Moscow

For the past few days we've felt like criminals on the run dodging the police. Moscow police are notorious for stopping tourists and demanding to see their passports and paperwork. There are a few bad apples in the mix and numerous backpackers have been "fined" and forced to pay bribes to get their passports back. You learn very quickly to avoid police in narrow alleyways .. or in our case to avoid them if at all possible. It's become automatic for us to veer course or turn and look with sudden interest into a shop window when we see two grey uniforms on their way down the street. Avoiding them is an easy feat until you reach the Kremlin or Red Square ... this is where they swarm. Thankfully in these arenas their authoritative whistle blowing seems to distract from other work... they busy themselves blowing whistles at tourists who step off the path or cross into a forbidden area. It actually brings a great authoritative atmosphere to the place, you'd be disappointed if you could amble aimlessly around the Kremlin.

We're staying on Arbat Street, famous for it's artists and poets in the past. Nowadays portrait painters and street trader stalls line the street touting for tourist business. At night the place turns into a crazy zone. I forgot to mention in the last blog about how lax alcohol consumption laws are in Russia. Basically you cannot drink anything over a certain strength the streets (vodka) but your 8% beer is fine, any time any place. The entire population seem to wander around with a beer in their hand morning, noon and night. We got off a bus at 7am in the morning in St. Petersburg and there were people sitting around going to work drinking cans. Anyhow .. Arbat Street on a Saturday night seems to build into a party atmosphere with comedians telling jokes, contortionists double knotting themselves and people having a go at the "test your strength hammer". On the way home from Moscow day we managed to experience what happens after hours of partying. Scores of drunken people were queueing up for the strength hammer or arm wrestling challenge. Some folks opted to be lead on a drunken horse ride up and down the street. There were little old ladies selling bunnies, kittens and puppies to anyone who wanted company on their way home. You could just imagine waking up in the morning, sore arms and a new puppy.

Both here and in St Petersburg the metro systems are incredible. The Moscow metro moves more people every day than London and New York combined. 172 stations service 9+ lines. The stations are deep underground with escaltors running more than 7 storeys tall. The stations themselves are works of art. Each one different, some with bronze statues, some with mosaics and almost all with chandeliers, they are an attraction to themselves. Oh and you only have to wait 2minutes for a train, its great, noone runs to a train if they see one on the station, there will be another along in no time (every 30 sec in peak hour).

We have our train tickets to Ulan Baatar in Mongolia but it wasn't as smooth sailing as the last ticket purchase. With the added complication of crossing the border we knew from the outset that it would be trickier and we'd need the help of a member of the rare species of specialised friendly ticket agents. Arriving at the ticket booths we did a quick lap eyeing up the agents putting each into one of two categories "Not Friendly" and "Possibly Friendly". Systematically Marcus worked through the friendly ones ... each one's reply first off was "NYET" as in "NO" (but we're used to the nyets and just ignore them now). After been pointed to 5 different booths and then upstairs (where there were no cashiers at all ...) we were starting to question whether anyone in the station actually knew what was going on. Sense does say that if the train leaves from this station and connects onwards out of Russia then somebody must be able to sell you a ticket out of the country. It should be just a matter of finding that elusive person. On another go asking at all the booths we eventually secured a definite point to another building and moved to search to there. Eventually we found someone interested in making a sale ...a mere hour and a half of an exhausting search later. It's definitely a case of perseverance.

Moscow is not as pretty as St Petersburg but what it lacks in visible beauty it makes up for with history and authority. It is here that the seat of Russian power is located and you definately feel its weight walking around the Kremlin and Red Square. One of the highlights of Red Square is of course catching an on-the-move glimpse of Mr Lenin. Looking rather waxy these days it is rumoured that Mr Putin will send him to rest in St Petersburg with his mother as was his wish soon enough.

Again we were lucky to hit Moscow on its birthday (859th) celebratory weekend. As you would expect the full spectrum of Russian pomp and pagentry was on display around the city. We strode around rather confidently that day as the police had their annual relay run around the ring road here, and we thought that should take out any of the numble ones for a few hours. Most of the traffic in the area around the Kremlin and square was sealed off to allow multiple stages with concerts. Despite the relay, the police and militry presence was huge. You could not walk 10 metres without passing someone in uniform. The Russian approach to crowd control seems to be less spending on the metal barriers, more blokes standing shoulder width apart shaking their head when you get too close. We explored some of these before settling into the main area behind St Basils cathedral at one end of Red Square for the nights entertainment. The show consisted primarily of ethinc music and dance acts from all over Russia and indeed some selected other countries. As darkness fell some local pop stars got up to strut their stuff before the main event commenced at 9.30 (the billing was for a spectacular laser show). Now I say main event because the square was at its fullest and it was 9.30pm on a Saturday...but the main event was....lets just say, cringefull. Imagine 200,000 people standing in a square, filled with the anticipation of a 'spectacular laser show'. Well, the curtain in front of the stage went up....more raised expectation....then on went the fountains. Fountains...of the choreographed variety. Up on a stage, 300m from the guy at the back. I have no idea who designed this but the dancing fountains did their thing to various snippets of music (30 sec each) which covered everything from Pink Floyd to Bocelli. Along with the fountains some images were projected onto a screen of water...such creative images as time lapse photography of flowers blooming and horses running along a beach. Kitch to the extreme. Oh and the 'spectacular laser show' was something not obviously checked before the show, as it was projecting into the dancing fountains, throwing off some random green triangles every now and then.
Now it sounds like I am running it down, and I am, but we found ourselves looking around to the crowd seeing if people were giggling or looking decidedly short changed...nope, people seemed to watch almost waiting (hoping) for something good to happen.
After 45mins of this the real main event started. A truly spectacular fireworks display launched from the middle of the river. It was beautifully choreographed and seemed to only include the huge 'finale' fireworks...and none of the 'smiling cubes' that have become de-rigeur.

We met some guys at the hostel here who are in the middle of a great challenge. They are taking part in the Mongol Rally. Its a race of sorts for charity, from Hyde park to Ulan Bator...in a car with an engine capacity less than a litre. They are doing it in a 1990 Suzuki Samuri ($200 worth) and have taken a great route across the continent, heading through Turkey, Iran and the Stans. They were in the hostel as they had come back to Moscow on the train from the border with Mongolia to try to source a new engine. Its well worth reading their blog to catch some of the great stories they have experienced. Very sound guys who are looking to put their story on TV.

We will wrap up this post with a final funny story from here. In front of one of the entrances to Red Square there are some bronze markings set amongst the cobblestones. These obviously have some traditional importance as the thing to do it to stand in the middle of the arrangement, get a photo taken and toss a coin over your shoulder. So imagine the scene, a person posing with a smile and a rouble in hand, the friend takes the photo, the coin gets tossed....and 4 homeless scallywags dive in to try to catch the coin (one hand one bounce off the cobblestones) before the others. There must be some pecking order as whoever gets the coin gets a good talking too from the other dero's. I wouldn't be surprised if these same folks don a snorkel and mask in the evenings to trawl the fountains for more coins.

We are off to the supermarket now to complete our full collection of 2-minute noodles for the 75 hour train ride ahead. We are heading to Irkutsk and then taking a trip up to Olkhon island on Lake Baikal which should be interesting (read no electricity, water, phoneline). Check out the map link on the right to see where we are headed.