Camels in Moscow
Moscow 18. July – Hot. The degrees rose higher than Jesus’ age, meaning upper thirties at times. Moscowites complained, deer groaned, the homeless left for more livable climates.
Luckily Moscow has a good metro system which saved us the trouble of Segwaying there. No, we didn’t have Segways, but wouldn’t that be cool, huh?
The metro forms a ring around the centre of Moscow (just like the roads) and there are plenty of other connecting lines. Tickets cost 26 rub if memory serves me right. The stations deserve their reputation as a piece of art, they’re definitively the most interesting ones I’ve seen in any city. The Dostojevskaja station, for example, is clad in marble, lights are decorated, and at the end of the platform is a portrait of Dostojevski, a mosaic made of stone. There’s plenty of coloured glass, metal ornaments, lights are almost always decorated differently. Not all stations are that special, of course. Some of the older stations show the wear and tear of time and are lighter on decoration. But what they lack in polish, they make up in genuiness, displaying old communist symbolysm like the hammer & sickle, bushels of wheat, young revolutionaries… Even the steel air vents are all adorned with the letter “M” logo of the metro. It also works well into the night which came in handy later.
Moscow is quite safe everyone says and it’s true from our limited experience. But who are we to say, our hostel was right behind the interior ministry. 
The Godzilla hostel was modern, clean, friendly, great service. The Godzilla did not eat anyone, but I assume they mostly prey on the Japanese. Human sushi. Which is really popular everywhere in Russia by the way. Fish sushi though, not the human kind.
Back to the hostel. A shower or two more couldn’t hurt, but hey, it’s not always that you’re all sweaty again even before you’ve left the shower room.
But alas, we had to leave the room at some point and go sweat elsewhere in the city. On our way to the Kremlin I did my usual routine and stopped cute girls passing by to take photos of them. Last year I was in Moldova, praised the beauty of Moldovan women when I got home and was chastised by my coworkers since I didn’t bring many photos. I took it to heart, this time, they’re getting a bunch.
We soon made our way to the Kremlin, the epicentre of Moscow. It was enclosed by a city race of formulas, street cars, lorries, you name it. It was there and loud.
Naturally sponsors had their stands, displaying cars and… dancers. Female dancers, moving mildly on a stage, like somewhat dosed dancers from a dance club. Their sporty suits were tight, revealed some cleavage, but the main “feature” of the suit was that it was so tied up into their vaginas they revealed a “camel toe” that would make a camel blush. I’m no moralist, but that seemed quite degrading even to me.
Passing the giant 4 storey shopping mall hidden just beneath the entrance to the Kremlin, we finally made our way to the Red square. We just missed the tomb of the world’s second favourite dead revolutionary, Lenin, since it closes at 13.00 sharp.
Next, the candy cathedral AKA St. Basil’s. Great & positively lickable on the outside, not much to see on the inside. There’s a small space (mini church) under each dome, nothing spectacular. The tsar (Ivan, if I’m not mistaken), had it built, as he promised, after winning the battle for Kazan in the 17th century. I’ve read before that the tsar then had the eyes of the arhitect torn out, so he could never build something this beautiful elsewhere. But they didn’t write down this tale anywhere in the church. I guess it’s for Russian eyes only. Pun oh so intended.
Afterwards we visited the inside of the Kremlin walls, housing a bunch of chatedrals, palace of the patriarchy (head of the Russian orthodox church), Russian senate and a part of government. All these being in one place is very symptomatic of everything that was wrong with the ruling of Russia in much of its past. All hail Raspoutin!
We then visited the armoury, but they only let visitors in at certain times and in limited numbers. So you have to buy the ticket 45 minutes in advance if you don’t want to be left without. Armoury houses the famous Fabergé eggs, other royal jewles, weaponry, cutlery, carriages, clothes and such. All of them priceless, clad in tons of gold and otherwise utterly useless today. What really stuck in my mind was a mini carriage for children, drawn by ponies instead of normal horses and accompanied by midgets, eeerm.. dwarfs, eermm.. little people. All in the purpose of creating a mini procession.
Exhausted, we went to the hostel, showered for the n-th time, debated in the park over some beer and returned to our crowded communitary quarters in the hostel for some sweaty sleep.
Russia, the Beginnings of Sankt Petersburg
Who: Me and my friends Jasmina and Maja, backpacking.
Where: Starting in Sankt Petersburg, then traveling by train through Moscow, then taking the Trans-Siberian railway to Mongolia and later Beijing, China.
When: Started on 15th July 2010, planned flight back from Beijing on the 25th of August, same year – hopefully a different mindset.
Well, now that you know the jist of our plans I can start unraveling the story of our adventures in a bit more literary manner. We have subtitled the trip as “Pustolovščine Pikija in muc” as a friend of ours jokingly reffered to it, non-Slovenian readers and metaphore seekers fear not, you’re not missing much but an opportunity for some oversugared nicknimes. But I digress…
The first leg of our journey started by flying from Ljubljana to Prague, in a propeller plane of all things, and then switching to a flight to Sankt Petersburg the same morning. Apart from some partly early beer inspired tomfoolery and forming of internal jokes it was largely uneventful. For those considering a similar trip, the flight from Ljubljana to Sankt Petersburg via Prague cost 218 € including a quite generous student discount from Czech Airlines.
The Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg still has quite a socialist feel to it, mostly due to architecture, but also due to proverbially unenthusiastic customs officers and the usability nightmare of the immigration form. First they don’t tell you that the form exists and that it’s required before you reach the end of the line, then you have to fill it out and start all over again. Naturally the spaces for writing are so small a clock maker would suffer a nervous breakdown before filling them out. To add insult to injury, you have to put down the same data twice. Luckily, it seems, I am quite a stoic clock maker. Rant over.
On the bright side, the minibus AKA Miško, going our way was just around the corner and we were on route to our hostel before you could say: “Is the weather causing all the hotness or are the ladies here quite dazzling?”
At the Crazy Duck hostel (which is nowhere near where the Lonely Planet says it is) we were welcomed by an incredibly spacious dorm room right in the centre of the city. After a much needed shower, what followed of course was a stroll around Piter, as the locals affectionately call their city. It has a really nice vibe to it with well planned, spacious streets, water canals, illustrious churches and islands. The city was started in 1703 by Peter the Great as a part of his effort to modernise and Europenise the country which really shows. In the beginning it was largely built by Swedish prisoners of war which might explain the prevalence of Ikea furniture.
We marvelled at the architectural wonders, sat down for a beer next to the Winter palace (The Hermitage) and later for a refreshing bowl of cold Borsch. Tired from a full day of travel we half-dragged ourselves back to our hostel, somewhat time confused since there was still daylight at 23.30.
The game was afoot, the plains of Russia laid bare before us.
I’ll try to update the post with more photosh when I get the opportunity to upload them from my camera. Since I’m a few days behind reality with my blogging I’ll catch up later on the train.
Maja and Jasmina in front of our small propeller plane.
Sometimes even an airline passanger must adopt the heat preservation techniques of homeless people.
This is how light it is in Piter at midnight.