Moscow, Russia – 09/09 Love is in the air

(Michelle) We have been in Russia less than a week, but already we have seen about 15 wedding parties wondering around town. In St. Petersburg we saw 5 in one day and it was a Wednesday! I managed to capture 3 couples on film. We learned later from our friends in Tomsk that it is traditional to take wedding photos at all the famous sites in your town. We even saw a wedding couple getting their photo taken at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Kremlin… If we have the option of a photo by the tomb of the Unknown Soldier for our wedding album, I will probably take a pass on that one.

(TJ) I’m vetoing the pass by Michelle, if there are any Unknown Soldier graves or perhaps sacrificial sites by where we get married, we are getting our pictures taken there.

Moscow, Russia – 09/09 Museum and Train

(Michelle) Before we could hit the museum, we still needed to drop our bags off somewhere first. Our book said that there is a left luggage place at the station where our train leaves later that night. So we finally find it in the basement of the station and there are like 6 different windows. We of course have no idea which one to use. I was fiddling with the lingo for a while to see if I could find a Russian phrase for “what time do you close”, because we want to make sure we get our bags out before then. So I finally get it worked out and he indicates that they don’t close and that he is the guy to leave them with, (at least that is what I think he is indicating) so ok.

We then take the Metro back over to the Russian history museum. Like all history museums we go to, it’s starts off with information about Homo Erectus. I only know it was talking about Homo Erectus because I am starting to read the Cyrillic alphabet and after you sort out the letters, that’s what it spells. From there until about 1600s, I had no idea what anything else said because there were nothing in English words even if you adjust for the Cyrillic alphabet. Then the next three rooms, we were handed complete English leaflets for every exhibit. Then back to nothing for the 1800s on. So bizarre, I don’t know how they determine which rooms should get translations and which shouldn’t. Also disappointing was that it had nothing from 1917 on, which I think the recent history would have been a lot more interesting.

When we get on the train at 11pm, we will be on the Trans-Mongolian train for 3 days straight. How do you prepare for 3 days straight on a train? Fortunately we found a huge grocery store near the train station and we did another supermarket sweep. I also found a great pair of grocery store sweat pants that will do just fine for lounging around on the train.

(TJ) The part I found the most interesting in the Russian history museum was the 1800’s period. They had tons of rooms with costumes and everyday items from aristocratic households. They also had quite a few rooms dedicated to the Napoleonic wars which I found very interesting. I did find it rather ironic that they had almost no items regarding the vast proportion of the people who worked the land and were by law serfs to their landlords during this period. They also had a small room showing the history of the trans-Siberian railroad and including an exhibit on the train of the future. No idea when said train of the future will actually hit Russian rails, probably about the same time that the US will get one.

Grocery shopping list: Ramen, Ramen, Mashed Potatoes, Ramen, Coke

Moscow, Russia – 09/09 New Friends

(Michelle) The next morning, Yan laid out a nice breakfast for us, which included the “American Fresh” peanut butter – I didn’t realize an “American Fresh” brand peanut butter even existed, but I am more surprised to see that it is one that is exported to Arabic Speaking countries – note the writing on the jar. Yan and Lydia are about the same age as us. Yan is a graphic designer and Lydia is a producer for the Russian version of “Who wants to be a millionaire”. On their version though, they only win one million Rubles instead of dollars (which is a lot less than a million dollars!). It was really interesting to talk to her about her job. I’ve never met a TV producer before.

As we were packing up to go (and of course while TJ was petting the kitty – photo is of Lydia with the kitty), there was a movie on tv. Lydia told us that it is a very famous movie, where this guy goes out with his friends and he thinks he is in Moscow but he is really in St. Petersburg and there is a house with the same address as his own in Moscow and his key works there too and he is really drunk and then he meets some girl and they fall in love. I’m really screwing up the story here, but it is a very famous movie and they watch every year at Christmas, kind of like I watch a Christmas Story or Christmas Vacation every year at Christmas.

We left at around 1. We were leaving Moscow on the overnight train at 11pm, so we have time to get in one more museum.

(TJ) Russia has some very good food, you just need to be with some Russians to know what to get.

