that is the invasion of central Moscow!
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Matti
non-member comment
To be fair...
It was probably already like that when we were there in 2000; I remember GUM being full of diamonds and handbags and silly shoes, and Moscow was full of chain pizza restaurants, McDonalds, Stella Artois, Pepsi etc. I think because we were in a big group we didn't see that much of it. Do the police still drive Ladas?