Gone with the wind
20., 21. July – Moscow was fun, but it was time to move on, go east. We took the metro to the Jaroslawski train station, had our breakfast at a local buffet and purchased some food for the long ride ahead. One of the benefits of Russia is cheap caviar, so I stocked up with a full jar of its black variety for not much more than an euro. While waiting at the shop an akward chat developed with a customer and the security guard. At first they were unsure about the whereabouts of Slovenia, but they soon remembered the football match with Russia and briskly left, somewhat dismayed. 
The next 31 hours were spent on a train from Moscow to Yekaterinburg. One would think this is where the story ends, that there wouldn’t be much to write about. One would be wrong. One has much to learn about Russian train travel. Who is this rethoric one I speak of? I don’t know. Ask him, or her. Whatever.
First, we came to the train on the platform, gave the stewardess (yes, they’re called the same on trains) our tickets and she blurted out our seat numbers. We muddled along to our coupe, where there was already a middle aged and, due to the heat, topless gentleman. He spoke only Russian, but seemed rather nice. We proceeded to unpack our belongings, make our beds. After a few minutes, another three topless gentleman came, politely asking if we were all going to stay here and asking for our tickets. They said they were all traveling together and that this was their coupe. After another glance at our tickets we realised our, and the stewardesses’ mistake, then moved two coupes forward.
We repeated the settling process and mentally prepared for a day and a half of relative boredom. But it was not to be. Our previous acquaintances soon invited us over to their coupe for some drinks. It turned out to not be only drinks, as an entire corpse of a baked chicken lay on the train table. The table was almost comicly small when put in perspective with the chicken and accompaniyng vegetables. We tried it reservedly, but the main focus of the feast was elswhere. Vodka. Their Praznichnaya variety went down really easy, as if it did not contain all that alcohol. Naturally we still had to seal the deal with a few sips of beer. As the often repeated and useful Russian saying goes: “Drinking vodka without beer is like throwing money into the wind.” And we couldn’t act so wastefully, could we?
A debate soon developed, although a bit hampered by differing languages. Jasmina’s and Maja’s knowledge of Russian came in handy, as ususal I struggled through with the few words I know and my improvised Serbo-Croatian with Dolenjska accent which, when put together, can sound surprisingly like Russian.
As you might have gathered by now, the guys were really friendly and talkative, a fact in no doubt emphasised by the dashingness of my female cotravelers. During the small talk we found out that they were construction workers from Belgrad, a Russian town near the border with Ukraine on their way to Perm for a month-long job. When, much later, our limited vocabulaires left us with little more to disscus, we retired to our quarters for a few rounds of cards and observing of the shanty lumber towns and berch forests we were passing by.
Surprisingly time went by quickly. Before we knew it, it was already the evening of our second day on the train and we’ve arrived at our destination – Yekaterinburg. It was quite late, we didn’t have a place booked, so we took a taxi to a nearby hotel that was in the Lonely Planet guide. It turned out to cost a lot more than we would have liked it to and the energetic and business savy taxi driver offered to call around for other offers while he kept repeating he has a brilliant memory. That extra service of course increased the price of our taxi ride to about 10€. When I tried to haggle my response was met with a non-threatening “I called hotel, I now control situation”, the ususal “I have a brilliant memory, you know” and the slightly racist “I work for good price, I am no nigro”. In the end he came through, quickly got us a good and much cheaper hotel and even waited to see that we got our room keys. So I suppose he well earned his fee.
Afterwards we did a quick midnight walk around our part of the city of Yekaterinburg, which used to be known as Svedrlovsk. What more it had to offer would have to wait until the following day.
Moscow of leaders and artists
Moscow, 19. July – Got up, got the train tickets to Yekaterinburg, got food at Subway (plenty of those in Russia). Checked out an interestingly and uniquely Soviet styled skyscraper, housing a Hilton hotel these days, decided what we already knew, too expensive.
Basic errands thus accomplished we followed the Moskvaaa, doooown to Gorky paaaark, listening to the wiiiinds of chaaaange… Sorry, I got carried away by The Scorpions… Parents reading this, DO NOT BE ALARMED! Scorpions are a band.
In the northern part of Gorky park are a bunch of satues of Soviet leaders, deposited here after 1990 when people of Moscow didn’t want their former oppresors/leaders displayed publicly anyomore. Nice, but not as many of them as I expected. There are also some satues of a more artistic nature and a reeeeaaaly giant one of Peter the Great, setting sail on the shores of Moskva river.
The rest of Gorky park is full of amusements such as roller coasters, dodge cars, trains for children, suffering deer… Yep, you read that right. Suffering deer. They had a stand set up, where people could get a photo of themselves with two deer. But with flaming 34 degrees Celsius and deer’s coats made to rough out the harsh winters of Syberia it was really more of a sad affair. The animals huffed and puffed, just lay on the ground hyperventilating while a family was actually petting them and getting their pictures taken just behind them. I don’t see how that would make a nice family photo. Maybe for the Pot family. As in Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge.
A warm beer later we were on our way again, over the bridge, past the gigantic Ministry of Defence. It really is a monumental piece of fearspect inspiring Soviet architecture. Huge block of concrete, all in straight lines, so tall the windows seem tiny while they are in fact quite abnormaly large. Soviet symbolsm on top, two howitzers parked in front. We could easily stroll by it, even climb the stairs to the entrance, take as many photos as we could. Two decades ago we would probably be arrested and anally probed for just thinking about pulling such a stunt. Accross the Moskva river, just opposite of the ministry, rests a real-sized model of the Buran, the Soviet space shuttle. A project so expensive and mismanaged it contribuited to the downfall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. In the end, it never flew. So the employees of the ministry go to work each day, seeing the great failure. It must be grounding.
One last tourist trap remained for the day. The Arbat street. It used to be the home of many of struggling artists such as poets, writers and street performes. The latter are plentiful to this day. There’s lots of portrait and caricature drawing, juggling, singing, even a mostly pathetic mime. Apart from that there are a lot of souvenir shops and restaurants. Perhaps the most useful part of the Arbat street is a fountain where you can chill out and observe the locals being their weird selves. It’s thoroughly entertaining and since it doesn’t involve much phisycal activity, it was just the remedy for our soring feet and a pleasant occupation for the remainder of the evening.
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.
