June 22

Moscow is a fantastic city! Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. I was raised in that cold war Russia-is-the-enemy era when we were taught that Moscow was grey, dreary, and all made out of concrete blocks, with people walking around looking down for fear of being shot. I bet a lot of the fear stuff was true during the heyday of communism, and I'm sure some sections of town are ugly and concrete. The Russians taught the Egyptians how to build ugly-ass apartment buildings in the 1960s, and those certainly transformed the Cairo landscape! But Moscow -- at least the parts we've seen so far -- is gorgeous! It's like the best buildings from Paris or Zurich, but instead of just one or two historic buildings in the old section, there are just blocks and blocks of these blue and green and yellow art deco and noveau buildings with columns and pilasters, carved angel heads and mosaic tiles, and onion-dome cathedrals everywhere you look. 

Even the Stalinist buildings are gorgeous. There are seven skyscrapers built under Stalin (called the Seven Sisters) that are these giant looming fairy tale castles. Kind of evil, like the castle of Mordor in Lord of the Rings or something, but just because it looks evil doesn't make it ugly. I even enjoy the real Communist buildings, the party headquarters and Army central and stuff. They're square-ish in a post-modern way -- like a Brady Bunch-era library. But they have these great cubist mosaics of working people and tanks and farmers, made of inlaid tile and cast concrete covered in gold leaf. I like it.

	It may very well be one of the world's biggest hotels. 5000 rooms. It's a full city block. Walking the circumference of the hallway is a half-mile. But -- and this is the reason we chose this hotel -- out our window you can see the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great; it's just a spectacular view. We re-did our beds so our pillows are on the foot end, so we can just look out the window. We've watched the sun rise and set behind the cathedral (I have taken more photos of that building now than I ever did of the pyramids!). And because it stays light so long here, when we wake up in the middle of the night, you can see it -- either in the dusky light of late evening, or illuminated by streetlights in the middle of the night. Fantastic! It's Tricia's all-time-favorite building. She says it puts the Taj to shame.
This is our hotel.  No, not the lovely eight-story art noveau masterpiece on the right.  The butt-ass ugly square gulag on the left.  With the guard tower on top.
Even the interior of St. Basil's is awseome.

We tried to get some laundry done our first day here. Since we couldn't leave the hotel until they were done with our passports, we gathered our laundry and looked it up in the directory of "guest services." Which said we should bring it down to the first floor, North wing. We're in the West Wing (if you ever come here, that's the wing to stay in. The rooms have been renovated, so they cost more, but the view is worth it. And we went past some of the other rooms today which haven't been renovated. Trust me. West wing.) 

These photos were all taken from our hotel room window.  Man, we had a fabulous view!

But you can't get to the North Wing from the west one. Each wing has it's own lobby which does not connect to the others. Our taxi driver had to run into one lobby to check on which wing we were staying in so that he could drop us off at the proper lobby. What we have found out is that the only way for sure we can figure out to get from West to North is to go up to the fifth floor, where we're staying, and walk around the building, then go down a different elevator. Seems weird, going up to 5, but we tried 2 (large ballrooms) and 4 (a medical center, or something) and all over the place are people working at doors, whose only job is to let you in if you belong there, and keep you out if you don't. Their job absolutely does not include helping you find the laundry room. Most Russians know one or two English words: "No" and "Closed." We tried to get from our lobby to the North lobby and couldn't, (carrying our smelly train-cootied clothing) then figured out the "go up to 5" strategy and by the time we did find the laundry, it was closed. We went back the next morning when it opened, paid through the freaking nose (seriously, it was almost $100) and then a day later, went back down to pick it up. Glad my clothes are clean, but for $100, deliver them to my room. Along with beer and a pizza.

But again, let me stress the fabulous view.

June 26th

So we were in Moscow for 4 days (5 actually, since our train left so late last night). We saw all the expected tourist sites -- the Kremlin, the churches, the museums. The Pushkin museum had a good collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings; the old Treskyovsky museum had a giant collection of old portraits. We wanted to go to the New Treskyovsky too, but we ran out of time on our last day and missed it. It's Constructivist and cubo-futurist, which are my favorites. Next time.

