Mighty Moscow, 25 - 30 November 2010

I arrived in Moscow a little after 8am.  I bidded Vladimir farewell and stepped off the train and began the hunt for the metro station.  There was a sign pointing towards the metro but it made no sense as I ended up walking into a public toilet!  Perhaps it was a misreading of the Cyrillic on my part.  I ended up walking into the cold outdoors and was unfortunately surprised that the snow that was in Saint Petersburg had not yet arrived in Moscow.  I eventually found the metro station and bought myself a card.  The politeness of the people selling tickets is no different from Petersburg, you ask for one, they take a deep breath, snatch money off you and throw your change and ticket back at you.  Swiping my ticket at the barrier, I entered the metro station and was confronted with a huge mass of people trying to squeeze down two escalators.  I suppose turning up in the capital city during rush hour was not such a great idea.  I took the initiative to stand back and wait for the crowd to die down before attempting to descend into the depths of the metro.  I was joined by two middle aged Russian gentlemen who had so much gold in their mouths I couldn't believe.  They looked a little shifty and asked if I was American, to which I replied no, I am English.  One of them pointed down the escalator and drew his finger across his throat, now that can mean either; if I go down there, they will kill me or if I go down there, there are so many people I will be suffocated to death.  I hoped it was the later one.  We spent the next hour and half together, I shared chocolate and they sang Tom Jones to me.  The crowd eventually died down to a controllable amount at around 9.30 and we all made our way down to the metro.

The Moscow metro stations are the most beautiful and one of the busiest networks in the world. It opened in 1935 and interestingly the Soviet Union consulted the London Underground, the world's oldest underground network, for help prior to construction.  Each station has it's own theme and my favourite station I visited was the Ploshchad Revolyutsii which has bronze figures of Soviet soldiers wielding guns, farmers and other people. 

Having reached the bottom of the escalator it was again time to decipher the Cyrillic alphabet and find out where I needed to go to get to the hostel.  Luckily the Godzilla Hostel website had extremely good instructions how to get there, so it wasn't difficult to get there at all.  The only problem with the metro system I can find is that the temperature difference between outside and inside, going from -15 to +30 can't be that good for you.  I arrived at the hostel and checked in, my first impression of the hostel was that it seemed more like a hotel than a hostel and I was concerned that there wasn't going to be any communal atmosphere where you can meet anybody else.

After checking in I went in search for the Moscow Arts Theatre, one of the most important things for me to see whilst in Moscow, however my first attempt failed.  I found the Constantin Stanislavski Theatre, the Tchaikovsky concert hall and a Moscow theatre but not the Moscow Arts Theatre.  Having failed, I went back to the hostel all disappointed.

That evening I sat at the computer doing the Facebook thing and I could hear a recognisable voice coming from the TV room.  It was Ash, a girl that I had met briefly in Tallinn, literally her and her boyfriend had arrived as I was leaving.  Having entered the TV room, several other people were there, Eugenie (German/Russian) and Eric (French) and we all got on quite well.  We ended getting a pizza delivered from the local Pizza Hut and watched Hot Tub Time Machine, which I personally found hilarious but I'm not sure if the others found as funny.  I also enjoyed a bit of banter with Eric after he corrected me on my pronunciation of Auviour I proceeded to corrected him every time he said a word beginning with 'H' like hotel, he was saying 'otel.  After I made the effort to ridicule him for this he was saying hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhotel.  Later that week we had a hilarious conversation on how France donated 80% and Germany donated 20% to create the English language.  I love the Anglo Franco relationship!

On my second day in Moscow, I walked around with Ash and I got my first real taste of Moscow. I walked into Red Square for the first time, however it felt a little smaller than I imagined.  Perhaps it was due to the monstrosity of an ice rink they had erected in the centre of the square.  Red square is still an amazing place to be, so much history in such a small place.  Just to stand there and think about those extensive military parades to show the Soviet might.  Lenin's embalmed body remains there in his mausoleum, I never got to go and pay my respects because of the limited opening times and huge queues.  Lenin, a great man with great ideals, shame they never worked!

St Basil's Cathedral sits at the end of Red Square and is truly another amazing piece of architecture.  It's actually a cathedral made up of different churches.  This cathedrals marks the geographic centre of the city. 

Tomb of Unknown Soldier

As we walked into the Alexander Gardens we were confronted by lots of police shutting off an area around a car which had been deserted in the middle.  I have no idea how it got down there.  The police had sniffer dogs and what I presume was a bomb disposal squad.  Moscow is still in a high state of alert after the terrorist attacks on the metro system earlier this year.  Having been on the metro and witnessed how busy and packed it is, I can't imagine how frightening it must have been to all those people trying to escape.  We walked back through later that day and it was all cleared up.  The gardens also has the tomb of the unknown soldier which is guarded by soldiers all day.

