The Blaus - South America and Europe

Click the picture to see our album. Scroll down to the bottom of the album for the latest photos.

posted by The Blaus @ 4:13 PM 1 comments

7th of November - Moscow, Russia

We took an overnight bus from Riga into Russia. We were a little nervous crossing the border as we have heard that it is common to get hassled, especially with an American passport. It didn't help that one of the guys next to us was telling this exaggerated story about "Americanskis" and how they got their passports ripped up at the border patrol. We arrived at a small frontier town and had to get off the bus and stand in a long line to get stamped and into Russia. The place looked exactly like what you would expect a former Soviet State building to look like, and was a bit nerve racking for us. We were the last ones to go through the line from our bus, and we were happy when we were told we had made it, with the guy stamping our passports saying, "Nikolai, you speak Russian?" Finally, Billy's strange middle name (Nikolai) actually got us something other than strange looks, it is a typically Russian name and helped us get through the border with no hassles.

We arrived in Moscow at 6AM, and it was cold and we were a bit tired. We wanted to take the Metro to our hostel, and ran directly into two police who immediately took us aside and asked for out passports. We have heard that police frequently check passports of foreigners trying to find a reason to levy a "fine", which is usually everything you have in your wallet. These two were scary looking, but let us go with a "thank you Nikolai", which was making us even happier about the middle name. The experience still rattled us a bit. It is strange to have to be scared of the authorities. Anyone who supports the Patriot Act should visit Russia and feel what it is like to be constantly hassled by the police for "your own safety". You feel violated in a very fundamental way, and it makes you not feel truly free. We can just imagine what it was like 15 years ago when the KGB would know everything about you and would follow you around the country. It is not a feeling that either of us would want to live with on a regular basis.

We found the Metro Station, but had all of our bags with us, and could not read a lick of Cyrillic writing (the Russian alphabet is very different from the Roman alphabet we are used to). We had to figure out a complicated route to our exit station which consisted of 3 train changes, and a lot of standing around rubbing our heads trying to read the signs. We would be able to memorize the first three letters of a stop, and that would be how we would remember it. A common one is, backwards 3 followed by the X with an extra line through it and a gamma. This after very little sleep on a bus and all our packs was difficult. We had to do all this during morning rush hour too. The Metro here is enormous, and probably a million people use it every day. There is a mass of humanity charging in all directions, and we were totally helpless with our giant packs bumping into people, all the while trying not to stick out too much in case we were to get detained again by the cops. It was a bit of a nightmare, but after about 2 hours we finally made it to the hostel, exhausted and a bit scared of the Metro.

Moscow is the largest city in Europe, and Russia is the largest country in the world in landmass. That makes this place by far the all around biggest city we have been to so far. Our hostel is about 10 miles away from the center of town, and it is still in the middle of high rises and a mass of traffic everywhere. The hostel was a bit of a disappointment, as there were cockroaches in the bathtub and the wall paper was all peeling off the walls from water damage. It was, however, one of the few affordable options in Moscow, which is very expensive. Since the fall of Soviet Union, all of the State run agencies were privatised, making a lot of people very rich, along with being the second largest oil producing nation in the world. So today there is a lot of poor people, but a lot of rich people too. More billionaires live in Moscow than any other city in the world.

The city itself looks a bit like Las Vegas. There are neon signs with flashing lights everywhere. There are casinos on every corner, and strip clubs on every other corner. The people on the street run all ranges, from the very rich looking women with all designer clothes, mink coats, and suede knee high boots, to the typical drab looking older men who all wear the same nondescript dark clothing that a Westerner would think of as Soviet style. The Metro is also a carry over from the Soviet days, and it is ground zero for Soviet kitsch lovers. There are bronze statues with people harvesting wheat with a sickle, there are fancy emblems of cosmonauts, there are equally impressive mosaics of the sickle, hammer, and wheat all together showing the unity of the workers. When the Metro was built it must have been very impressive, because it is till quite amazing, with some stops made completely out of marble and granite. We have learned the system quite well, as we have to commute everywhere we go in Moscow. We have also learned how not to get hassled by the police. That means no smiling (Russians think smiling is for the weak, or the mentally challenged), no eye contact with anyone, and no English spoken near police. We feel like we have gotten quite good at being Russian, although we don't talk to each other in public places very often.

As with every other person that visits Moscow, your first stop has to be Red Square. It was quite an amazing feeling to first get there. Saint Basil's church is the symbol of the country (the giant church with the colorful bubble shaped minarets), and it is spectacular in person. The entire square is by far the most impressive square we have seen anywhere thus far. The Kremiln lines one side with Lenin's mausoleum in front of it, and there are old beautiful buildings on the other two sides, one of which is now a famous and very expensive shopping center. To top it all off, we were there during the November Nationalist holiday, and for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a military march on Red Square. We saw cadres of men and women come in dressed in different uniforms from different eras, all marching perfectly and standing to greet Vladimir Putin who was up in the Kremlin watching. Of all the things we wanted to get out of a visit to Moscow, seeing this was beyond our best case scenario.