We rode the metro a lot.  Once you figure it out, it is a convenient way to get around.  (Of course, it's not easy to figure out.  But if it wasn't a challenge, would it be fun?)  Each station is gorgeous, and decorated with marble and brass, chandeliers, carved wood benches.  Just wonderful.  I could have taken a million photos down in the subway.

Really, it's a nice enough city that I'd live there, and certainly visit again. Especially if I had a friend move there. There were lots of smaller museums and houses you can tour that we had to skip.

The caretakers of these portapotties collect a few rubles when you want to use one.  And I think she lives in the first one.  It's all decorated with shelves and clothes.  Some even have houseplants in them.

That old small building in front is the original English embassy in Russia.  The pillared thing behind it is the courtyarded palace with the empty mall inside it.  I took this photo from our hotel room, so when I say "right next to," boy do I mean it!

Our first night, we wanted to find some food, so we searched out this place in the guidebook called the Armadillo Tex-Mex. I wasn't expecting much, but it has burritos and nachos, so Tricia and I were looking forward to it. Then we were looking for it. Never found it. It was right next to our hotel, but it must have closed down. We found the place it was supposed to be in -- a giant city block that used to be some sort of old courtyarded palace, or a train station, or something. Big pillars on the outside, tiled courtyard in the middle, steel-and-glass covering the football-field-sized hole in the roof where the courtyard had been open air, and then 4 stories of shops and restaurants around the perimeter. Like a shopping mall from the 1700s. But the weird part is that none of it was open. Like it was just recently painted and no one's moved in yet. So we walked around it in eerie silence, looking for a sign saying "Armadillo," or maybe some mariachi music. Eventually we gave up, but we did find a place in that Night-of-the-Comet empty mall called the Amsterdam, which had Dutch food. Not any easier on vegetarians than Russian food is, but we were hungry and tired of walking, so we ordered a plate of cheese, a mushroom-baked-in puff pastry, and a tomato-and-arugula salad. Not bad.

So I was getting good at saying "no meat" -- bismyasuh. Which, when you say it exactly the way it looks on paper, everyone understands. This is what's weird: the word for toilet is "toyalet," or maybe "tooalet," but it sounds (when Russians say it) just like "toilet." So I can say - In Russian -- to a waiter "salad without meat" and they'll say "sure, one salad with no meat." Then Tricia will say "where is the toilet," and get this blank stare. "toyalet, tooalet," blank stare. One waitress who spoke pretty good English said "I'm sorry I don't understand." She couldn't find the bathroom until she did a charades version of "I have to pee really bad" which eventually broke through that language barrier. There must be some Russian vowel sound that we can't do. 

The first night we were in Moscow, after dinner at The Amsterdam, we went out to walk around St. Basil's cathedral at night, when its lights were on making it look beautiful against the dark blue sky of 11 pm.

We couldn't walk all the way around it, because guards had barricaded part of the street and most of Red Square. We could only walk on the south edge of the cathedral, which is fine. We figured either red square isn't open to pedestrians, or it closes at night or something. One theme of the Moscow experience is that if things change -- hours that someplace is open, days that someplace is closed, whatever -- there won't be any signs saying it, or anyone telling you. Just grunts and hand gestures that seem awfully rude. (The one we saw most often is an "X" made with the forearms followed by a hand-waving dismissal, accompanied by a "oouhggh!" noise. )

"can we walk through here to get to red square?"
"oouggh!"
What time will it open tomorrow?"
"no! Closed!"

Again, the two English words that Russians know: "closed" and "no." They haven't quite got the customer service thing down yet.

The shopping mall we cut through was the famous GUM store.  It's a fantastic, lovely mall.  I expected dreary concrete, with people in line for black combat boots and grey wool hats.  Instead, they've got a MAC makeup counter, and a Zegna store.  Lots of people walking through, but not many Russians can afford to shop there, so basically the shops are empty.  You have to hope the clerks don't work on commission.

The next morning, our plan was to visit the Kremlin, get there right at 10 when it opened, and spend all day seeing it. The guidebook says it's a full day experience. But then, the guidebook was wrong most of the trip -- I think we got an old version. When you buy a guidebook in Delhi, you can never tell what year it's from. We got the "fourth edition" or something, but they don't say "1993 edition" on them they way they ought to.