On our walk round we got to Arbat Street which is supposedly the Bohemian centre and one of the oldest streets of Moscow.  As the guide wrote, it's a tourist trap, and I can confirm that.  So many souvenir shops and people trying to herd you inside.  However, there were some musician playing down the street and it had a nice atmosphere.  I suppose, like many things, the street would be better visited in summer!

On my third day in Moscow I did absolutely nothing.  Sometimes walking around sightseeing becomes to much to handle, especially in the bitterness of winter.  So Ash, Eugenie and I went to an Italian restaurant and spent the afternoon eating yet another pizza and drinking warm alcoholic drink before heading back to the hostel where we said goodbye to Ash as she headed up to Saint Petersburg.  That evening I met Brigid who is also doing the Trans-Mongolian, I was so relived that I wasn't the only crazy person to do the journey in winter!

Also at the hostel was Karen who was an American lady who was desperately trying to find work anywhere in the world.  She had just been working on elections in Uzbekistan I believe.  She is also second cousin to Tina Dico, a highly successful Danish Singer Songwriter.  I had many a conversation with her about many subjects during my time at the hostel, I just hope she managed to get back to the US for her to get a job.

On the Sunday I visited the market with Eugenie and it was so cold we had to keep stopping for tea every 30 minutes.  The market was enourmous and full of souvenirs and second hand stalls where you could by an arsenal of weapons functioning or non functioning.  Eugenie bought a few souvenirs to take back to her family.  I would have liked to have done the same, but it's very difficult to buy things at the beginning of your trip as you have to got through the ordeal of finding a post office, trying to get the person to understand and waiting an anxious three months for your parcel to arrive back at home.

After walking around the ice cold market for a few hours we decided to leave as I wanted to go and see Stanislavski's house before it closed.  Eugenie left me on the metro and headed back to the hostel as she was recovering from a cough and cold so wanted to get back in the warm.  I arrived at Constantin Stanislavski's house as it was turning dark. It was an unremarkable house from the outside and I wasn't sure I had the right address or not.  I walked around the back of the building and attempted to pull the door open.  It did open, next I was hoping that I wasn't walking in on some families home.  I was relieved to see a photo of Stanislavski hanging on the wall in the entrance.

Stanislavski's desk, the beginning of great things

As I wrote part of my dissertation on Stanislavski and the Moscow Arts Theatre, seeing his house and his study where he wrote 'An Actor Prepares' and 'My Life in Art' was truly amazing.  These books have been the actors' bible ever since he took the time to experiment with psychological acting and create certain processes for actors to get a more naturalistic performance.  Stanislavski's 'system' was then later taken and evolved into American 'method acting' most people have heard about. It seems strange to think how much influence this one man from Russia had on the world of theatre and film.  He totally radicalised the contemporaneous acting style of Russia which was melodramtic.

His house was more like a mansion, he had is very own studio where he worked with his actors, which at the time I visited was playing host to a concert so I couldn't go in, but I peeked through the doorway.  His study also turned into an ad-hoc performance space.  During Stanislavski's final years, he moved his bedroom next to his study and would write continuously from the moment he woke up.  There was a photo of Edward Gordon Craig's set that he built for Stanislavski and Nemorich-Danchenko for their production of Hamlet, however, the part on the English translation had a line through it so I believe it had been taken away.  This was a shame, because I wrote about this very production in my dissertation and would have like to have seen the original photo. 

Having read his books, studying him for years and using some of his techniques, it was great to see the family side of his life, as we do sometimes forget that great figures also had families and we just see them for their work.  He dedicated the upper floor to his children.  The Soviet Union ordered the house to be made into a museum for Stanislavski and his work. 

On my last day in Moscow I had my last chance to visit the Moscow Arts Theatre and Museum.  I was walking around with a Scottish guy called Will and went into the theatre box office and I had a wonderful time laughing with the lady there as neither of us understood each other.  I asked in very broken Russian whether there were any tickets for that evening's performance, to which she replied Niet!  I was absolutely devastated as that would have been my only chance to have seen the inside of the theatre which Stanislavski and Nemorich-Danchenko founded.  I then asked about the Moscow Arts Theatre Museum and was pointed in the direction of the museum entrance.  We made our way to the museum but there was no one there apart from a security guard who pointed us back to the box office, we were confused but saw that the ticket office was open from 2-7pm so we thought we'd go back and try later.  Around 3pm we visited the Museum again and was politely informed by another security guard that it was closed.  I cannot tell you how disappointed I was not to be able to go into the theatre and the museum.  This was number one on my list way way above the Kremlin, St Basils etc.  I took solace in the view that Moscow isn't that far away from the UK and that I can come back in the future, preferably in the summer!


