The Blaus - South America and Europe

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