Some very suspicious people

We went to Moscow over the easter weekend, it really was an interesting visit. There were 8 of us all together, including some of my mates and my Sarah. As usual Rob has written a pretty good email about it so I will post that instead of writing one of my own.

With the Easter break providing a window of 4-days, we departed London early on Good Friday. The time difference meant that we lost 3 hours, and then the phenomenon known as Moscow traffic meant that we lost another 2, so after checking into our hotel, we had little time to do more on our first day than find a restaurant for dinner and plan our next days' excurisons.

Before getting on to the trip details, one of the highlights for me was our hotel - Hotel Ukraina. Built by the river, the 30-storey building is one of 7 built by Stalin in the style of "Soviet classicism". It certainly was a classic soviet-style experience - each room had period furniture from the 1960s, the marbled lobby included a ceiling mural of workers, farmers and soldiers waving red banners and, with over 1,000 rooms to administer, the staff seemed to be made up of communist-era public servants......... The hotel even had its own observation deck with wonderful 360 degree views of the city and came complete with its own secret service cronie to prevent you from taking photos of various important government buildings dotted along the cityscape.

On a rainy and cold Saturday we were met by our university student guides who took us on a tour through the city. We walked around the gardens and chapels of the Kremlin, past Red Square to St. Basil's Cathedral. In the evening we trekked out to the suburbs to watch the Moscow State Circus which was a very impressive show. It included some very talented trapeze and rope artists, acrobats and jugglers, animal acts, Cossack daredevil horsemen and, at one stage, the floor was even recessed to give way to an ice-rink with acrobatic skaters........

On Sunday we queued at Red Square to see the embalmed body of "Grandfather" Lenin and view the tombs of various other communist leaders buried outside the Kremlin walls. We then went on a walk through Moscow's inner city suburbs, up the main shopping street to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. On Monday, we had the good fortune of stepping out the front door of our hotel to see a speeding motorcade taking President [Boot Scootin'] Putin to work - again, this came complete with secret service cronies ensuring that no bystanders were snapping away photos which may breach security protocol. With the day turning out to be particularly nice and sunny, we ventured back to Red Square and St. Basil's to take some brighter pictures. After a lunch of yummy borshch, vareniki and pelmeni, it was time to collect our luggage and make our way out to the airport.

The trip to the airport must be one of the cheapest excursions to any airport anywhere in the world! A remnant of Soviet pride is the massive Moscow Metro system. Each station is designed in grand Soviet style with statues, murals and mosaics of happy workers and soldiers being greeted by important figures such as Lenin and Stalin and bas reliefs still depicting the hammer and sickle. But with trains arriving each minute on a network combining more than 260km of track, this is the largest mass transit system in the world - It carries more passengers per day than the London Tube, Paris Metro and NY Subway put together! Meaning that the airport, in remote woodland some 40km outside of the city, can be reached efficiently for a fare of just £0.35......

Churchill once described Russia as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". To me, I did not find it that strange - it seemed very much like a large industrialised city slowly emerging from its communist past. The way of life still seemed very regimented and basic, with unnecessary levels of security and administration. The city itself was generally dirty and emotionless and, humorously, the people's fashion and grooming senses seemed very much rooted in the 80s. But overall it was a great experience and a very interesting destination. Travel was not easy and I must say a special thank you to JC, whose mastery of the Cyrillic alphabet meant that we always got where we were trying to get to and remained well fed. Having seen the massive development and flood of tourists to former-Eastern Bloc countries like Czech Republic and Hungary, I was pleased to experience a city which seemed to have drawn the Iron Curtains, but had only just begun to open the window to allow capitalist culture to waft in.