We assumed from what we learned in the guidebook that the Kremlin opened at 10 AM. The Kremlin is a big fortress, dating back to the 11th century. In the middle of it are some old cathedrals, government offices, palaces and museums. There are plenty of entrance gates, but the entrance for tourists is on the opposite side of the fortress walls from our hotel, so there was a bit of walking to be done but it would be great sightseeing walking, through Red Square. We could have gone around the South edge, but that would be mostly park, and not Red Square. Red Square is the big cobblestone space outside the north and east edge of the Kremlin walls, where the tomb of Lenin is, along with several other monuments and sights to see. It was also barricaded, just like the night before. But then, it was only 9:45, and the Kremlin didn't open until 10, so we figured that after 10, Red Square would open.
"can we get through red square to the kremlin?"
crossed-hand gesture, followed by "oo-ugh! Nyet!"
"When will it open?"
disinterested shrug. This guy is paid to keep you out, not to chat or give directions. So we waited, along with a big group of other people who had gathered at the gate waiting for the same thing. Plus 2 tourist groups -- old ladies following a guide with a colorful flag, or umbrella, or some other signal to help the group stay together. Lots of people tried to get up there and have the "when can we get in" conversation, none with any more luck than I had -- even the Russian-speaking tour guides.

Well, we waited at the gate until 10, then until 10:05, but they still weren't letting us in. At around 10:15, we decided that maybe people weren't allowed in Red Square at all, and we'd have to go around the Kremlin to the entrance by a different route. But everywhere we went, our way was blocked by more guards and more barricades. By cutting through a shopping mall, and going in and out of a metro station, we got a quarter of the way around, then we got to a street under construction where they had one of those wood-and-metal pedestrian tunnels set up. We went 2 blocks through that before we got to the end, where another barricade was set up and the guards there told us to go back through the barricade and where we came from. Some people were squeezing through the bars of the barricade into traffic, but we decided to just go backwards and cut around. It was almost 2 hours later when we got to the ticket booth. Well, we didn't actually get all the way to the booth. We got to the pedestrian under-the-road passage that would let us come up near the ticket booth, where hundreds of people were jammed up against barricades. I squeezed to the front, and tried to get through, and got the big "ooo-ugh!" noise, along with the arm gestures. I tried to pleasantly ask, "When will the Kremlin be open, and how can we get in there?" but to no avail. We just decided to skip it and try again the next day going from the south edge entry, instead of trying to walk around. Some tour guides were telling their groups that it was closed for the day, and some just couldn't figure it out any better than we could. Here's the main point -- it's the single biggest tourist attraction in the entire country. It's the largest country on the planet. There are hundreds of people trying to pay $10 each to get in. But it must be closed or something, and it may or may not ever open again, and at no place anywhere in a 2-hour walk around it was there anyone or any sign helping out people who wanted to see it.

Then we saw a sign saying that Cher was playing in concert that evening. We decided it must be a VIP tour. Cher was in there, touring around, and they had closed the entire Kremlin down for her visit. Good thing we were there 4 days! Imagine if you were on a whirlwind tour and they closed it down. Like Wally World in National Lampoon's Vacation. You can't just close down the Kremlin and not say why!!!

Or, to put in another way, of course you can. Here's something else we learned about Russia. No matter what your guidebook says, it's wrong. Rules change daily. Prices vary depending on what the person selling the tickets can get for them. Ticket counters are staffed by people who enjoy tormenting the tourists. Signs -- when they exist -- are in Russian Cyrillic only. Signs do not ever have posted hours, days, or prices. If they did, I could at least figure that part out. If the guidebook says it's open Monday through Friday, don't count on it. We wanted to get into Lenin's tomb to see the preserved body of the Soviet leader, and it was closed. Well, the first day, the whole Red Square was closed. The second day, Red Square and the entire Kremlin was closed. The third day, we were actually able to get into Red Square, but Lenin's tomb was closed. The guard told us "oo-ugh," but when I pressured him "will it be open tomorrow?" he told me "Saturday." Just to make double-sure, I asked again the next day as we passed by, and a different guard told me "Sunday." 

