Advertisement
Published: November 16th 2007
I haven't done an entry on Moscow yet. So let's head back in time, to 6 days ago...
We arrived by overnight train from St Petersburg early in the morning. I was not at my best as the cabin had been like a sauna all night. we shared our compartment with a lovely Korean-Russian lady and her 10 year old grandson who both spoke no English but we managed to convey that we were from NZ and we learnt they were from Moscow, having been on a visit to St Petes. Its quite funny how people who don't speak English even when they know you can't speak Russian, just continue to jabber away to you in Russian as if your blank look you're giving them, means quite the opposite. I have now got used to this and have taken to just nodding and playing along. I took some photos of I don't know what today, from the train, cos the Russian lady was making me. She was gesturing and speaking Russian at ten to the dozen and pointing out the window. She must have explained the significance of what I was taking the photo of, but of course, I wasn't exactly sure.
When we got off the train, our driver was standing on the platform, right outside our cabin, holding up a card with our names on, and quickly ferried us to our hotel. This of course didn't score us any points on the "traveller" scale, but at 6am on a cold morning in strange and foreign Moscow, the hotel transfer was a godsend. The hotel complex we had been booked into was a massive complex, four towers each 35 floors high, used as the athletes village for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, a fair distance from town. But in the complex, it was Vegas-style everything you need under one roof- restaurants, bars, casinos, bowling alleys and health clubs. It was beginning to seem we wouldn't end up seeing much of Moscow!
We slept much of that first day and on the second, we were on a morning guided tour of Red Square. Our guide, Kate, met us at our hotel, and we caught the metro in 5 stops and 20 minutes into the city centre. Once there, we visited Red Square, site of the Kremlin, St Basils Cathedral and Lenin's Mausoleum.
Now, I have learnt a fair bit about Russian history since being here and Lenin was not a particularly nice man, yet he still lies in state here as he has done for the last 80 years, and people still queue up for hours to see him. its all very strict to go and see him, no backpacks, no phones, no cameras. He lies in a glass casket and looks like he is asleep. The embalmers did a pretty good job, though, I have to say. Hmm, now we have started our quest to do the rather strange "triple", to see the bodies in state of Lenin, Mao (Beijing) and Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam).
I loved the sight of St Basil's cathedral in its real splendour, with all its different coloured domes. A sight so familiar but yet you don't know so much about. And I still don't really, I wasn't paying enough attention to what Kate was saying, I was too busy taking photos of the cathedral!
We tried to visit the Kremlin on our own in the afternoon but the process was annoyingly difficult to work out so we gave up and headed back to the safe sanctuary of our hotel complex. We also tried to get tickets to the Bolshoi ballet but they weren't performing that night, d'oh!
The next day we headed back for another attempt at the Kremlin and it was surprisingly easy this time round. We visited the Armoury which houses all the treasures collected by the Tsars over the years they were in power and is quite an impressive collection.a dazzling array of gold and silver everything plus thrones they sat on and carriages they rode in. The highlight for me though were the collection of Faberge eggs made by Carl Faberge. I'd heard about these eggs but never quite understood the significance of them. Well, they are just magnificent. Eggs intricately decorated in lots of gold and jewels, each egg inside containing a miniature model masterpiece. One was a little replica of the Trans-Siberian train made in gold, with a little locomotive and little carriages . Quite something.
After this, we had a bit of time to kill before we had to get back to the hotel to catch the first leg of the Trans-Siberian. As we were wandering just outside Red Square, we were stopped by a Russian policeman who held up his hand and demanded to see our papers. We had been prepared for this, so we produced photocopies of our passports. He didn't seem greatly satisfied with these so then asked for our hotel keys snd cards which would show him which hotel we were staying at. We tried to explain that we had checked out and were about to board a train to Irkutsk, even showing him the train tickets, this wasn't enough to satisfy him. He just kept repeating "hotel key! hotel key!" which clearly was the extent of his English vocab. Trying to explain wasn't getting us anywhere and just when I thought he was going to bundle us up and take us to the nearest cells or at the very least, fine us a few thousand roubles on the spot, he asked "how long, Moscow?". David quickly replied "2 days" this seemed to be satisfactory and he finally let us go. Phew. Storm in a teacup in the end, but definitely one Russian experience I won't forget in a hurry!
That was about the sum total of Moscow for us. That night, we headed off to the train station to jump on the train for the start of a long but exciting journey.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.257s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 5; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0465s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
the embalmed trifecta
having paid my respects to mao and uncle ho a few years back, i can tell you it's just as strict. boy did i get in trouble for having my arms crossed while gawking (so disrespectful of me!). it's pretty funny that you spend longer in the queue than peering at the corpses huh?... sick, but so, so fascinating... enjoy the rest of your journey - am loving reading your instalments! m :o)