Another movie that was on tv was a Russian classic about a girl who disguises herself as a man so that she can fight with the Russian Army during the time when Napolean had invaded Russia. The girl is a obviously a bit saucy and does not want to marry. She spurns suitors so that she can go fight. She then ends up falling in love with one of the suitors who she spurned while serving with him in the army. The movie was all in Russian and looked a bit like “Gone with the Wind” in its cinematography, it looked good. I wish that knew some Russian or that it had had some subtitles.

Moscow, Russia – 09/08 New Friends

(Michelle) We had tried using couchsurfing again in Moscow. We got in touch with a girl named Lydia who was busy on Friday night but invited us out to her house on Saturday night. It was difficult to communicate because we had to call from Skype, so we needed an internet connection in order to call her and there was no way she could call us since we didn’t have a phone. Long story short, we didn’t head out there until 9pm. She told us the train stop and some vague directions from there to her house and we hoped we would be able to find it.

Sitting on the metro train, I saw a guy holding my new favorite canned beverage (there were of course many people holding canned beverages if you know what I mean). On the can in English, block letters, no design or anything else on it, the can said “GIN AND TONIC”. So we knew what he was drinking. We were of course getting some stares as well because we had all our stuff with us, so I’m sure they were all wondering where we were going so far from downtown. .

After about 45 minutes, I noticed that the train was going to a stop that shouldn’t have been on our line. ?? The train line splits and while the picture had indicated we should stay on our train, really we were supposed to switch. So we get off at the next stop, switch, come back, switch, wait for the other train.

When we finally get off at our stop, it’s dark, there are no people around and it had just started raining. The area behind the train station looked like a deserted county fair, which was really creepy and seemingly out of place. We knew that her apartment was supposed to be a straight walk from the train, but we were a little turned around on which direction to start that straight walk from. Finally eagle eye TJ sees a street sign and it just so happens to be the one we are looking for. So we start walking along. On the opposite side of the road, there are open fields; on our side there are huge prison looking apartment buildings with a lot of space in between each one. (See attached picture from – the view from their apt the next day of the open field across the street). The further we walked, the more convinced we were that we had made a big mistake coming out here. Finally, we see a massive building with the matching number, but there are three entrances and none of them seem to have a thing to put in a number code to get in. There are three rather shady looking men hanging out in the back, but fortunately for us, they helped us into the right entrance. Finally! Lydia was very worried about us because obviously we had no way to call each other, so she didn’t know what had happened to us.

Lydia and her husband Yan immediately tried to feed us. Yan would not take no for an answer on any of it. He is a very excited person and quite hilarious. The snacks included a really fatty mooshy salty pork product (a little nasty), dried tomatoes in oil (good), and a plate of pickles and onions. What were the plate of the pickles and onions for? Oh, that is the traditional vodka shot chaser. That shot almost came right back up, but not from the vodka… that would be the pickles. Gross.

(TJ) I have just a few short comments on this little adventure. The Moscow metro is absolutely massive. We probably rode a distance of 40-50 miles on the subway only having to transfer once outside of downtown Moscow. Not only this but some of the stations are incredibly well decorated, with communist era art from the 1930’s and 1940’s. Some stations are dedicated to infantry, farmers, fighter pilots, factory workers, tanks etc. I wish we would have had time to take a tour of some of the famous subway stations, truly a very cool thing to see. The attached photo is the train station at Orekhovo Stop, which is the stop Lydia and Yan lived at.

Despite the rain and distance it was very interesting to see the outskirts of Moscow. I was a little surprised on seeing how spread out the apartment blocks were in the area that we visited. There were probably 10 of the same concrete towers lined up on the street we were walking down and each one sat on 6 acres roughly. They definitely were not looking for population density when planning this area. The towers themselves definitely came from the communist school of architecture-boring concrete blocks. I learned later from Yan and Lydia that some of the housing associations are fixing up their towers exteriors and interiors and the owners are able to sell for a pretty healthy profit.

I’d recommend that you eat the pork fat when a Russian offers you it as a chaser for Vodka, its tasty - don’t let the looks deceive you. The pickles and onion I’m not so sure about, but your last few shots of the night should probably be some mouthwash.