My time in Moscow saw me make my first two mistakes.  One: getting shaving foam instead of deodorant. Two: Getting 15,000 Rubles out of the cash machine instead of 1,500!  The shaving foam is fine but I'm not sure if I can actually spend 15,000 Rubles before I leave Russia!!

My last night at Godzilla's Hostel was spent with the people I had met whilst there.  We took a trip to the local shop and enjoyed a feast.  I also began learning some more Russian and can now say Salad, Cucumber, Pepper, Cabbage!  It was quite a funny story, we were in a book shop hunting for a picture translation book where you can just point to a picture to indicate what you want.  I hunted around the whole shop and found the only similar thing, which had pictures and the Russian word on the back.  I thought that's great.  I got back to the hostel and showed Eugenie what I had bought and she looked confused, I asked her why and she replied, the word doesn't reflect the picture on the front.  It turned out to be a game of some sort. One day I may learn more words but I'm quickly running out of time in Russia!

I woke up early on the day of departure so I could get packed, return my sheets and towel, chill out a bit and say goodbye to people before heading to the craziness of Russian train stations for my carriage to Yekaterinburg.  My train was leaving at 12:40 and I left at 11 to give me a good margin of error just in case anything goes wrong.  Nothing did go wrong and I took my last metro ride in Moscow and boarded train 092 heading to Yekaterinburg.

Saint Petersburg, 19 - 24 November 2010

All dazed and culture shocked I stood there at the reception desk being checked in whilst lots of half dead people appear from the dorms and head to the kitchen for breakfast.  I was shown around and told that I'd have to wait until midday until I was able to find a home for my bag and somewhere to sleep.  Taking the first opportunity I grabbed a towel and headed to cleanse myself of the nights travelling.  Finally I was feeling refreshed and headed to the kitchen to meet the fellow travellers and have something to eat.  I was confronted by many people, so many I couldn't quite take in who said what and where they had come from.  One Australian guy welcomed me to Russia and presented me with a Big Bong, a Russian equivalent to Pot Noodle but in a bowl and having tried it later that evening, much nicer!

A certain amount of relaxation is required by all of us mere mortals so I decided to take the first day easy and just have a walk around the local surroundings and get my Russian visa registered in Saint Petersburg.  Not only do you have to fork out a lot of money to buy a visa for Russia, you have to also register it within three working days of entering the country at an extra cost of 600 Roubles (about 20GBP) and again if you go and stay in another city for three or more working days.  Real Russia who I got to acquire my visa for me, gave me a name and address of their partner company in Peter who could register it for me.  Luckily enough it was only the next road up from the hostel so it shouldn't have been a long walk.  But me being me I walked the wrong way up the street until I found some building numbers and realised I went the wrong way.  I got there in the end though and sorted it out easily.

Having registered my visa, I took a walk down Nevski Prospekt which is the main street in Saint Petersburg.  I was struck by the grandiose buildings that were built down the entire length of the street and throughout the city.  After Tsar Peter the Great gained the land during war against the Swedish he build the Saint Peter and Paul fortress and begun the development of St Petersburg and taking inspiration from European cities, he used serfs and prisoners of war to build 'the Venice of the North'.  Once completed, the capital of the Russian Empire was moved from Moscow to Petrograd by order of the Tsar.  It's a truly bizare place and must have been worse during the USSR days.  Such grand buildings and yet so many poor people.  After the revolution Lenin moved the capital back to Moscow.

Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood

I stumbled upon the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood.  It's was my first sight of this type of Russian architecture and was absolutely amazed, it was like something out of a fairy tale.  I began to read the plaques outside and discovered that the church was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated.  I was going to go in but was stalled when I saw the entry price and that non-Russian Federation citizens have to pay double.  That price was too steep as I had little money left after paying the hostel and visa registration costs.  A few days later I did get to visit and the inside was completely decorated in mosaics and was absolutely fantastic. 

I was utterly disappointed to be in a snowless St Petersburg, it was cold, bitterly cold down by the river and by the Peter and Paul Fortress.  The fortress was built by Peter the Great to protect the Russian Empire from Swedish invasion as they had previously been able to sail straight down the Neva.  However, the fortress was never used for that purpose and became a prison for enemies of the state, such as, Dostoevsky and the Decemberists.  The Peter and Paul Cathedral was also quite a sight, here most of Tsars lie in state, including the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II, his family and servents who were executed in 1918 during the Bolshevik revolution in Yekaterinburg.  Their remains were recovered from a mine shaft just outside Yekaterinburg and were brought back to rest with the other Tsars but in their very own chapel within the cathedral.  Two of Nicholas' sons were never found.