We spent the next day going inside the Kremlin, which was another hassle in and of itself. There is nothing easy about being in Russia, and they do not cater to foreign tourists at all, in fact it seems like the system is built to discourage tourism. We tried to buy tickets to get in the Kremlin, but after waiting in a line that did not move for 30 minutes a guide came by and said in English that the Kremlin is closed, except for people that go on tours. When we asked the guy why all these people were waiting in line, he said "Russians love to wait in lines, they don't even care if the office is closed." We were skeptical, but then found out that it was really closed unless you paid 3 times the normal fee to go with a guide. That is very Russian. There are no rules that can't be changed or altered at the last minute. One day the Kremlin is open to all, the next day it is closed to people that don't pay for guides, no explanation at all. We paid the extra money and walked around all the old churches and political buildings where the head of State runs the government. It was interesting to see where Lenin and Stalin lived, what they built newly and what existed from when this was just a fort to keep the Mongol Tartars out about 900 years ago. The main attraction are the churches that are much less interesting than the politics of the Kremlin.

We decided we wanted to see the famous Moscow nightlife, so we headed out to s small neighborhood and a bar called "Vodka". The bar was brand new, and incredibly well done, all in a Soviet style with lamps that had the red star on them, mosaics of bombing raids and wheat, but also very modern and hip. It is probably the coolest place we have been thus far. We are not accustom to drinking straight vodka, and made a terrible decision to buy a bottle of vodka instead of paying for shots one at a time. It was a good decision financially, but terrible for the hangover we had the next day. We stayed there until it closed, talked to anyone who could speak English, and the DJ there was even from Chicago. When it was time to leave, the Metro was closed, and they could not get a cab out to the bar for us, so we were in some trouble. To make the matter worse, as we were trying to see if anyone from inside the bar could help us, a policeman came and started harassing us. With this situation not looking good, we jumped into the car of someone we were talking to in the bar, and rolled up the window when the cop approached us in the car. The driver fended him off, and actually drove us all the way home, which was about a 45 minute excursion because he did not know where to go, we didn't really know where to tell him to go, and we didn't speak Russian. Not only did these guys take us home, they walked us to the front door, and would not take any money from us. Russians can be very nice, and many of them have been so far. It can be unpleasant dealing with officials, as the Communist spirit in government apparatchiks dies hard, but many people have been very good to us. We just don't expect smiles from people over 50.

Eating has been one of the hardest things, as menus are all in Cyrillic, so we bought a Russian to English dictionary, and even that barely helps. Although very few people speak English, many people will help us through it, and we met one very cute girl who was a waitress and tried her best to get through the English that she knew from school to help us. She could not believe that we were here from the States, and especially San Francisco. When we told her we were from San Francisco she said, "Isn't that where people dress up in costumes and go to parties?" She invites us to come back when she was not working but it was our last day in Moscow.

Although it is difficult traveling here, we really enjoy it. We have also been blessed with great weather so far, it has been in the mid 40s every day and sunny. We hope St. Petersburg is as warm and dry.

posted by The Blaus @ 9:27 AM 1 comments

1st of November - Riga, Latvia

We had one stop in Latvia as we continued to make our way up to Russia. Riga was not in our original plan, because it would have been more direct for us to go through Belarus to Russia, skipping all of the Baltic countries. However, we learned that we needed a visa to travel through Belarus, so we saw that we could avoid Belarus by going through Riga to Moscow. We arrived in Riga by train in the afternoon and Billy said he had a bad feeling about it. His instincts were correct.

We stepped out of the train station to discover a very modern, polished, glitzy Eastern European city with price tags to match. The value of the money here is the same as the pound, so everything is super expensive, and it seems like there's a lot of cash flowing. This is a big party destination for Limeys (especially for stag parties). It's not dissimilar to our Las Vegas, complete with gambling and strip clubs.

We went to the tourist information booth inside the train station and asked for help finding accommodation. The girl working there was cagey from the start. She insisted on knowing how much we were willing to pay and she wanted a number from us. We normally look for the cheapest accommodation available, and when we told her we'd be willing to pay 40 Euro a night for a really nice apartment or a room, she said that would be next to impossible in a first class city like Riga. Then she said that she knew of one place a few blocks away, and she closed down the office to walk us there. We thought that this was incredible customer service until we realized that she was taking us to her apartment. She had an extra room with a pull out couch bed that she was hoping to rent to us for a whopping 40 Euros. We declined and she abruptly kicked us out of her place and sent us packing. This was not the usual kind of help that we receive from tourist information offices.

