8th October: Moscow on a Whim

As predicted, the rest of the week flew by in a blur. The nights were quiet but my days were spent catching up on missed time – with people, work and my things in the flat. On Wednesday night we met for a few drinks in Bristol Bar; on Thursday I took Jojo, the girl from Oxford who lives in my apartment block, to my gym class and on Friday we spent all afternoon getting train tickets for St Petersburg, due to the ridiculously slow ticket-booking system at Russian train stations – leaving just the evening free for my gym class and work. I didn’t go out that night, having spontaneously decided to tag along with a trip to Moscow which meant I had to leave at 6am the next morning. I’ve realised that I should start making the most of the weekends while the weather still allows easy travel – not only this, but a lot of people had already been to Moscow so this would probably be my last opportunity to have someone to do the ‘touristy’ bits with.

It was surprisingly easy getting up at 5.15am that Saturday morning as, not having really slept again, it didn’t feel like the start of a new day but like the continuation of one after a nap. When I walked up to the agreed meeting point, the Lenin statue on Yaroslavl’s Red Square, Beth and Sean were already waiting in the taxi, and we arrived at Yaroslavl Moskovsky Station a comfortable twenty minutes before the train was due to leave. It’s called the Moskovsky Station because trains go from here to Moscow – a system that operates throughout Russia; the station we were travelling to was the Moscow Yaroslavsky.

When the train did arrive, it was a traditional Soviet-style locomotive, and not only this, but as it was arriving from another distant town, it was a sleeper train. Having bought my ticket separately from the others, we were in different compartments, leaving me to experience this bizarre train journey on my own. My carriage, being third class, was a communal sleeping compartment with around thirty people sleeping on hard, thin bunk beds, arranged in sets of four, and separated by thin walls. Everyone was still asleep and I felt like an intruder for entering the train at such an ungodly hour. Not knowing where my bed was or wanting to use it anyway, I managed to find a small corner with two chairs facing a little table by the window, where I was joined by a man I quickly termed Russian Jason (as he was the spitting image of the guy in my brother’s band, if only he had that certain Russian thing about him). I slept almost the whole way, or at least I can only assume I did, not being able to remember the sixty-two songs I’d apparently got through on my iPod when I eventually opened my eyes.

The final fifteen minutes of the journey brought us through the drab backstreets of the capital, which were made even bleaker by the persistent rain and ominous dark cloud that hung heavily above the rooftops. The ‘Welcome to Moscow’ sign written in Russian on large grey stones as we pulled into the station seemed somewhat ironic under the circumstances. I admit that, at that moment, I felt a flicker of doubt that I had made the right decision in coming.

However, the next moment I was off the train and had to focus on the next task: finding the hostel. Since I had booked it, I was in charge of getting us there, which meant getting to the correct metro station and finding the walking route from there. Getting on the right metro was no problem, but when we emerged from the station at the other end, our written directions were completely inadequate and left us totally at a loss. Luckily, the woman I asked was incredibly helpful and, despite the cold and rain, looked up the hostel on Google Maps on her phone and directed us as best she could. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of walking up the hectic multi-lane bridge we realised we must be going in the wrong direction and, taking our lives into our hands, sprinted over the road. We asked several people for directions but, although they were friendly and willing to help, no one was able to.

Eventually, a middle-aged businessman approached us and asked if we needed any assistance, at which I immediately explained the situation. He told me that as he often travelled himself on business, he understood how reassuring it can be when a local helps you to find your bearings, and therefore he would do everything he could to help us find our way. He was an insurance broker in Moscow and had lived there all his life, but didn’t know this particular hostel or street. Nevertheless, he asked passers-by and a policeman, and took us right up to the door. He even telephoned the hostel to let them know we were on our way, and took my mini-suitcase up five flights of stairs to where we thought the hostel was (admittedly, we had got the wrong floor and ended up walking into a random woman’s house). When we finally found the hostel reception he told the staff we were ‘wonderful young people from England’, and that they should look after us. He even said I could give him a call if we had any problems. We could not believe that anyone could be so generous – for a busy Muscovite to take over twenty minutes out of his day to help some strangers find their way was completely unexpected.

After we had had lunch, checked in and found our beds, we headed back to the metro station, where we took the metro to охотный ряд, which would lead us to Red Square. The tickets were surprisingly cheap for a capital city – the equivalent of 60p for one journey – especially if you compare this to London, which is said to be on a level with Moscow and Tokyo as the most expensive city in the world. We came out directly onto Theatre Square, where we saw the Malenky and Bolshoi Theatres. After we had crossed yet another busy road, Red Square was impossible to miss, and after a couple of phone calls we were able to meet up with Josh, Karen and Nell and go for a bite to eat in the famously elaborate shopping centre, Гум. Feeling revived, we took a trip around the history museum for only 80r (£1.60), which showed exhibits of Russian history from ancient times to the end of the Tsarist period. By the time we had finished it was approaching 6pm, so we decided to make our way to a couple of the famous metro stations before stopping for dinner.

The metro stations in Moscow are incredible, and it is impossible to choose which one is best. Many feature elaborate architecture, sculptures, tapestries or stained glass, often based around a theme, and all convey a feeling of capaciousness you just don’t seem to get in other cities around the world. The Revolution Square station is particularly impressive with its statues of revolutionaries and the industrious proletariat. All the stations are meticulously looked after; they seem to be a real object of pride in the city. The care taken over the aesthetics of Russian cities has been apparent in all the places we have visited, including Yaroslavl, where the streets are cleared of litter and sprayed down by large lorries daily, and pavements and parks are regularly cleared of leaves. But it’s particularly impressive in such a huge commercial city like Moscow (at least in the central parts I’ve seen).