During my stay I went to see Il Viaggio a Reims at the Mariinsky Theatre. The theatre was absolutely amazing.  The opera was in Italian, and they had subtitles in Russian so I didn't understand a word.  I really enjoyed the performance, unfortunately a lot of the action happened off stage in the auditorium which I couldn't see from my seat.  The turn around with shows at the theatre is truly amazing, they have a different show on every night.  I would like to see how quickly they can strike a set and rebuild for the next show.  As I left the auditorium, smiling at the fantastic performance I had just seen, I was confronted with St Petersburg under snow!  It had been snowing all day but nothing had settled, but during the show it had laid and was quite deep.

They say that you should get a taxi after dark in Russia because it is not safe to walk around, however that would mean you would need to get a taxi before 9am and after 4pm.  Since being in Russia, I have not felt threatened once and have been able to walk around unhindered.  I'm not sure if it's because I can pass myself off as a Russian or whether it is as safe as it feels.

To pass yourself off as a Russian, you must follow some simple rules:

1. Never smile
2. Let go of doors which means smacking the person behind you in the face
3. Pretend people aren't getting off the metro and walk through them to get on board.

Saint Petersburg also hosts The Hermitage and Winter Palace. The palace originally built by Peter the Great was the home of the Russian Tsars.  The Hermitage is one of the largest art galleries in the world and was the creation of Catherine the Great who wanted to share the countries collection of art.  I'm not the biggest art fan but the building itself is a piece of art.  Every room has it's very own decoration style and I found myself more interested in the building than the art hanging on the walls.  If you are a fan of art, you could easily spend a whole week looking through the endless collection.  They have so much they can't show it all at once and continually rotate it.  The Hermitage also has collections of artifacts too, such as Ancient Egyptian mummies.

I returned to the hostel one night to find that a crazy Brazilian man who wore florescent trainers and a Brazil fleece had joined us.  He said that he was surprised that he got stopped by the police and asked for his passport and registration documents.  He was a very strange man who kept going on about how he hated the English because of what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes, and I tried to convince him that we also didn't like what happened to him either.  Then he said that he would like to see Elizabeth II die and he'd visit her grave.  At this point I was speechless and didn't really want to be alone in the same room as him!  He did teach us all a trick of his though.  He said that he doesn't like sharing toilets on plane journeys, so he take a bar of chocolate and covers the toilet in melted chocolate which stops others from using it.  This all made us laugh hysterically although it might have been down to the consumed alcohol.


During my last day I wanted to visit the Leningrad Blockade Museum which commemorates the The Siege of Leningrad which lasted for 900 days and saw 332,000 army and over 16,000 civilian casualties.  Unfortunately you never know which days places close in Russia as they seem to be any day they like and it so happened that the day I wanted to go, it was closed!

Since arriving in Saint Petersburg I wanted to go out for a drink, but the people staying at the hostel were all couples and didn't want to go.  This all changed when I was about to leave as a couple of British guys came and wanted to go out for a drink.  Unfortunately it was my last day and I had planned to go and see Giselle at the Mikhaylovsky Theatre.  As I had seen an opera, I thought I should see a ballet too.  Unlike the Opera or theatre, you can understand ballet (if done well) as there is no language.  I enjoyed the performance and the dancing however became tired at some points as it seemed like they were just repeating the same choreography.  I sat right up in the gods and next to this lady who decided that it would be a great idea to blow her nose during a very calm section of the performance, and also was texting on her mobile phone during the second act, to which I gave her a look that said 'put the bloody phone away'!

After leaving the theatre, I needed to get back to the hostel where I would have about one hour before I needed to catch my overnight train to Moscow.  When I am travelling, I like to be at the place of departure with plenty of time to spare just incase anything happens.  I was however convinced by the people in the hostel to chill out for a bit and Pavlik, who worked in the hostel, would take me there.  We got to the train station five minutes before my train was scheduled to leave, which would have been plenty of time if my carriage wasn't the last one. So I had to run down the platform being very cautious of the ice as I did not want to slip over and hurt myself!  With a minute to spare I gave my passport and ticket over to the provodnitsa (Attendant) and was thrust onto the train with the door closing behind me and the engine kicking into life.  I found my compartment and was impressed with the quality of the train.  I was met introduced myself to Vladimir, a business man and there was a guy already asleep on the top bunk.  Vladimir wasn't very talkative so I climbed up to my bunk and made myself at home and fell asleep.  The train was extremely hot it was like stepping off a place in the Mediterranean but stepping out of the freezing cold of Saint Petersburg into the warmth of the train.  Eight hours later I arrived in Moscow.