22/9/2002 Moscow, Russia (Phill)
I've decided that I preferred visiting Moscow in terms of sights, but there's NO way I could live here! This city reeks corruption. In between that are some spectacular sights, not least the Kremlin and Red Square.
On the second day here we managed to sleep in until 11am! Quite a feat in a hostel, trust me. Our roommates were pretty cool and managed to not wake us when they got home.
We never managed to make it to the infamous 'Hungry Duck bar' (anyone who reads Maxim will know this one) but we did manage to meet up with my Aussie friends from Finland
Andy and LeeAnne. We were supposed to meet them at 1pm, except waking up at 11 made this difficult. Couple that with the fact that we still hadn't registered our visa's and couldn't legally (without risking bribes) leave the country without this being done. Next problem was that it had to be done at a hotel on the outskirts of Moscow. So we hopped on the truely brillaint Moscow Metro (the stations are phenomonal, see www.metro.ru, and trains come every one to two minutes) to the 'burbs. This was a very different environment from the tourist areas where a coke costs $2. This was decrepid and very poor. We were surrounded by bray tenament buildings cracking and crumbling. We refused to get in the first elevator that arrived at the building since we KNEW we wouldn't make it to the 15th floor.
In the end the visa's were straightforward and as long as you paid the $10 you became 'legal' again. The whole system is a big scam but you can't risk being refused at the border and shipped back to Moscow!
We met up with the Aussies as they were leaving Red Square, they had waited almost 40 minutes for us and we were lucky to bump into them. Grabbed lunch and compared notes, they're a great couple of kids. They both have been living in London for the last bit, and although Leeanne is heading back to Oz I'll expect to see her on her US tour in 2004! Andy I'll see in November when I pass back through London.
Once again we missed Lenin's tomb, well I wouldn't say we 'missed' it, just didn't see it! Oh yeah, on the way out of the Metro station a cop grabbed me and started interrogating me. He was met with some blank stares from me and I mumbled 'angleski! nyet Ruski!' he smiled and waved me on. We saw TONS of people, particularly the Japanese being harassed by the police. Basically it's just a big excuse to wrestle some money out of you. We survived by keeping our heads down, and probably becuase we blended in a bit more than the Japanese!
Before we left Helsinki we had booked our train back to Finland
(since we were cutting it very close for our flight to London), however, there wasn't a free bed on the direct train to Helsinki so we had to book an overnight to St Pete's and after a two hour layover a morning train to Helsinki. We knew it'd be exhausting and if anything went wrong we'd miss our flight.
We got on our train no problems, even made the girl ticket lady laugh. Just before leaving a Russian come's in our cabin and obviously has reserved the spare bed. I swear all Russian men look shady and this guy could've been right out of the Soprano's. However, it turned out he spoke quite a bit of English and was a totally decent guy. I felt quite ashamed for having judged him so quickly. He translated for us and happily chatted away. Turned out he was a Russian Wrestler (he was the same weight as me), had medalled in the Olympics (proudly letting us know he had beaten an American) and was know president of the corporation that imports Pringles Chips into Russia.
Totally decent guy, we chatted for ages. He was actually from the ex-soviet state of Georgia. Anyone following the news knows that the US just shipped a bunch of Military Advisors there basically to help Georgia defend itself against the Russians. John and I asked endless questions about Georgian/Russian relations, what they think of America, Iraq, Afghanistan etc... Poor guy!
All of our train connections went fine. On the train to Helsinki actually was some 80s rock star, I didn't know him but he looked the part! His name was Guy something and he had a one hit wonder in the 80s and had been playing a couple of gigs in Russia. They played some of their music for me and it wasn't bad, but VERY 80s!
Flight from Helsink to London went off hitchless, apart from John pissing off the British Airways staff. Oh yeah, the flight I was suposed to be on (STA managed to get me on the BA flight with John last week, but originally the only seat was on an SAS flight) was cancelled! I wouldn't have made it to London.
Okay, long long posting, sorry bout that. I'm actually in london right now, spent the day with my mum buying stuff for Africa
. Needed a sleeping bag and shoes and tons of random stuff. I thought I had a week in london and have arranged to meet tons of my friends for drinks this week, except it turns out that I only have 3 days till I fly to Dubia in the United Arab Emirates, and onwards to nairobi, Kenya. This time next week I'll be on Safari, how crazy is that?????????
One side note, once you get your postcard from Russia (I sent millions of them) email me and let me know. I want to see which ones made it and which didn't, my Russian cyrillic writing isn't exactly brilliant and the first five I didn't even realise you had to do that so they might not make it (I think they were to the 3 young kids in Austin, Nicole, Mari in Oslo, Christine in Berlin and Feike in Holland, so you guys can email me if you get them).
Posted by Admin at September 24, 2002 09:47 AM