From Russia With Love

After our first impressions of Moscow yesterday we were then taken out by Jane, a city guide who did her best to show the best side of the city. The first thing to be done was a lesson in how the Moscow Metro works and how to decode what all the cyrillic means. The underground is as noisy and shabby as the London Underground but the carriages are wider, the trains rattle along faster and the stations are higher and more cavernous. They are also highly decorated and ornate, and although we saw a couple of amazing examples of chandeliers, Jane gave us the locations of some even more impressive ones to explore later.

We then walked around the city centre and took in the sights of the Bolshoi, the old wall and the outside of the Kremlin. Moscow’s heat wave continued unabated, and although it is a lot cooler than the week before, it still stated 38C on thermometers and it felt just about as hot as Bangkok gets at Songkran. We dived inside what used to be a sumptuous dance hall salon, but is now a Muscovite version of a Tesco metro, past statues and monuments and down to the gates to Red Square. Unfortunately they were locked (see next post) but Maisie and Harry made a wish on a traditional golden square outside the gates. You flip a coin and if it lands eagle side up, then your wish will come true- both Harry and Maisie were lucky! Maybe their wishes were granted, as we headed for Moscow’s biggest toy shop, spread out over four floors.

We were pretty exhausted with the heat and had tried drinking copious amounts of water, summer smoothies and ‘kvass’, a kind of non alcoholic beer made from bread. We dived into some shade in a little restaurant behind the Bolshoi and I felt a little better after a couple of glasses of ice cold Baltika beer. We had a lovely meal, sitting outside and people watching (every few minutes Maisie would point at a questionable dress sense and shout ‘Fashion Police!’). Then the waitress brought out some deserts as a ‘gift’- how lovely! And delicious they were too. We headed back to Chekovsplaya Metro and took the Metro back to the hotel, exhausted, but glad we’d seen another side to Moscow.

From Russia With Antipathy

We were picked up in the pre dawn darkness by a driver and deposited at the Zarya Hotel.  We were still swaying from the effects of four nights on the train and looking forwards to a shower like you would not believe. We got to the room, turned on the taps, and no hot water. I phoned through to reception. “We appear to have no hot water.” “Yes sir, it will be fixed in two hours.” “TWO HOURS! WE HAVE BEEN ON A DIRTY TRAIN FOR FOUR NIGHTS WE HAVE TO HAVE A SHOWER NOW!!” was my response to that. Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door and I hastily put back on my filthy train clothes. “We go now. New Room.” said a porter. The new room was two floors up in another wing of the hotel. Great.

Everyone then dressed again and packed up bags that had been instantly disgorged in the ten minutes we’d been here. Luckily for everyone involved, we were upgraded, but still there was no hot water coming out of the shower. The porter could see my eye twitching like Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movies and quickly showed me that there was hot water for a bath. It was a big jacuzzi style thing, and we all jumped in like a victorious football team in a communal bath. Even the usually cleanliness resistant Harry felt better after a soak (although his feet still look a little suspect...)

After this reviving dip we then set off to find out what was going on near the hotel and get our bearings. The air outside was choking with pollution. Moscow was suffering from an unprecedented heatwave and it felt just like being back in Bangkok. Only Bangkok with ugly people. We walked past blokes having their morning litre of beer and made our way gingerly by wrecked Ladas and piles of broken bottles. Crossing a railway line we came to a market that was like a cheap and nasty version of Walthamstow market (if you’ve never been to Walthamstow, you won’t realise how bad this is...) We wandered round, looking for a cafe to have a drink, but it the same old problem that you just can’t tell what is inside a particular building unless you read Cyrillic. We despondently headed back to the hotel, only to be accosted by a fifty year old glue sniffer. Moscow. Good first impressions then...

Irkutsk to Moscow Train #339

Day 1

Well, it couldn’t all be a bed of roses, could it? Train 339 was probably used in a previous life to transport prisoners to the gulag. It is old, uncomfortable, but worst of all it is dirty. The dust sits in the air, and in the ancient, stained pillows. The windows are so filthy that even if there was anything apart from Birch trees to look at (which there isn’t) you wouldn’t be able to. The seats are like church pews and the only way you can pad them is to add decrepit woolen blankets that look like the potential home for fleas. Everything you touch leaves your hands dusty or sticky and we sneeze constantly. This train has come from Beijing (probably from the Ming dynasty) and there are several compartments of Chinese migrant workers who chain smoke and chain noodle-eat.

