Blogs from Moscow, Northwest, Russia, Europe - page 15

Woke up to snow - lots of it. Arrived in Moscow early morning happy to be there feeling as if the travelling adventure had really begun. We navigated our way through the metro to our hostel without a hitch. Tina was really pleased that yet again her choice of accommodation was spot on - this hostel had been booked for the resident cat Basil - he was an enormous black and white cat with a strong Russian accent. The hostel - basically a guys apartment had everything we needed. One of the most striking things about Russia is the scale of everything - huge. We made the most of the first day visiting Red Square, walking round the outside of the Kremlin and the GUM(!) an up market shopping centre on the square. We made it ... read more

Hello folks, Another day, another city, but first i'll recap what we got up to on our last day in St. Petersburg. Managed to rouse ourselves fairly early, no beer haze this morning, and took ourselves off to the State Hermitage Museum, just around the corner from our hostel. Russian's like to rinse your money if you aren't one of them, so admittance was 400 rubles, around £10, 4 times the amount a Russki would pay. The building is very impressive. Founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, it has the largest art collection in the world (not that we were bothered), and holds over 3 million items, some of which are Egyptian relics, armour and weapons, Siberian antiques, to name but a few. We mosied our way round, taking about 3 hours to do so, ... read more

One time in a year at the beginning of September a place near a historical village Borodino turns into a field of an epic battle reconstructions. More then 2000 people take a part in this event, making a historical reconstruction of the greatest battle between French and Russian armies, happened on 7th of September in 1812. Borodinskoe field knows not only the French conquerors. In the 2nd World War there was a battle between German and Russian armies and the other day you can see a reconstruction of 1945 year. Please, see the pictures of the greatest battles of Borodino.... read more

23.03.2012 Dnes jsme po 2100km prijeli do Moskvy. Cesta byla celkem v pohode, jen na ruskych hranicich jsme stravili 8 hodin diky tomu, ze Lotysi jezdi do Ruska pro laciny benzin. Russti celnici byli naprosto v pohode, koukli do auta a kdyz jsem rekl kam jedem, tak jen nechapave kroutili hlavama a rekli "buh s Vami nikdo Vas uz nikdy neuvidi". Cesta do Moskvy byla celkem nudna, krome asi 50km seriozniho offroadu...kde silnice proste zmizela v bahne. Kamarad z ruskeho Delica clubu nas privital vodkou, pivem a spoustou jidla. Vecer jsme v parku vyvencili psa, popovidali s mistnimi pejskari, proste pohoda. We arrived to Moscow after 2100km. Russian customs were nice and we did not have any problems. Journey was good, only 50km was serious offroad...Our friend from Delica club was waiting for us with vodka, ... read more

The Oxford Dictionary definition states that a smile is 'a pleased, kind, or amused facial expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed.' This human expression seemed somewhat lacking as we travelled throughout Russia and the surly and non-smiling faces became commonplace. 'Make it a game', said the text from my daughter,'see how many will smile back!' Score – 0. No-one responds with a smile if you smile first. Why not? Maybe we should have taken the advice of a friend and just asked them to 'Smile,' please!' According to Hinsz and Tomhave (1991)50% of people who are smiled at will smile back. We tried to prove that statistic but came to the conclusion that the 50% of people who don't smile back all live in Russia! The Middle ... read more