The travels of Tim and Megan: Moscow, Russia

Friday

After piling off the overnight sleeper train in Moscow, we all caught a bus to our hotel, Hotel Vega, which was once again, awesome. On the Go kicked a goal that time! We were not able to check in to our rooms yet, as it was still something like 6am, but we were able to relax in the hotel lobby and enjoy a brilliant buffet breakfast, complete with all the deliciousness you could hope for and cheesy 1980s music!

At about 9am, without showers or a change of clothes, we set off on our Moscow walking tour! At least everyone was in the same boat. We caught the metro from the hotel to the city centre. Some of the metro stations in Moscow are incredibly ornate. Stalin ordered artists and architects to design a structure in the metro system that embodied radiance and brilliance. With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grandiose chandeliers, this underground communist paradise reminded metro riders that Stalin and his party had delivered something substantial to the people in return for their sacrifices.

Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia. It is situated on the Moskva River and was founded before 1147, much earlier that St Petersburg. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia. It is also home to the Kremlin, an ancient fortress that is today the residence of the Russian President and of the executive branch of the Government of Russia. The Kremlin is also one of several UNESCO World Heritage sites in Moscow.

Moscow is the most populous city on the continent of Europe, and the seventh largest in the world. Its official population is 11.5 million but, as is the case with St Petersburg, the actual figure may be much higher. Based on figures from Forbes 2011, Moscow had 79 billionaires, displacing New York as the city with the greatest number of billionaires. Woah!

We emerged from the metro near the city's famous Red Square. Vladimir pointed a number of famous buildings and statues before we entered Red Square. The square separates the Kremlin from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod. As major streets of Moscow radiate from here in all directions, Red Square is considered the central square of Moscow. The name "Red Square" derives neither from the colour of the bricks around it nor from the link between the colour red and communism. Rather, the name came about because the Russian word "krasnaya" can mean either "red" or "beautiful". This word, with the meaning "beautiful", was originally applied to St Basil's Cathedral and was subsequently transferred to the square itself.

We wandered through Red Square, surrounded by enormous and beautiful buildings and structures on all sides. Along one of the sides is the massive fortification wall of the Kremlin, with Lenin's Mausoleum and the graves of famous Russians in front of the wall. Running along the other side of the square is the equally massive former GUM department store building, now a multi-level luxury shopping mall, full of designer clothing, jewellery and other things we could not afford. At the far end of the square is the magnificent St Basil's Cathedral, of similar design to the Church on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg. And at the end that we entered the square from, sits the State Historical Museum and the Kazan Cathedral, separated by the Resurrection Gate.

Lenin's Mausoleum is a dark, imposing Communist-style block building which houses the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin. Lenin's body has been on public display here since 1924, the year that Lenin died. The mausoleum is not open every day and it was not open on Friday, so we could not visit it. However, a few of us decided we would come back early on Saturday morning to see Lenin.

St Basil's Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox church, which was constructed on Red Square between 1555 and 1561. Built on the order of Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, it marks the geometric centre of the city. The original building contained eight "side-churches" arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession. A tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint, Saint Basil. A victim of State atheism, the church was stolen from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's anti-religion campaigns and it has operated as part of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularised in 1929.

We then left Red Square and wandered along the Kremlin fortification wall, past the eternal flame, commemorating Russia's dead from WWII, which had some very serious looking soldiers guarding it. We then went back to GUM for lunch at an awesome old school Communist style cafe called Canteen 57 in the GUM. Tim had chicken breast, pork fillet, boiled potatoes, chocolate cake and a coke (not very Communist), but it was delicious, not too badly priced for the heart of Moscow and the atmosphere was cool. Despite our Kremlin tour commencing at 2.30pm, Vladimir got us out of the warm, cosy and interesting GUM department store building at 1.30pm and we walked the short distance to the Kremlin wall, where we waited for 55 minutes in freezing cold wind until it was time for our tour to start. Not impressed.

