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.
Oriental Bucarest experience
Friday 31. July 2009:
I woke up in a shaking train cart, rather suprised that I managed fo sleep as well as I did despite all the noise and commotion. The landscape outside was rather somber but nontheless intrguing. Small and slowly moving oil pumps were scattered accross the land connected by countless wooden posts laid with poorly planned wires. A world of gray and brownish shades, overlayed with just a touch of morning fog, but stil peculiarly beautiful in its’ industriality. Clearly we were not in Bucarest yet, so I took a short nap until we were.
At the station a Romanian friend of Ivor’s going by the charming name of Flavia was alreqdy waiting for us. I proceeded to make my traditional bad first impression by cracking Ceaucescu jokes which can be rather hard to take even when the clock is not well before seven in the morning. Sanjin and Jan of course happily joined in and we were churning out Romanian stereotypes the whole metro ride. All in good taste. Your taste may vary.
Flavia was extremly kind and had already reserved a room for us at the Midland hostel in the centre of the city. It was early, room wasn’t ready and our much needed showers had to wait. Next was the quest for Ivor’s Moldovan visa. Croatia isn’t yet in the EU so he needed one. I wonder why it’s taking them so long to join, poor bastards? 
That took some time due to some senseless bureaucracy, but what doesn’t kills gets us more forms to fill out, as the old proverb arguably goes. That meant the rest of us had some time to look for unsecured WiFi hotsopts in the neighbourhood and a coffe & chocholate-prune mousse. My eyes gleamed with delight when I cast my sight upon a couple of Hoegaarden beers in the fridge. Not to worry, we tried plenty of local ones later on, though, not suprisingly most seem to be owned by the Belgian InBev anyway.
The visa quest took Ivor and Flavia through some more administrative challenges, meanwhile we were intermittingly meeting, exploring Bucarest and were even able to shower to the undoubtful delight of anyone we met.
After a nice nargile outside an Egyptian bar, discussing the various high flying problems plaguing our society and women (not counting the among the former), our need for sightseeing could no longer be ignored. Thus we proceeded to the square of Nicolae Ceaucescu’s last speech, the “stabbed potato” monument to the revolution and ex-communist central cmmitee which now houses 4 government ministries. Our experience then turned thoroughly oriental with a great sushi dinner, beers at the Khrishna bar and Jan’s well spirited, but unsuccessful atempts to teach the waitress Chinese. Another of Ivor’s Romanian friends joined us, Tiberie by name. We continued to cruise Bucarest chanting partisan hymns until we grew tired and my jokes rather stale. A refreshing sleep put us right back on track.
I can’t yet add the photos whch aren’t on my phone, so you’ll have to live just with the sushi photo for the time being.