I think they have a rule to always tell tourists 5 days from now, knowing that they'll probably be on their way to St. Petersburg before that day arrives. Can you imagine if the Smithsonian just now and then wasn't open, and no one knew from one day to the next what day it would be available for visiting? Just wouldn't fly in the USA. Or France. Or Tokyo. Or, for that matter, just about anywhere else in the world. But here, there's 2 things going on: people are used to arbitrary rules from power-hungry governments who seek to beat down the will of the people through random acts of malevolent government, and (two) no one knows any better. No one who works as a guard at the Kremlin has been on vacation at Disney World, witnessing a land of smiles and helpful service. That's all going to change in twenty years -- not because tourists will demand it, or because the internal travel and tourism industry of Moscow will wise up, or even because people will slowly start to read critiques like this one. The reason it will change is because all the workers at McDonalds will grow up and get better jobs.

This is the very first McDonalds.  It's bigger than it looks.

Oh yeah, of course we went to the first McDonalds. It's just about the only historically significant fast-food restaurant in the world. And although there are golden arches every half-mile or so all over Moscow, we sought out the very first one -- the big restaurant at Pushkinskyaya circle. It was 2 metro stops away from our hotel, but a whole world away from Moscow in terms of customer service. Sure, they didn't all speak English, but they helped where they could. They communicated through pointing and gesturing, they accommodated our requests for "bis mysuh" -- although it took them aback. If you got a big mac with no meat, what are you going to eat?? But most importantly, they smiled and helped us. They'll get jobs some day -- maybe not as Kremlin guards -- but in stores, or ticket booths, or metro stations. Maybe they'll work for the visa department at the Russian Embassy in New Delhi. But one way or another, that insidious American corporate culture will slowly invade this place. Freedom, schmeedom. Democracy doesn't work anyway. The real perestroika is going to be the way that McDonalds teaches a whole country how to look another person in the face and make the edges of your mouth rise slightly in a friendly gesture.

Now that I've sung the praises of McDonalds, let me make a little fun of it. First of all, if you live in America, you've never been in a McDonald's on the overseas scale. The one in Beijing was two floors of a shopping mall, with maybe 200 people in line for food and another 400 sitting down. The one in Moscow is just as big. And we ate early. It was like 10:30 a.m. and only a handful of registers were operating. The counter alone was fifty yards long. You could tell that by noon, when they opened up all of those registers, the place was destined to be a madhouse. Thousands of people daily trying to eat something that amounts to an American bastardization of a European meal anyway. Belgian fries (oh, yeah, you don't really need to call them "Freedom Fries" anyway, since they weren't invented in France) and a German meat patty on bread. I guess the only American contribution to it is the processed cheese and combination of ketchup and thousand island dressing that we know as Special Sauce.

Whatever. I digress. Funny part at the Moscow McDonalds, aside from the 75 or so people eating Big Macs for breakfast (we had hoped that Egg McMuffins had crossed the Atlantic, but no such luck), was the background music. It was this mix, like a 3-CD changer. Greatest New Wave hits of the 80s, Current MTV hits 2004, and Old-time Radio American Christmas Favorites. So it was Duran Duran, followed by Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, then Brittany Spears or Black Eyed Peas. But the best part was the song that was playing as we first sat down -- Sinatra belting out Jingle Bells. It reminded us of Mongolia all over again. No one in Arizona has sung or heard Jingle Bells in 2 months, and here we are in the Steppe, in Siberia, in Moscow -- can't get away from those snow-dashing one-horse-open-sleighs.

So the Kremlin was closed. It was starting to rain. We headed for the Pushkin museum, which is a great collection of impressionist art. It was located next to a giant gold-domed cathedral that (according to the guidebook) allows tourists to visit the top floor, where you get a great view of Moscow. Well, in keeping with the theme of Moscow, it was closed. Probably for renovation, but who knows? Maybe it's only open on certain days. But the great part was that we were walking down the street and I saw a sign in Cyrillic for IL NATNO, which I was able to read. El Patio! At first, I was just impressed with myself for being able to read a sign in Russian, but then I remembered having read about El Patio in the guidebook. So, for almost the first time on the trip, the guidebook was right -- wood-fired pizzas, great atmosphere, fun time. It also said "there are branches all over town, but the location across from the Pushkin museum is considered to be the best." And we just lucked into even finding it. Hooray!

