Moscow and Saint Petersburg, August 2003

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Thursday 21st. Moscow

landed.
train to moscow
eat in TGI Fridays

Friday

Woken up very early (6am) by man with angle grinder. This is the view from our room.
And this was our room.

Went for an early morning walk to the river Moskva, the Kremlin,

Red Square,

and the Bolshoi Theatre
.
Saw Genardy Zuganov (Leader of the Communist party, who challenged Putin for the Presidency at the last election)

Nap
In the evening, went to a club with Yuri.
There was some German kraftwerk-electrofunk-band playing, which was very good.
Borsh, and Plov
Once Frank found out how to ask for 3 vodkas, it was always going to end in a hangover... ;)
He ended up taking some girls numbers, but was so drunk that he forgot to ask for their names, and instead put them in his phone as "Russian girl 1, Russian girl 2, etc", which wasn't particularly useful when we wanted to ring them the next day. ;)

Saturday.

Went to an airshow.
Met up with Oksana and Dmitri.
Caught a train to Zhukovsky airbase (about 20 miles outside Moscow).
Then there was a convoy of buses to get us to the airshow.
Weather was good.
Sat on the grass, drinking Russian beer (which is excellent, and very cheap btw), eating shashlik (kebab), watching MiGs ripping around the Russian skies.

Noise was very loud, and didn't help my slight hangover much.
Upon leaving the site, we had to queue for a long time.
A convoy of army lorries decided to drive right through the centre of the crowd, which didn't please Mr Russian man very much, and they had to abandon their vehicles.

Lots of police, and mounted police turned up to try to control the (very large) restless crowd, which was starting to get a bit frisky.
There was no information for quite a while in this crowd, and people started shouting and yelling. I could see another revolution starting here.
A few people made a run for it, but were gunned down before they reached the buses. (I made that last bit up actually). The crowd just cheered them on in reality.
Eventually got back to Moscow. On the train back got talking to some crazy old guy who was, we suspect, rather drunk. He thought I was German, and Frank was Italian, and not much we could say or do would change his mind. After we told him that we were going to St Petersburg by train tomorrow, he told us that the best way to travel was to get very drunk, and gave us two small cucumbers to help us with our hangovers.
Tried to find a restaurant that served Russian food. Ate shashlik and crabs

Sunday

Gorky park

Shashlik

Big wheel

Ship in the air? What's that all about?

In the evening, we caught the overnight train to St Petersburg, at 2am, arriving at about 11am.
The train was really nice - all polished wood, really clean and comfortable.

After we set off, the train conductor knocked on our door, and asked us for 120 rub. We asked what for, and were informed that the pillows and sheets weren't included in the ticket price. We weren't falling for that, and so we told her we had no money, and she went away after a while.
Just got a couple of texts from someone that has read this:
you moron, sheets and pillows ARENT included in the price on trains in Russia
refusing to pay for pillows and sheets you broke the law - you villain!

Monday. St Petersburg

Note: As I was browsing the internet, I found someone elses description of their trip to St Petersburg. Admittedly, it was in 2000, but he seemed to start moaning about everything once he left the US. I mean, he only drank coke, and ate at KFC when he was there. If you go abroad, you have to try and soak up their culture, their customs, their way of life, not moan about everything being different to where you live. The fact it's different is the whole point for going abroad!

Found the Sovietskaya hotel. It was really nice, albeit a little far from the centre.
We decided to ask random girls in the street if we could photograph them.

We spent the day walking around St Pb, looking at the nice architecture, and the scenery.

Met some girls on the Metro, and in a little cafe.
In the evening, we went out to the Metro club. The doorman must have spotted we weren't Russian (don't ask me how) as he turned us away, and told us to go through the VIP door. The only difference is that the fee is £10 each via the VIP door. Anyway, once in, the club was excellent. More excellent Russian beer, lots of very gorgeous girls, and the music was really banging actually.
We started off drinking beer, moving on to vodka.
We met a few girls, and got chatting, and bought some Champagne, and after that we started on the vodka again. (It's a pretty potent mix, let me tell you.)
By the time the alcohol had improved my dancing skills to the point that I was the best dancer in the club, and everyone was looking at me, and giving me lots of room to dance.
About 4.30am we decided that we should maybe tear ourselves away, and head back to the hotel.
We argued with a taxi driver (and won) about the price of the journey to the hotel, and slept very deeply.

Tuesday

Frank was decidedly hung over today.
Decided to SMS some of the girls we had met in the club the night before, and found that there were lots of names there that we didn't remember. Sent a mass-SMS to them all.
Met the girls from the cafe again.
Did more sight-seeing - we were going to try and get into the hermitage, but the queue was too long.

We knew of a webcam that pointed to the Winter Palace, so we decided to get on it ;)

Caught the train back from St Pb to Moscow at about 11pm.
The train conductor came and asked us for money for the pillows and sheets again. We tried to argue, but she wasn't having it. Ended up paying 120 rub.

Wednesday. Moscow

Didn't sleep very well at all on this train. There was a little knocking noise that kept us awake most of the journey.
Arrived at Moscow Komsomolets train station at 6 am.
Hung around for a bit, went to the hotel, and tried to check in at about 10am.
Couldn't check in, so hung around in the lobby, and tried to make the place look untidy as possible.
They found a room for us shortly.
Slept until about 3pm
Went to Oskanas office

Argentine restaurant
Saw a very very drunk policeman in uniform on the metro. Apparently, much as we like to malign the Russians for drinking too much over here, this doesn't happen very often at all.

Thursday

Bought some more souvenirs
Went to the airport.
Arrived at 7pm for a 9.35 flight.
Flight was delayed for those magical "technical reasons".
Ended up taking off about 1.5 - 2 hours late.
Ran through passport control, ran through customs, ran to the bus stop, but the coach had left about 5 minutes before. The last coach for the night.
We met another lady from Bristol, and we resigned ourselves to sleeping on the seats at Heathrow.
Frank wasn't having it, and found a British Airways person, and demanded they pay for a taxi back to Bristol, or put us in a hotel. A hotel it was. The Renaissance.

Friday. England

Had about 3 plates of full English breakfast.
Caught the coach back.

Things not to be in Russia

Vegetarian
Teetotal
Anti-fur
Feminist
Easily offended

Calums Russian Metro Rant

The Russian Metro is one of the best in the world. Not only does it look like this,

but it costs £1.20 for 10 journeys, you can travel as far and as long as you like for one journey, and the trains come ever 30 seconds in peak times. They drop to about 1:45 or 2:00 in slow times.

Best vodka: Russki Standard
Best beer: Starri Melnik, Classikni, anything really.

Here are all the pics for completeness.