Advertisement
Published: November 13th 2009
Moscow in three days not possible...
Where to start. Got settled in the $28/night 8 person mixed gender dorm top bunk the squeaked when I coughed. The cough has been developing as I am traveling to the East and the pollution seems more pronounced. Best breakfast of the trip, small restaurant, coffee/americano, 2 eggs basted, thick slice of canned ham cold, heated bread that passed a toast unfortunately the coffee was not a bottomless cup but americano never is: is it? $8. Red Square is not quite as I had pictured, not a big as it looked in May Day parades with all the tanks on TV. The Kremlin is closed every time you turned around. Did not get the tour. City Metro is FANTASTIC. Even I could find may way around, once I figured out the the line crosses were separate stops. Lenia, we met on the train remember, and I met a Lenin's tomb, went to GUM, similar Caesars' Forum, had dinner in an open cafe. Next night Alexander, Lenia, and I went out for a beer and several ours walking taking in sights; numerous small parks and statues. Then on Wed night Lenia, Helen and I went to the English speakers club at the Pushkin culture Center, it free for native English speakers $7 for non-native speakers,includes coffee, tea, cookies and fruit. The hostess greets you and ask where your from, as a volunteer her job is to track some rough statistics, she is self taught; started at age 63 and at 85 seems to have mastered it, an inspiration. I was surprised to see the 50 or so young, 25 to 35 clubbing dressed- up and comers. They were polishing and improving on there all ready descent English skill for both business and personal reasons. There were it seems 4 native speakers and we were all engaged with small groups. An enjoyable experience, you can have more in depth conversations than with many of the people you come into contact with in daily routines and business where you are using special vocabulary like "train"' "platform", "beer". I would recommend to any travel to check out English speaking club opportunities in any city you may travel to. The Russian professor of Japanese at Moscow University said I had a particularly hard to follow accent. The girls had to move on to other things and I went on to see the Credence Clearwater Revival tribute band at 'bilunga' (a club); had no trouble with the Metro part but the Diana, a young, gought dressed Polish girl, gave me directions the club, she ended up walking with me, or at least Barbara would call it walking; it was a near trot, for a mile a half. The band was Russian band and including an interpretative dancer. No Credence! On exiting we were 300 meters from the Metro.
The city has lots of LARGE black cars, with the rain and constant drizzle most are not shown at there best. There is a real sense of great personal wealth here in the center of the city but there is not a sence of thriving commerce and prosperity in general. Most things shows signs of needing a lot of maintenance. I did a check google translate check to see if there is a Russian word(s) for , "maintenance". There are. Found 44 nouns and adjatives but no verbs. The whole concept could use examination.
Most of the time ate a food stands on the street ... everything here is more expensive...
Next day it raining hard so decided to have a travel agent do the train ticket to Almaty, 3 nights $ for me. It was delivered to the Hostel in less than hour the total for fees were $
-- Great City ... will definitely come back....
Train to Sochi uneventful.. until the boarder check. Long story.. was ejected from the train, ticket conficated and but on the next train heading back in the direction of Moscow.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.287s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 13; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0709s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sherry & Ward
non-member comment
interesting
David, Always interesting and informative - Thanks!