Seven days in Moscow

View of Red Square
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Moscow = GMT +3hours and not too cold  anywhere from minus 4C to 1C (above freezing - t-shirt weather)

Our sojourn in St Petersburg was almost over and it was time to head to Moscow station at the top of Nevsky Prospeckt to get our overnight train to Moscow.

Think of a word beginning with Propa and you get the picture...

The train pulled in and it was the longest train I've ever seen, and it even had a red soviet star on the front. We were as excited as kids. (Nerdy ones). The sense of occasion was great cause all the staff were in very smart uniforms and very polite, even spoke some english. We found our berths (we were in a four sleeper cabin) and there was even food there, a potted plant, reading material (in Russian - but we looked at the pictures) and a small toiletry kit, including toothpaste. Trying to look like seasoned travellers and to contain ourselves we bought some vodka and introduced ourselves to our co-travellers, one was a radio operator on a fishing vessel and had been everywhere, the other guy was a businessman and had spent some time in Newcastle (wasn't overly impressed).

GUM - the famous department store. Now revamped, with actual merchandise inside.
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The journey was great, and it was amazing to wake up looking out the window at more snow than I had ever seen. Dire warnings about it being minus 37C in Moscow started to echo in our heads, but undeterred we headed out into the busy main station. We got (bad)coffees and waited for rush hour to be over.

We found our hostel thanks to the excellent directions of our Canadian friends from St Petersburg dumped our stuff and set off immediately for Red Square.

What a sight - St Basil's, Lenin's Mausoleum, GUM and the state history museum which you never see in pics but was beautiful. Red Square is large and impressive, we could see where all the tanks used trundle past and where the big cheeses used to all stand to wave!  So exciting!

Church on Red Square.
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The following day we went to look at Lenin. He's definitely dead and it's one of the spookiest things I've ever seen. Not just cause it's so weird him being in a dim black marble cube, but the soliders poke you if you stare too long, which of course we did, hard not to.  He wanted to be buried near his mum and they ignored his wishes and you can't help hoping he's tormenting Stalin in hell for this as it's truly awful to be gawped at by tourists for the last few decades. We wandered and had a look at the other gravestones along the Kremlin wall - and saw the unknown solider eternal flame.

Lenin lives on here.
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We went into St Basil's which is tiny on the inside but quite sweet. They managed to pack 4 souvenir shops in there which is such a pity.

The following day we went to the Armoury at the Kremlin to look at the various royal carriages, costumes and more gold than I have ever seen (and we've been to the gold museum in Lima). We also saw the Fabrege eggs which are beautiful. Especially the trans-siberian one with the little clockwork train.

We went off to a market also, a weird wooden Disneyland type one with more tat than you could imagine and a good many icons and matriuska dolls.(spelling?)

St Basil's.
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Needing a few more icons we went to Novodevichy Convent to have a look at some and also frescoes which were saved before Stalin had the churches destroyed. Later that day we walked along Gorky Park and went to a Sculpture park - when they tore down all the communist art, they carted the sculptures off here, and it's really interesting. We saw about half cause there was so much snow, but Cathal loved it and we froze happily there for hours.

We reckon we must have seen about a million pieces of art now on this trip cause we racked up a fair few at the Puskin museum - loads of Cezanne and Egyptology and plaster casts of every famous sculpture you can think of.  And more icons. I went to the Cezanne exhibition at the National Gallery in London a few years ago, but I have seen more Cezanne paintings in two museums in Russia than I did there. They have so much stuff, half nicked off the bourgeoisie and the rest off the Nazis.

Heads in the Sculpture park. These represent those who died in Stalin's Purges.
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Cathal prefers Moscow to St Petersburg, but I'm not so sure. It's much brasher and louder. More poverty and more expensive. Worth seeing, if only for the crazy parking (they park on the pavement, on zebra crossings and anywhere else they feel like). We've seen more hummers and 4x4 Mercedes (we reckon those are the Russian Mafia). It's definitely completely different to St Petersburg and part of the Russian Experience.  Although now the snow is melting we are in fear of getting impaled by horrendous icicles hanging off every building (old ladies have been warning us when we looked in danger!).

Inside St Basil's
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Tomorrow we head out to the Trans-Siberian train to Irkutsk at nine twenty pm. So excited, we did a special shopping trip so we won't starve!  Not sure what we bought though, so we still might. We've discovered that even if it has mushrooms on the packet that's no indication of what's inside. But 90% of the time it's alright.

Our last day in Moscow we went to VDNKh. That's commie-speak for Monument to Soviet Economic Achievements. Well we just had to go. Approaching it we saw the Space Obelisk which is really cool. It's a monument from when the Russians were ahead in the space race. See pics, it's rather large.  VDNKh itself is like a soviet amusement park (although not that amusing) with various pavillions in different styles (about 60 of them). Each one was dedicated to extolling the virtues of something or other, eg. agriculture, electricity, Armenia or whatever was so great about the USSR. Think of a word beginning with Propa and you get the picture. There's a golden fountain with 20 girls in national costumes holding sheafs of barley aloft, and a tractor driver and farm girl doing similar on the entrance (holding sheaf aloft etc).  Now though with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the inside of all the buildings are filled with the sort of tacky inferior goods they were trying to keep out, it's little Tottenham Court road with little kiosks peddling electronic goods, crammed into these big exhibition spaces. And a bit depressing and ironic for all that. The worst thing was the unspeakably bad Euro Vision type music blaring out of all the lamp-posts. (Presumably it used to be the voice of Stalin in other times). This music kinda followed you around, and did my head in. It's very weird.  However we did see Yuri Gargarin's Vostock launcher and some planes Cathal knows the names of Tur- something. We went over into thigh deep snow to take some pics so hope you like them. Next despatch from Irkutsk in about 4 days