Uninviting Moscow

Biggest city in Europe and don't they know it!

Unlike St. Petersburg, there wasn't much to see. I had a lovely tour guide, Dina, show me the main sights, centred around Red Square and the Kremlin. Militia were everywhere and I felt like I had a bomb up my ass waiting to explode if I took one step wrong.



The Kremlin is an impressive sight, and I especially liked the Armoury Building, which houses the collection of treasures accumulated by the Russian State, including the most incredible carriages. It's also amusing to see the "checking" of the guards ceremony which takes place outside the Kremlin regularly - check out my video, hilarious!

It's very obvious that Lenin is everyone's hero here, so I made a special effort to queue early one morning to visit Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square. Security was immense and there were guards every 5 metres to ensure visitors remained respectable. I got told off for having one hand in my pocket. The whole experience was a little strange.

The Bolshoi Theatre is closed and will be for the next year or so, so that was that.

Another cool place to walk around was Arbat Street, Moscow's most famous street, which has a Covent Garden feel to it. I then had lunch at Café My My (pronounced Moo Moo), and yes, there was a great big cow outside. Excellent Russian food.

Having "seen" the sights, I went on a search to find an internet café - it was somewhere in the underground shopping mall near Red Square. By now I had a grip on the Russian alphabet and was using my phrasebook frequently. Even so, about 10 Russians I approached for help all ignored me, except the final person, a security officer, who responded "This is Russia, no English". So he spoke English, but had no interest in helping - nice!

That evening I ended up at the O2 Lounge on the roof of the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The bar was 5ft off the ground; I felt very short. The views were great although the clientele were basically bankers (ironic I say this, but wasn't really looking to discuss the current economic climate or UBS's stock price). And then onto one of the new spots in town, Denis Simichev. Cool bar / club, although small. The wealth around the place was very clear to see. If you weren't drinking champagne, you were a bit of a loser!

It would have been interesting to see Moscow 10yrs ago - I suspect it was a very different place, without the oil money fuelling the local economy and ego.

Londoners are fairly arrogant when it comes to acknowledging the rest of the UK and even other parts of the world, but they don't come close to Moscovites. These guys live in a different Russia (a bit like Mumbai and Delhi vs rest of India), and I can only see the divide between Moscow and the rest becoming greater.

Dina did tell me however that more and more young Russians like herself want to learn foreign languages and increasingly travel to other parts of the world, not just on holiday.

One think Moscow has got right is its metro system, the busiest and deepest in the world. Even though it sometimes felt like I was taking the Waterloo & City line to Bank, it was very fast and efficient, and easy to use providing you can translate Russian letters into English ones!

Also Russians seem to love cakes and ice-cream :)

Hopefully as I travel east across Russia I will find the more pleasant Russian people that I've been promised.