Russia - April 2006

Marching around Moscow

The Guinness

We found Silver's Pub after wandering around a bit. After establishing that draught Guinness as indeed being served we ordered a pint (£3.50) and a meal of steak and chips to go with it.

Me and Kevski enjoying the Guinness at Silver's Bar

Bertie Ahern the Irish Prime Minister had been here apparently though it wasn’t clear whether he also had to ask the barmaid to draw out of a hat the next place he had to visit. Explaining to the barmaid why I am asking her to pick out a straw at random is never easy and therefore I have another photograph of a rather bemused young lady to add to the collection. Her name was Nasty, a rather unglamorous-shorted version of Natasha.

Natasha picking out my next destination

Getting there and around

It is possible to go to Russia as an independent traveller but getting a visa sorted out can be a hassle so instead we went on an organised tour with Travelscope. The tour we opted for had two nights in Moscow, two in St Petersburg with a night on an overnight train between the two and then two nights in Prague at the end of week. Our tour guide pushed the optional tours making out that doing anything under ones own steam was nigh impossible. He should have learnt that saying something like that to me and Kevin just made us even more determined to try. He eventually gave up trying after three days and finding we were still alive.

We flew from Manchester to Moscow via Prague, the took an overnight train to St Petersburg, We flew home from St Petersburg stopping off in Prague for a couple of nights.

Team Makeup

Intrepid Kevin, or Kevski as he will now be known, kindly joined me again on another trip.

Accommodation

As the coach pulled up to the hotel I realised it was the very same hotel I had stayed in almost two decades earlier. It was the enormous Hotel Cosmos, built in an arc shape and towering to some 25 floors and containing well over a 3500 beds. Memories came flooding back as we entered but some things had changed. Flashing lights covered the hotel frontage and the massive lobby area was now full of tourist shops as opposed to the dour cavern it was previously.

Hotel Cosmos - don't forget your room number!

Food

I won’t remember this trip for the food that’s for sure. One thing I will remember however was the boxed breakfast on the sleeper train from Moscow to St Petersburg. This was accompanied by coffee made from the charming hot water boiler at the end of the carriage. The strawberry jam proved not to be but was instead caviar – real first-class treatment.

Sightseeing highlights

The Moscow underground stations are a tourist attractions in themselves, many of which are lavishly decorated with statues and chandeliers. They are also designed to double up as nuclear fall-out shelters. Perhaps the décor is meant to take your mind off the fact an A-bomb has just landed on your head. Navigating the underground was a little challenging with all stations in the Cyrillic alphabet and the station names not being visible from the train. It became a matter of counting the number of stops from when you got on and hoping for the best. A mistake here and there just meant you had another attractive station to admire.

The ornate Moscow Underground stations

The peaceful walled grounds of the Kremlin. The occasional swiftly-moving black government limousine was all that broke the peace. The Tsar Bell, the world’s largest that cracked before it was installed having been doused in cold water during a fire.

The Tsar Bell in the Kremlin

Red Square (or as Kevski pointed out is more of a grey rectangle actually) with St Basils and Lenin’s mausoleum.

St Basils on Red Square

The large open-air arts and crafts Vernisazh market in the suburbs of Moscow, catering mainly for locals it stretched for miles, stall after stall. This is where you came if you wanted to buy antiques, coins or even parts for a MIG fighter. I was expecting food stalls but there weren’t any. There was the sad sight of a man with his dancing bears, something that we saw again in St Petersburg. Some stalls sold the traditional ‘matryoshka’ nesting Russian doll sets with a modern spin. President Kennedy stood next to Castro next to Frank Lampard next to Bin Laden. In another set the Monica Lewinsky doll fitted inside the Bill Clinton doll.

Matryoshka of every design 

We ended up at the Novodevicy Monastery, a real oasis of peace amongst the busy Moscow streets. Another place to come for your picturesque photographs. It seemed to be full of numerous wedding parties and us. In one party we came across the new bride was Russian and the husband sounded like he came from Barking.

Quirky moments

I won the ‘first one to make a Russian smile’ competition hands down. Our plane was still passing over Germany when the lady from Moscow sitting next to me wrote out her address, thrust it into my hand and looked at me expectantly. She knew about three more words of English than I knew Russian i.e. five, which would have severely limited most people’s ability to hold a conversation, but Valentina was a determined individual and not one to put a language barrier in the way of a good chat. Perhaps it was the way I kept nodding as she jabbered away that made her think I knew what she was saying. Just as I was about to feign a DVT an angel appeared across the aisle. A young Polish girl, fluent in both Russian and English stepped in and started to act as an interpreter.

I had a phone call from a colleague when I was sightseeing in the Kremlin. She was unaware I was on holiday and seemed a bit stunned when I said I’m afraid I couldn’t talk at that moment as I was in the Kremlin.

Inside the Kremlin

We got a metro out to Gorky Park, paid a small admission fee and found not much there. Suddenly however a display of fountains accompanied by classical music started up as if someone had put a coin in a slot. It was all rather surreal given that so few people were around. We failed in our attempts to find a reasonable café anywhere so strolled back towards town. What turned out to be more interesting than Gorky Park was in fact the sculpture park. This was the home not only to modern sculptures but also to sculptures from the Soviet era – a sort of resting place for those statues no longer thought desirable. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Lenin and Pinocchio were so close together.

One of the relatively new additions to the Moscow skyline is on the River Moscow and is a giant quirky sculpture of Peter the Great standing 60 meters tall at the helm of a boat. It dominates the skyline for over a large area and is disliked by many locals and I can understand why. Small and quirky is OK but giant and quirky?

Peter the Great

Lasting Memories

I had last been in Moscow some 19 years previously. A group of eight friends from work had come on a similar organised tour of Russia and what at that time were the Soviet States of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. It was in the days of Micheal Gorbachov and perestroika when his idea of modernisation included a severe crackdown on alcohol consumption following a realisation that Russians were slowly pickling themselves in vodka. Things had changed over those 19 years. The most striking thing was the vast amount of traffic now on the Moscow streets. We circled the Kremlin for twenty minutes before discovering a subway that avoided us getting flattened.

We sat for a while in the sunshine outside the home of the Bolshei Ballet listening to a military brass band playing and watching the skateboarders perform. I’d heard many tales of Moscow before coming here including some which told how it was too dangerous for foreigners to venture outside without a personal guard. Everything we saw however appeared to indicate it was perfectly safe and the main hazard was being mowed down by someone with poor skateboarding skills of which there was a fairly high number.

Out of the Capital

The trip to St Petersburg was of course a holiday in itself highlight. It’s hard to know what to look at in the Hermitage, as the rooms themselves are stunning and packed full of famous works of art. Each room is differently designed too so there’s always something to look at.

At the Hermitage - looks like there are some perks associated with being a Russian general.