Moscow, Russia – 09/08 Lenin Mausoleum

(TJ) After exiting the Armoury we ran to get in line for Lenin’s Mausoleum since it was about to close. We love seeing dead things kept in wax like state by embalming chemicals, so it was worth the run. We were cut in front of by multiple tour groups, whose tour leader would slip the guard a small donation to cut, but fortunately, they closed the line just behind us. Once at the front of the line you have to empty out all of your pockets to go through a metal detector, apparently they are jittery about someone trying to blow up or deface comrade Lenin. There are also of course no pictures aloud, although you can buy plenty of postcards, magnets and T-shirts with sleeping beauty on them. Since I also had a bag, which is against the rules, Michelle had to stay out and hold our bag and camera until I returned, then she would go in.

After I finally got through the metal detector, you walk down a side walk for about 200 meters, then you see 5 or 6 gravestones. These are of course the former leaders of Soviet Union from the 1900s, like Brusnev, Krustav and…. Stalin. I was a bit surprised they were buried on the walk to the Mausoleum and had not read anywhere that this was the case. Especially Stalin, I didn’t think he would have his own monument… perhaps just an unmarked grave. Once I turned the corner from the walk I was stopped by a guard again before I was allowed to come in to the tomb. I had forgotten to take my ipod out of one of the pockets in my pants. Fortunately he believed me when I showed him it was an ipod. Based on what we read about corrupt law enforcement here, I am probably lucky he didn’t pocket it.

The tomb itself looks to be made of red granite possibly. It really just looks like red and black building blocks stacked on top of each other. If I remember right, the Soviet big wigs would sit on top of this building to watch parades through the red square. See attached picture I took of Michelle coming out (Mausoleum in the center of the picture).

So I finally get into the tomb, it’s almost pitch black and all I can see is the guards at each ninety degree corner. I almost fell down some stairs since my eyes are still adjusting. I turn the first corner at the bottom and I have one hand in my front pocket. Immediately the guard at the bottom of the steps starts snapping his fingers at me to get my hand out my pocket. Apparently I can’t do anything right in the crypt. I finally take another turn and see the sleeping beauty encased in glass and looking like he is made of a soft shiny wax. He really was a small man, I’d say maybe 5’-6”, although who knows maybe he has shrunk through the years. They really herd you through, you only get about 15 seconds to look before you have to move on back in to the dark corridors to exit. I was outside again before I knew it. I’m kind of surprised there has not been more of a call to bury Lenin, as its known that he was a Mamas boy and wanted to be buried next to his mother, maybe some day that will happen. Its worthwhile site to see just for the ghoulishness and best of all, it is free.

(Michelle) I can’t believe I even saw Stalin’s grave. I figured that like Hitler, he would be secretly buried in some unknown location. As we mentioned before, almost all the historical tsars from before the 1917 revolution were buried in St. Petersburg, so these are just the recent big wigs, and he is here chilling amongst them. I was actually only casually looking at the graves because unlike TJ, I do NOT take “Russian history during the 1900s” for a $1000 Alex, so I figured I wouldn’t know any of the names anyway. A statue of Stalin’s head is on top and I actually recognized his ugly big mustache wearing mug through a side glance. Since it was so unexpected, I didn’t really truly believe it until I came out and said to TJ… “Was that really Stalin’s grave?”

Lenin’s tomb is creepy.

After the tomb we took a quick walk by St. Basil’s cathedral, which is right behind the Mausoleum and can also be seen in that picture. We couldn’t go in because it was closed, but you can really only appreciate the onion dome from the outside anyway, right?

Moscow, Russia – 09/08 The Kremlin Armoury

(Michelle) Today we went back to the Kremlin to see the Armoury. Once again, I found a museum that had items that I was not expecting to see. Actually, I didn’t know what I had expected to see going in there. You cannot take pictures in there, but I have found some examples on the Armoury’s website. My favorite things in the Armoury:

1. The bibles that were gold plaited with varying shades of blue inlaid in it. I am attaching a link of an example, although this one is not as nice as some of the ones I remember seeing and it is difficult to see the blue colors I am talking about. http://www.kreml.ru/window.asp?ID=536&lang=en
2. The paintings of Mary and little baby Jesus with the jewels sticking out of the painting. While this is not art I would put on my wall (I’ve never much been into the jewels that stick out of the painting theme), it is pretty amazing and quite different. Once again, this example does not do what we saw justice. http://www.kreml.ru/window.asp?ID=538&lang=en
3. There were some really pretty gold chalices with ornate black etchings
4. The Faberge eggs. These are something that I have never taken much interest in before, but the ones they had here were really cool. My favorite was this yellow one with a clock in it. TJ’s favorite was a green one with a train in it (see attached wikipedia link): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway_%28Faberg%C3%A9_egg%29
5. Walking through the carriage room was like walking back in time. I felt like Cinderella. There was one carriage that actually had sculptures of George slaying the dragon on top of the piece over the wheels.
6. Catherine the Great’s coronation dress with double headed eagles embroidered all over it.
7. The two seated thrown for little boy tsars Peter the Great and Ivan the V.
   

(TJ) I think that Michelle covered quite a few highlights from the Armoury. Since it was an Armoury they also had some very old firearms, swords and of course armour. I found this all very interesting, Michelle not so much. I also enjoyed seeing all of the tributes that other countries would send with their diplomats when they would go to the Russian court. Most of these items were made from silver or gold and ranged from plates and trays to incense burners, all were highly ornate and beautiful. Some of my favorite items were the various crowns and their massive diamonds and precious gems along with some of the Faberge eggs that were on display.

Moscow, Russia – 09/07

(Michelle) We were awoken on the train about 2 hours ahead of arrival by a morning news radio program blaring on a painfully loud volume over the speakers in each car. We were in a four person car (known as class Kupe in Russian) and even the two other Russians could not figure out how to turn it off. We arrived in Moscow at about 10am and let me tell you, 10am on a Friday morning is not too early to get your drink on if you are the kind of person that lingers at a Moscow train station. I was slightly uncomfortable with the number of dudes staring at us while holding their tall boys.

We got on the metro train and found our hostel, waited forever to check in, then started another mission to get the train tickets we wanted. By 5pm on Friday we were in business - with tickets from Moscow to Tomsk and Tomsk to Irkutsk. They could not sell Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar (UB) Mongolia and UB to Beijing because they did not sell international tickets. We looked up online (in Russian) what the prices should cost and then went to a “travel agent” to compare prices as opposed to going all the way out to the train station. It was only a few dollars more expensive than what we saw online. Of course there was still a lot of waiting involved. Also, there was some problem with our proposed itinerary. We will never know why for sure as no English was spoken, but we could not go to Yekaterinburg as we planned.

You may ask yourself, is it worth it to spend so much time buying tickets in Russia when clearly it is not an easy task. You can buy them from a travel agent that speaks English outside of the country, but the difference in price is astronomical. We had read that through comments on the Lonely Planet Thorntree online forum, but we also were able to confirm it in person. We shared a car later on with a couple from Switzerland who had done practically the same trip we did. We summed it up and all our train tickets from Moscow to Beijing cost about $350 per person in total. The couple from Switzerland had a few hotel rooms included (one of the hotel rooms included was in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where hotel rooms would be about $20 per night), but other than that it was the same train tickets and they spent over $2,000 per person. On the money alone, it was worth it, but it was also a very interesting experience even though it was very frustrating.

Now that we are done, we did some sightseeing around the Red Square and Kremlin. We also went to shop around a little at the “Gum”. The “Gum” was the expensive shopping place for the upper echelon back on the day, but it is for everyone now. We had not given up hope on finding our track suits for the long train journey, but everything in the Gum was still too expensive for us.

We had dinner at a bar recommended at the hostel. We were there during the happy hour time, as all appetizers were half off then, and so were many other people. We got the last table. The place was pretty big and rather dark, but the people looked mostly like normal everyday people who just got done working on a Friday evening. It was the first time in Russia that I felt like we weren't in a totally different world. We didn’t stick around for any evening entertainment as we were both pretty tired, but I noticed on the way out that after 9pm there was a $20 (Russian Ruble equivalent) to get in, so it must be the place to go.

(TJ) Getting train tickets is a royal pain, all I can say that the sooner Russia Railways gets it act together so that you can buy tickets online the better. I’d say that in Russia overall they are not too interested in the tourist dollar. The mindset they have for the tourist is limited to the very wealthy one. If they ever pull their heads out of their asses they could have hundreds of millions more if they reformed their insane visa system (this could also be said for the US and the US has one of the worst visa programs in the world costing us tons in tourist dollars) and maybe made it a bit easier for independent travelers.