Day 2

We have got more used to our filthy little prison. (Or are we just institutionalised?) The views past the dusty window are no longer just the Birch and Fir trees of Eastern Siberia, but are now sprinkled with the occasional factory that looks like Chernobyl after the accident. Outside one particularly crumbling factory we see steaming hot water being pumped into a stream. No wonder the attendant villagers of these factories would make it on to any ‘zombie extra’ cast list.

Just for a laugh we try the dining carriage. The decor is lime green plastic which should be warning enough. The carriage attendant looks like a fearsome dinner lady and gives us a menu in Russian. We try smiling and then sign language (but how does one sign ‘a little bit of decent food, please?’). She brings out an omelette with a thick blubbery layer  of grease and some rice that has been basted in grease and then given a generous dollop of grease on top. I try some, and the amount of fat that thickly coats the inside of my throat means I cannot feel my breath when I breathe in. We run, comedy style, from the carriage.

Day 3

We have crossed over to Europe during the night and have 1,000km to go before we reach Moscow. Many of our fellow passengers have left the train, only a few hardy souls doing the full four night, three day marathon. We are starting to feel a little the worse for wear for all the grubby, dusty dirt in our carriage, especially as it is getting hot and only two carriages down they have the air con on at full blast. We watch the season finale of Doctor Who ("No! How will he escape? Did Rory really shoot Amy? The Tardis! Exploded!?") And then we empty the last of our food bag and feast on pot noodles, Ritz crackers and warm beer. We set the alarm clock for 3am and try to sleep in the sticky heat for a couple of hours. The train pulls into the station at 4:11am, on time to the minute! We are here, and we have survived one of the world's longest train journeys...

Four Weeks In

At the four week point we are a thousand kilometres into our big 5,000km train journey. We have crossed half of one of the biggest countries on Earth. What do we think of the past week?

Harry: “There wasn’t much sushi in Russia which was very strange. The people are Russian but not rushing, only some of them were. Lake Baikal was freezing cold for my toes like they were going to fall to pieces, so I didn’t play in it. It was like we were in the movies ‘cos the butterflies in the trees didn’t look real. The blue ones were like 3D.”

Maisie: “The food at Galina’s house was nice and although I didn’t swim in Lake Baikal I wanted to. Russian people are really grumpy, a bit like Daddy. I like the ‘baina’ (sauna) and going hiking to see all the different flowers and butterflies.”

Marcelle: “Russia is big and this train journey is long! I enjoyed the ‘baina’ (sauna) at Galina’s house and want one in my house in the UK. I don’t like Russian bread. I really enjoyed the day hiking on Lake Baikal and sharing the day with Kevin and Lalita and it was lovely to catch up with Sally, who we'd last seen in Mongolia! Never say never, but I’ll never go back to Irkutsk again!”

Matt: “Unlike China this past week has had a ‘communist’ feeling. People in the hotel look at you suspiciously, border guards check your passport with utter distrust and you can easily imagine having a KGB tail! I loved hiking around the lake and it made me look forwards to hiking when we get back to the UK. Never order food in a Russian dining carriage...”

So, only one more week until we reach Blighty! Having said that, it’s still 2,200km from Moscow to Cologne, 180km from Cologne to Brussels and 330km from Brussels to Kings Cross!

Siberian Sushi

We spend thirty six hours in Irkutsk and stay at the Angara Hotel. The foyer gives it a cosmopolitan air, but on the seventh floor the carpet is frayed and smells of old vodka and mould. The floor attendant sits behind her desk and views us with Stalinist era suspicion, writing something down in a dusty ledger. I smile at her. She scowls. The people responsible for ordering the beds for the hotel were clearly looking in the wrong catalogue as we have boy scout, fold out camp bed style beds, that sink almost to the floor when you lie on them, and bring the sides of the thin mattress up so you are enveloped like a sausage roll. The shower head falls off and lands painfully on my toe.

We walk to the river Irkuts and watch a wedding retinue tie the traditional padlock to the bridge and throw the key symbolically into the river. Looking at this bride I think I’d invest in a good fishing rod and magnet...There are wedding parties and stretched limos everywhere; weddings are clearly big business in Irkutsk. All the retinue are drinking pink champagne, including a few of the heavily pregnant bridesmaids, cigs hanging out of their mouths. We walk to the nearby ‘White House’, a hotel which was grandly and hurriedly built when President Roosevelt was due to visit. He never did, which says it all really.