Vladimir left us for the tour of the Kremlin and we got a local guide, who was apparently well schooled in the ways of the Kremlin. Sadly she was a tiny woman with a tiny voice, made worse by the bad cough she was suffering, so unless you were standing right next to her or were exceptionally good at lip reading, you could not understand a word of what was being said. We will be the first to admit that after an overnight sleep train, no showers, no change of clothes, a walking tour of Moscow and standing in the cold for an hour, none of us were in a great frame of mind for a Kremlin tour, but we were still disappointed by the content and lack of quality of the tour itself.

The Kremlin is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, which includes four palaces, four cathedrals and the enclosing Kremlin Wall and Kremlin towers. The complex serves as the official residence of the President of Russia. We only really visited the Cathedral Square and some of the cathedrals of the Kremlin, so that was disappointing to start with. Some of the palaces are open to the public and you can also visit the Armoury, including the "Diamond Fund", the home of weapons and exquisite treasures of Russia; a little like the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London but on steroids. So it was a shame that our tour did not include visits to these places. The cathedrals were quite cool, but we spent a very long time inside one of them and the whole group was bored to death by that stage. On the up side, we saw the massive Tsar Cannon, weighing in at 39 tonnes (this was mostly symbolic and was never actually fired) and the Tsar Bell, the largest bell in the world. We managed to sufficiently cuddle up to our guide to learn that the Tsar Bell weighs in at nearly 202 tonnes and is over 6 metres high, although it cracked during casting and like the canon, was never actually used.

After the Kremlin tour, we caught the metro back to our hotel and had much needed showers and a rest. Some of the group had signed up for an optional "Moscow by Night" bus tour, which checked out some of Moscow's sights by night and involved a vodka shot at each stop. Thankfully we passed on that, as they didn't get home until after 1am. We had a few quiet drinks, dinner not far from the hotel and crashed pretty early. Massive day in Moscow!

Saturday

We woke early on Saturday and met James and one of the Aussie girls from our tour, Jess, in the hotel breakfast room. We were the keen (or stupid) few who wanted to queue in the rain for over an hour to see a guy who has been dead for nearly 80 years and is immersed in wax every now and then to stop him rotting. Still, we were in far better shape than James, who had been up until 1am drinking vodka. After breakfast, we caught the metro to Red Square and, shivered for an hour until Lenin's Mausoleum opened at 10am. We were amongst the first few in the huge line, so it was worth getting up early.

We were filed through the spooky mausoleum in silence, watched by armed soldiers the whole way. Lenin's body in enclosed in a glass case underground, so you walk down quite a few stairs before you enter the room where his body lies and then you basically walk a lap around the glass case, and you must not stop moving or speak or do anything other than walk in silence really, for fear of being shot. Lenin's body looked very small and quite possibly has no legs any more. But otherwise, was well preserved and looked much like a Madame Tussaud's figure. Must be all those wax baths. On the whole, it was an interesting experience and worth the effort.

Outside the mausoleum, there is a row of graves of famous Russians, including the famous cosmonaut and first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, and former Premier of the Soviet Union and all-round nice guy, Joseph Stalin. After we left Red Square, we caught the metro to where we had planned to meet Vladimir and the rest of the tour group for a "metro tour" to see some of the especially elegant and opulent metro stations. We waited and waited and sent many texts to Vladimir. As it turned out, he told us to meet him at the wrong metro station, so we waited there for about 20 minutes for nothing and then we ended up doing our own metro tour, as we knew which stations were worth checking out. Some of the metro stations are insane. They have beautiful chandeliers, mosaic pictures on the walls and ceilings, paintings, sculptures. it really is amazing.