After getting re-fueled on beer and pizza, we headed for the Arbat -- the fun-filled pedestrian walkway. It's like Jackson Square in New Orleans, or the Ramblas in Barcelona. A street closed to traffic, with fun shops and caricature painters, and such. Like New Orleans, public drinking is much in vogue in Russia. 

You can't get on the metro without passing twenty people drinking beer. At 8 AM, it might be less than ten, but come on. If you walked down any large street in any large city in the world at 8:30 AM, how many people would you see chugging beer out of a 20-oz can? Russia is just full of people drinking. Even on the metro! New Orleans is the only place I know of in America where you can walk down the street with a beer or a rum slushy in your hand and get away with it. But even there, you can't hop on the train with a beer! You get on the metro here at rush hour, and half the people on the train have a 40-oz brew. The other half have a can of pre-mixed Gin and Tonic. Beer is just a warmer-upper for vodka. People here just drink vodka like it was water. We were in a coffee shop, and everyone but us had a little glass of water with their coffee. Turns out -- not water! If two people go into a coffee shop, they just order 2 coffees and 2 glasses of vodka. Just what you do. We ate (pizza again) at Sbarro -- the fast-food-Italian shopping-mall chain -- and up there next to the coca-cola vending fountain was a stack of little airplane bottles of vodka and Johnny Walker Red label. Nutty.

Speaking of McDonalds, do they have this thing called McCafe in the US? It's a window at the McDonalds, where you can get Cafe Lattes, kind of like Starbucks. The logo for it in China is this scary tribal tattoo. In Moscow, it's like regular McDonalds, but there are 2 walk-up windows just for coffee and muffins. That one's new to me. Maybe it's a very popular thing in America -- people might really want to get a cup of coffee and then lounge around on hard plastic chairs.

One unusual thing that Moscow has is the new breed of Mafia (mostly made up of former KGB agents) called "flatheads." I don't know where the name came from -- lots of them do have short flat-top haircuts. But the main point is that the government isn't spending money on the people or on helping them. No police, no medical, that sort of thing. If you want medical attention, you go the "free clinic" where the doctor, under the new capitalist system, still gets paid by the government. But since he hasn't had a check in a year, because the government tells everyone they're broke, he tries to charge you. You pay up, or die. And you pay up front. Doctors don't help people who are poor. That's the old "wrong" system that America helped to demolish. 

Now the police can't help you, because they're all corrupt and underpaid. So people who need protection hire mafia thugs to drive them around and be their bodyguards. If your thug pays off the police, they give you a special blue light to put on your car, which means you are allowed to break the traffic rules. And if you don't want to stand in line -- like when checking into a hotel, or getting an entrance ticket to a movie or museum -- you send your flathead to cut in line for you. He threatens the people at the head of the line, gets in first, buys the ticket, then you get in first. Works out great for everyone with money. Capitalism in action!

A lot of what we learned about Russia came from this great tour we took.  The company that arranged our train tickets has some tour guides who do specialized, small group tours.  We booked this tour called "The KGB Tour" which was a great historical session on the Stalinist Purges, the history of the KGB, and more.  We went all around Moscow looking at churches that were used as torture chambers, museums where people were shot, and creepy places like that.  Nowadays, they're office spaces, stores, or churches again.  Even the people who work there don't know what used to happen in the basement.  But we do.

One of the buildings where awful purges took place and people were shot.	The KGB Headquarters

I mentioned that we couldn't get into the Kremlin. The next day, we tried again. We got in. But there were so many tour groups in there, that we had a hard time getting from one cathedral to the next. Here's my advice for the world: China needs green left-turn arrows and Russia needs exit doors. Seriously. In China the light turns green and people think that means they can cross the street, but they only get halfway across before turning traffic cuts them down. You'd think a green walking person on a sign means something, but what it means is "look out! You're going to die!"