The rest of Russia is having a heatwave of record proportions. Whilst we are in Irkutsk the temperature goes down to 14C and it starts to rain. We look to find somewhere out of the Siberian winds and find the indoor market. All the fashions on offer at the clothes stalls would all be roundly rejected from an Oxfam shop. We go downstairs where there are lots and lots of power tools. Time to leave. We try and find somewhere for food, but all the shops have reflective film on their windows and doors with no pictures or signs, so it is difficult to see if they sell sports gear, jewelry or sausages. In the end we find one that is like a canteen and Harry spies the sushi. We are hundreds of miles from the sea but the boy has to have his sushi! We watch the umbrellas go past the window. Time to leave Irkutsk.

Stop! In the Name of the Fashion Police!

Irkutsk. Maybe it would be good to talk about it’s origins as a hangout for the ‘Decemberist’ dissidents, cast by the revolution into the wastes of Siberia. Or the fact it is soon to celebrate it’s 350th anniversary. Or the interesting juxtaposition of Karl Marx Street, with a statue of Lenin at one end and a newly restored statue of Tsar Nicholas II at the other. We could even mention that there has been a trial this week of cannibal Satanists (their ringleader was 22 and had just been kicked out of teacher training college). But let’s not; let’s be extremely shallow and talk about fashion.

Russian fashion is extremely interesting. I will freely admit that I know very little about fashion, and people in glass houses and all that. Irkutsk, cut off from the rest of the known universe, has distilled the quintessence of Russian and Eastern European trends. If you are a man, you must wear a powder blue polyester suit, or tight horizontally striped vest tightly tucked into stone washed jeans, topped and tailed with a mullet and pointy plastic shoes.

For women it’s a little more complicated. Hair can be peroxided or hennaed into the consistency of worn out brillo pads and left to explode outwards, the bigger the better. Make up must be electric blue or neon green for the eyes and scarlet for the lips. Dresses come in a variety of colours, but there is usually a nice helping of bronze, silver and gold mixed in. Hem lines are short, cleavages are de rigeur and frocks are accessorised nicely with diamante butterflies or bows the size of a child’s head. Shoes are always vertiginous heels in a range of metallic colours.

It is very shallow to judge anyone by what they wear, especially if you are a foreign observer, but the question that all these fashions raise is: did this fashion sense stop in the late 80’s, is it merely cyclical and this season is the 80’s revival, or have they only just now caught up to the 80’s?

Galina's House

We are staying at a homestay in the village of Listvyanka, a village spread out for about three kilometres on the edge of Lake Baikal. The house belongs to our host, Galina, who has been giving us hearty breakfasts (pancakes called ‘oladdy’ with homemade strawberry jam made from tiny alpine strawberries) and lovely dinners (tonight we had a fish called ‘ormul’ which had a thumbs up from everyone). Before dinner we all pile into the ‘baina’, a Siberian outhouse which is like a sauna, and where you mix boiling water from a heater into ice cold Baikal water. It is very refreshing and manages to clean even Harry’s toes, so it must be good.

Another thing for us to get used to is the toilet, which is very much an outhouse. It is also a long drop toilet, so there is no water and all the ‘night soil’ and wee will be used to fertilise Galina’s potato patch in the spring! It doesn’t smell (well, it doesn’t smell bad- it actually smells quite peaty and pleasant!) and Maisie thrills to the novelty of not having to flush- Harry doesn’t notice any difference, as he rarely bothers anyway.

While the children are getting to sleep we watch Russian TV with Galina. We watch the 5 o’clock news at 10p.m. as it is Moscow time and we are in Irkutsk! The TV is a wonderful parade of misery, whether it is the news (Satanists kill four women!) or their version of ‘Surprise Surprise’ where they reveal they have tracked down a long lost relative, only (sorry) they’re dead. We watch the biography of a murdered model and a ‘People’s Court’ where everyone has moustaches (including the women) and shout at a bad guy. No wonder everyone thinks Russians are miserable! Well, Galina and our guide today are not, and have been warm and welcoming hosts for our time in sunny Siberia.