We eventually joined up with the rest of the group for the Soviet Bunker tour, another optional add-on. That was brilliant. The Stalinist-era Soviet Bunker (that was still top secret until very recently) is cleverly hidden beneath an ordinary apartment building, on a busy street in the heart of Moscow. We descended 18 floors (65 metres) below ground level to the impressive 75,000-square-foot facility, which was constructed covertly in the 1950s to protect the select few against a possible US nuclear attack. Known as the Tagansky Underground Command Center, the site was in operation throughout the 1970s, with a staff of 2,500, of whom 500 could be on duty at any one time. In the event of a nuclear war, it would have been sealed, with enough stored food for three months and systems to purify the air. In the 1990s with the Cold War thawing and the death of communism, this bunker came off the top secret list and is now open to the public for tours!

The tour was really well done. We watched a 30-minute film on the nuclear weapons created during the 1950s and 1960s (scary stuff) and then wandered through the intricate tunnel system of the bunker. We even got to pose with AK-47s and Soviet army helmets and uniforms - very nice. At the end of the tour, we were led into a modern-looking cafe/restaurant/bar kind of thing, still 65 metres beneath the ground, where we were treated to a Communist-style lunch of buckwheat slop, dry bread and tea. It was pretty fun, although not that tasty. Apparently people hire out that venue for wedding receptions and other parties - hope they have different caterers!
Later in the afternoon, we walked with James and Margot to the Fallen Monument Park, which is full of over-sized former Communist statues of Lenin, Stalin and co as well as general "worker bee" type monuments to famers etc. The Stalin statue has been attacked and defaced (see photo below) - nobody likes that guy. Right next to the Fallen Monument Park is Gorky Park, a large amusement park. We had a walk through there, which was really nice. The sun had come out and it was actually quite hot for a couple of hours. There was a band playing some sort of music and there were pretty gardens and fountains in the park.

Then it was back to the hotel, where we grabbed an early dinner of Subway, before we headed out to the Moscow Circus! This was another optional add-on to our tour. When we arrived at the circus, we saw a tiger cub, which was posing for photos with anyone who wanted to pay the fee. Tim couldn't resist - photo below - and has decided he would like his own tiger cub. They had all sorts of animals posing for photos and we also got one with both of us and a baby chimpanzee - not on our camera unfortunately, so we only have a hard copy photo. But it is very cute. They also had a near-fully grown tiger, a leopard and an orangutan! From what we could tell, the animals all looked in good shape and well cared for.

The circus itself was brilliant. There were actually not many animals in the performance, aside from synchronised performing sausage dogs and a dancing horse. But there some incredibly talented acrobats, ballet dancers and tight-rope walkers (see photo below of the guy walking on an uphill-sloping tight-rope, with a woman standing on his head)! There were also the usual suspects such as magicians, clowns and the like. It was a good night out and excellent value.

Back at the hotel, we had a few drinks with James and Margot. OK, we had a lot of drinks. We had to finish off a couple of bottles of vodka, as we did not want to travel with them in our luggage. Once that was demolished, James and Tim headed down to the shop to get some more, but James got side-tracked and bought a giant white teddy bear holding a red love heart, with a message written on it in Cyrillic lettering. It was their anniversary, you see. Very romantic gift! Things got even more hilarious as James and Tim were walking back to the hotel, as they discovered that the bear talked. It says several different things, all in Russian of course and it also occasionally plays a little jingle. Much hilarity was had.

Sunday

Sunday was our last day on the tour and there was nothing organised. But we dragged ourselves out of bed, feeling like we had consumed a lot of vodka the night before, attempted breakfast, and then caught the metro into the city with James and Margot. The white teddy bear did not accompany us. We checked out another couple of the luxurious metro stations, wandered through Red Square and bought some quality Russian souvenirs. We acquired a Soviet decorated hip flask, some wooden Russian dolls and the obligatory fridge magnet, while James got himself an old school brown leather air force cap, complete with chin strap and the hammer and sickle logo on the front. That will be his new drinking hat. Love it.

Around midday, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed some lunch and then caught our airport transfer out to the airport. We were absolutely shattered - tired, hungover, cold, getting sick, generally broken down little soldiers. We were very much looking forward to a few very lazy slow days in Slovenia. In saying that, Russia was brilliant, we loved every minute of it. It also happened to be Tim's 50th country. Boom.