Red Square and the Kremlin were pretty much how I had pictured them to be. You could definitely picture by the size of Red Square all of the military parades that happened here during Soviet times. The GUM is more or less today your typical high end shopping mall with the exception of the exterior. The building its self is a very nice looking structure from around the turn of the century. I think it would have been nice had they tried a little harder to keep some of the old character to the interior, its no comparison for a old store like Harrods in London.

St. Petersburg, Russia – 09/06 – The train saga continues

(Michelle) We were having a nice conversation with Dan and Rebecca and then we noticed the time. We had to get going to catch our train to Moscow. Of course it started raining and we couldn’t find the bus we were looking for, so we were running with our big packs on down Nevsky Prospekt.

We arrived at the train station 20 minutes before our train was supposed to leave, which would have been more than enough time if the train was leaving from that station. Since we couldn’t read our tickets (written in Russian), we had initially been concerned that we didn’t know which station to go to, since there are four in St. Petersburg. Our trusty Lonely Planet told us that every train to Moscow leaves from Moscova station, but we didn’t want to take that on faith alone, so we had picked up a local tourist brochure in English that said the same thing. Dan and Rebecca said that they had also read that from a different source… so we reluctantly believed it. We were wrong.

We arrived to see about 12 trains (they go all night long) to Moscow listed, not one of them was our train number. We were frantically trying to figure out where our train was and with about 5 minutes to spare, we saw a woman who looked like a tour guide based on some signs she was holding, and asked her if she knew why we couldn’t find our train. The answer was that it was at a different station of course. Great. No way we are going to make that now, so what can we do? It turns out that you can get some kind of refund on your ticket if you miss your train, so we at least didn’t lose out entirely on the fare we paid (because it was not cheap). Of course I waited in the wrong line first (with cutters) before getting to the right line for the refund. When I finally get to speak with the refund lady, I can’t say anything in Russian except please and thank you, so I just hand her the useless tickets and smile. She did not smile back, but she did hand me some money. So either the refund is 50% of the ticket price, or it is supposed to be more and she pocketed some, I will probably never know for sure and I was happy to get 50% as it was.

We decided to then utilize the special ticket room here - paying a few more bucks to avoid the lines (yes there are long lines at midnight) and try and get on a train still that night. Fortunately, we were able to get a spot on the 2am train. Since there are trains going all night, many of the restaurants were still open, so we got some potstickers from the Japanese restaurant and people watched until our train left.

(TJ) The potstickers were very good.

St. Petersburg, Russia – 09/06 The Hermitage Museum!

(Michelle) We have an overnight train to Moscow tonight, but it doesn’t leave until 11:30pm, so we still have a full day today. We saved today for the Hermitage. Wow. First of all, it was the first Thursday of the month and the first Thursday of the month is FREE! That saved us about $20 each - this is not a cheap museum. It can command that price though, as this is a wonderful museum. I liked it better than the Louvre (I am sure I will be blasphemized by my French friends). First of all, the museum itself used to be the Winter Palace, so the architecture is stunning. The variety of things you could find here was part of what was so cool. Some of the items include: Ancient archeological finds (hidden in the basement and I’m not entirely sure we were supposed to be down there for a number of reasons), armor (which we all know TJ loves), furniture, sculptures, dishes, royal jewels, and the paintings were all great. The greatest item in the museum though is the famous Peacock Clock. I do love clocks. I took a photo, but it is not that great, so here is a link to the museum website:
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/12/2006/hm12_1_22.html

The other photos here include the outside of the museum, us in a very golden room, a Da Vinci housed here, and some Turkish Armor. Also, I gave TJ the camera for a while and you can see the artwork that he values (the dog).
If you forgot to go to the toilet inside the museum, never fear, there is an outdoor toilet bus waiting for you outside. Could this be the future of the standard BIFFY?


(TJ) I don’t want to be redundant on what Michelle said, but I think this is my favorite museum I have ever been to. If you are a art fan, you could easily go here for 3 days. It has widest range of paintings that I have seen anywhere and in the most gilded architecture that I have ever seen. It's worth it alone just to look at the rooms that the painting are in. Incredible, a must see….