And in Russia, each cathedral had two or three doors. Most of them are welded shut, and the single entrance that exists has two doors, only one of which is unlocked. So, one group of 50 people wants to enter at the same time that another group of 50 people wants to leave. The Russian solution is to elbow each other for domination. Whoever pokes hardest and fastest wins. The trick we learned is to watch the groups. Tricia and I stood in line (line?!? who in Russia has stood in a line?!?! A line is an illusion that Americans ascribe to the chaos of people grouping around something they want to participate in.) Anyway. We waited outside of many of the Kremlin's cathedrals trying to enter. With big groups of blue-haired German and Japanese ladies in front of us poking their way in. On our way out there was no one trying to get in. Turns out, you can just watch the other lines, and jump into one of the other cathedrals - one that no group is trying to get into . That's the smart plan for the Kremlin.

So we saw all the cathedrals, then tried to get into the Armory. This is the room where the crown jewels and robes and carriages and such are. Faberge eggs. Old swords. Dead horses wearing metal armor over their taxidermied legs. Must sees. Well, when tickets sell out, they won't let you in. And since tour guides buy all the tickets before the place opens, you can't (as an individual person) possibly purchase one. We were told that we'd have to come back at 2:30 to buy tickets. So we decided to wait. We had a beer and a coffee in the Kremlin cafe (not bad prices, considering that a beer in the Smithsonian is $7) and waited until 2. Then we got in line early. We only had about 10 people in front of us. When 2:30 rolled around, the old lady in charge of the Armory opened the door and said "any groups with tickets?" and everyone behind us in line jumped to the front. Their guides had purchased tickets back when (or perhaps before) that moment in time when we had been told that we were going to have to wait. One of those things. If you are on your own, there's no way you'd know how the system works. The only way to know the system is to have lived under it for years. So we waited while German and Japanese groups passed us up. Made us wonder why there was a line at all. It was nearly 4 before we got in. And by then we were so frustrated that we didn't' really care about the world's largest collection of old brass tea cozies and Russian monarchist's saucer sets and horse leggings.

I thought the Faberge eggs were pretty cool, and I even took a photo of the trans-Siberian egg. It has a map of the railway engraved on it, and a working miniature railway inside it. More interesting was that we ran in to Cher in the Armory, which proved that it wasn't her that had closed it the other day. Turns out, it was a World War memorial day which caused the country's biggest tourist attraction to have an unannounced and unsigned closing day yesterday. That doesn't make me feel any better about our crappy day walking around getting yelled at by guards, but at least I don't hate Cher for it any more. By the way, she's really short! I always figured she was taller than Sonny, at least with those heels, but she is a tiny human being.  I tried to get a photo of her.  This is it below.  Think I can sell it to People Magazine?

The architecture in Moscow is amazing. There are some art Deco gems, and some Art Noveau masterpieces. Lots of old Neo-classical pillared buildings, and some great Constructivist buildings. Lots of Soviet Stalinist buildings. Stalin built some great buildings - the aforementioned group of seven skyscrapers called the "Seven Sisters" for example. One's the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It's at the end of the Arbat, so our hike down that street ended when we hit. Big, cool, gothic monstrosity. Kind of evil, like the tower in Ghostbusters. But intricately detailed, with unusual features. Two of the sisters are hotels, one's an apartment building, two are government offices, and one's a university. Moscow University is in a skyscraper! How cool is that?!

Of course, not everything Stalin did was "cool." After hearing the stories, I guess he ranks right up there with Hitler and Pol Pot. We took a detour off the Arbat to see a Constructivist house made by Melnikov. Stalin didn't like it, so he forbade Melnikov from ever designing another house, and sentenced him to live in it until his death (in 1973.) But I guess if you're in a communist system, and you get fired (or "forbidden to work" -- same thing) you probably still get the free bread and shoes. Not a bad deal, actually.

One sight I really wanted to see in Moscow was the Soviet Space Shuttle. It never took off, seeing as how their country dissolved right in the middle of their space program, so now it's a kiddy ride in Gorky Park. The park was open, but the rides weren't, and we had people to meet later, so we didn't climb inside it. But we saw it.

Don't have any pictures of it.  Oh, I took a bunch.  But then, to find out what happened to the camera, you'll have to read about St. Petersburg.

Malaysia - Beijing (pg 1) - Xian - Beijing (pg 2) - Train to Mongolia - In Mongolia - Irkutsk - Moscow - St. Petersburg