We wanted to find a traditional Russian place for dinner, but after being turned away from one which was too full and failing to find another, which was recommended by the first, we were tired and hungry, and chose too quickly. The restaurant had an interesting interior: a traditional Russian building paired with cream diner-style furniture, which was somewhat incongruous. The menu was average but over-priced, but as we had seen this in most of the places we had walked past, we were willing to put up with it just to get some food. We’d wanted traditional Russian cuisine and we got traditional Russian service – slow, surly and inept. The food arrived separately, one meal was missing ingredients, the others were cold and my ‘spaghetti with tomato sauce’ arrived covered in minced meat. Admittedly, when we complained, they added Nell’s onion rings and made me another spaghetti, but it was by no means value for money.

During the meal, I picked up three missed calls and a text from Sergei the airport transfer man, telling me I needed to get to the car immediately, or it would leave without me. I was now more confused about the airport transfer mishap than ever; if they had got the wrong date, how on earth had I managed to get home on Tuesday at all? This was obviously just another case of poor Russian organisation.

After dinner we went to a couple of bars and met up with Flora and Charlie in the downtown area near one of the hostels. The drinks were expensive (£5 for a single vodka and Coke) and the six of us were all exhausted from our long day, so it wasn’t long before we called it a day and headed home to catch the last metro. We got to bed at 1.30am, giving us enough time to have enough rest for an early start for lots of sight-seeing the next day.

On Sunday, we were checked out of the hostel by 9.45 and made our way to Red Square once again, where we hoped to see Собор Василия Блаженного (St Basil’s Cathedral) before visiting Lenin’s Mausoleum and the Kremlin. However, we soon found out that St Basil’s didn’t open until 11am, and the other two sites weren’t showing any signs of opening at all. Taking advantage of Гум for some shelter and warmth, we wandered around the shops until 10.30 when we met the others for breakfast and formulated a new plan.

After ascertaining from one of the guards that the mausoleum was undergoing refurbishment (which would explain all the metal fencing) and would not be open until April, we braved our way through the wind and drizzle to the Kremlin. However, once at the ticket office, we found out that none of the Kremlin buildings were open either, which completely ruined our plans for the day. Luckily, Josh was there with Joe’s trusty guidebook, so it was decided we would visit the nearby Храм Христа Спасителя (Cathedral of Christ the Saviour), another famous Moscow landmark.

The cathedral was worth the trip. It’s impossible to express the vast scale of this elaborate building, which looms up over the landscape from its paved platform. Destroyed in the Soviet anti-religious campaign after Lenin’s death, it was intended as the site for a monument to socialism known as the Palace of the Soviets. When funds wouldn’t allow for construction to go ahead, the site was transformed into an outdoor swimming pool under Krushev, following the flooding of the foundations of the site. Eventually, after communism in Russia collapsed, the cathedral was rebuilt and restored to its former glory. It seems inconceivable that such a spectacular cathedral, white with huge golden domes, could ever have been replaced with something as mundane as a swimming pool, especially seeing it from the inside. The scale is even more breathtaking from inside, where the impression of vastness is intensified by the wide corridors around the outer perimeters and the enormous central section with its beautiful ceiling stretching to a seemingly limitless height. There is even an underground area to the church, which covers the entire surface area of the main building. The enormity and the elaborateness of this place can only inspire a feeling of awe – in avid worshippers and atheists alike; I find it almost impossible to comprehend how something this spectacular can have been built purely on the basis of blind faith. Having seen the cathedral for myself and the devout worshippers that go there to pray, I find myself having a greater understanding of the Church’s argument in the Pussy Riot trial.

After visiting the Cathedral, it was time to find somewhere to have lunch, so we took the metro to the Arbatsky region, where a local had told us we would find the famous Russian fast-food chain Ёлки Палки (Tree Sticks). However, on arriving there we were told that this particular branch had closed down, and possibly reopened on the New Arbatsky Street. As Karen, Nell and I were not particularly concerned about where we ate, we split into two groups. After a quick lunch at an Italian buffet, we went back to Red Square, where Nell took my suitcase while I went to get a quick look at St Basil’s Cathedral, which they had already seen.

St Basil’s was completely different from the first cathedral we had seen, but beautiful from an entirely different perspective. Built in the sixteenth century under Ivan the Terrible, it is full of little corners and corridors, with different tapestries and frescoes in each dome, which represent different events leading to the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, which the cathedral is dedicated to. I was lucky enough to be visiting during a performance from a male vocal quartet, which sounded gorgeous in the cathedral’s unusual acoustic. This cathedral is on a much smaller scale than the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and is more subtly beautiful than striking, with a completely different atmosphere. I was glad to have been able to see them both.

Satisfied that I’d seen all I could have in the time I’d had, I walked back to the others, where we bought souvenirs from the market, chatting to the friendly market workers, who were more than willing to give us a good deal once they realised we spoke Russian and had got up some good banter. Then it was time to make our way back to the station for the three-and-a-half hour journey which would get us to Yaroslavl at 22.14. Exhausted but content with how the day had ended up, I split off from the others and headed reluctantly to my compartment, only to find that not only was I in the seat in front of Flora and Charlie, but we were in the higher-class section. So, all in all, everything had turned out for the best. The weekend had been spontaneous and tiring but I was so glad I had come.