So, we decided to walk to the center of town to find a place to stay there. As we are ascending the stairs of the train station exit, Jen felt someone tugging on her backpack. She turned around and saw nobody there. A few seconds later she felt the same tugging and this time Billy turned to find two gypsies unzipping Jen's backpack and trying to take something out of it. Billy went running after them and when he caught up with them he realized that they were two older ladies scrounging around for food to give to their children, and we later concluded that nothing was taken. This was our only encounter with gypsies in all of Eastern Europe, and they didn't get the best of us. In the end WE gave THEM a bit of a scare. We've been on the road for so long now that we are more frightening than the gypsies.

We finally found a room in a hostel in dorm style accommodations (which we swore off after our last experience in Vienna), but there were only two of us in a 4 person dorm room, and the price was right at $37 per night. The hostel's name is Profit Camp, which isn't really appropriate for a budget hostel and must have been chosen by someone that doesn't know better. It was conveniently located down an alley above a strip club called Mademoiselles, but it was clean, not too crowded, and included breakfast and internet. It was better than the room that the tourist info office tried to sell us anyway.

Our first night in town we went to a Latvian fast food joint, then to a bar to try some of the famous Riga Black Balsam. This is the drink of choice in Riga....the king of Latvian liquors. It was invented in the middle of the 18th century by a pharmacist living in Riga. It is only produced in Riga. The traditional recipe is based on a composition of 25 ingredients such as flowers, buds, roots and berries. It's sold in ceramic jugs. It was once used as a medicinal remedy, especially aboard sailing ships. It is dark in color and looks like medicine. They serve it in a number of ways, but our drinks were hot and mixed with black currant juice, cloves and lemon with a splash of Black Balsam. This must be how the locals keep warm, as it did the trick for us.

The next day we went out sight seeing and tried not to freeze in the cold. The temperatures in Riga hovered around zero degrees Celsius during the day. We decided it was time to break down and buy Billy a jacket. Going back to California's winter will be a piece of cake after this.

We checked out most of the Art Nouveau buildings in old town (Riga is called the Paris of the East for this reason). We went on a walking tour of the city to see the castle, the city's moat, the river, the churches, the oldest stone dwellings in town called the three brothers, the House of Blackheads, the opera house (called the White House, because it looks like a giant marshmellow). We ducked into cafes to warm up every so often. We walked through the park that runs along the canal near the city's Freedom Monument (the monument is guarded by two soldiers who slowly and ceremoniously march around it all day). Latvia is a country that is proud of its recently gained independence, and it should be. It has been occupied by Germany (at two different points in history), Poland, Sweden, and most recently by Russia. As we crossed one of the bridges in the park to get from one side of the canal to the other we noticed that there were many padlocks attached to the metal bars of the footbridge. Some of the padlocks were engraved with what appeared to be couple's initials and dates. Some padlocks were elaborate and large and others were rusty and looked like they had been locked to that bridge for years. We tried to ask passersby about the significance of the locks, but nobody spoke English.

Some everyday things are a little strange in Riga. For instance, if you want information about trains at the train station, you have to pay for it. This is the first time we have had to pay for information, but in an expensive and flashy city like Riga, it's not surprising that one must pay to ask a question. Another thing that we found odd is assigned seating in movie theaters. Because it was so cold, we entertained ourselves with indoor activities and went to a movie one afternoon. When we bought our tickets we had to choose our seats, like you do when you go to a theater production or an opera. Perhaps this is the way of the future with movie going.

Jen forced Billy to go to a chamber music concert at the small guild to hear two cellists play classical music by the likes of Vivaldi. Billy hated it (and would probably never admit that he actually attended this concert), but it was something to do indoors, and Jen was happy to sit and listen to music and take in the elegant interior of the building. The small guild had stained glass windows covering an entire wall, paintings of Baltic sister cities on the opposite wall and an extremely detailed decoratively painted ceiling with unusual lighting fixtures hanging from it.

It is funny how resourceful one can be when the goal is to save money and time is not an issue. Even in a place like Latvia, where hardly anyone speaks English, we managed to perform some miracles. For instance, we needed to repair a piece of clothing (as many of our clothes are threadbare at this point), and we were able to find a place that sold us the right accessory and then we managed to get it affixed. If faced with this task at home, we wouldn't even know where to start.

So after a few days in beautiful Riga, we were off to Moscow...the land of the hammer and sickle, and we hoped for warmer weather there.

posted by The Blaus @ 12:58 PM 0 comments