The Dhugal In Russia

Peterhof; Peter the Great's Summer Palace

2010-02-03T20:06:00.000+08:00

After the storm the previous night, we awake to a fine day. Now, Peter the Great built his Summer Palace, Peterhof, as a response to the French palace at Versailles; he was determined to make this its equal. It cost more lives than Versailles did to construct, but it is truly magnificent and helped put St Petersburg firmly on the map of the great European courts. We saved our visit there for our last day in town and decided to take the hydrofoil boat out there. As we travel out of the mouth of the Neva river we can see Alisha’s apartment building and the foreshore in front of it. It seems strange to see this view from the other side now.

The shadows of the now scattering clouds cover blue and green stretches of the calm sea; forming glistening marbled patterns that stretch to the horizon. As we draw close to the dock we have our first glimpse of the canal cutting through the gently sloping land that leads up towards the palace itself; with the central group of fountains visible in the distance. The canal was originally the place where the Tsar’s boat would be manoeuvred and secured when visiting the palace grounds. I can imagine the sheer spectacle this would have made for visiting dignitaries almost three hundred years ago and appreciate its grand style. The Grand Cascade draws you in and up the paths either side of the central canal, beckoning with fingers of water sprays and sunlight.

The centrepiece now is the statue of Samson wrestling a lion that was added long after Peter’s death. The water jet from this fountain is the highest in the park, pushing water high above the magnificent statue and into the blue sky above. The multiple waterfall cascades and rows of golden statues of women become shrouded in the mist of water sprays from the numerous fountain jets. Rainbows form and fade constantly in the mottled sunlight from the dappled clouds hanging in the sky. As you walk near and past the cascade, the rainbows jump from place to place as thought they’re playing in the water. The whole spectacle is apparently powered only by the water cascading down the hill from the upper gardens, there are no water towers or pumps to be seen or heard anywhere. I feel immediately calm and relaxed here, even surrounded by throngs of people, families surging in different directions; you can’t help but feel peace in the Summer Palace water gardens.

We drift through them for hours, there are so many different areas with different types of gardens and fountains nestled within them. From ordered hedges housing golden statues from Greek mythology to the Grand Cascade directly in front of the palace; the place is a wonder of landscaping. In a central grove, surrounded and shaded by tall, broad leafed trees, is a strange artificial tree with fountains and sprays of water spreading in all directions. In front of it, a bench seat is placed such that anyone sitting there, or standing nearby, will be showered with short bursts of water as part of a cycle. Children run back and forward in front of it risking a sudden dousing. Each time someone gets caught, laughter fills the air as everyone shares the moment of surprise and shock. It’s another warm, sunny day in Russia and the cooling effect of the water sprays filling the air leave us all in the mood to frolic.

The trick fountain frolics

I had wanted to see the pyramid fountain since I’d heard of it from a friend who visited these gardens. It doesn’t take me long to find the track to the small grove that houses it. We pass by a huge statue of Peter mounted on a rectangular base about two and a half metres high. It’s surrounded by a crowd of people trying to flick coins up onto the small flat surface of the base near his feet. If the coin rests on the statue somewhere, you make a wish. This proves to be no mean feat, as I try a number of times with all the coins in my pocket. I only succeed once. I think the real winners are the small children swarming around near the base, recovering fallen coins and trying to land one on the statue themselves. I’m sure we paid for their ice-creams that day. I could see myself bringing my family here on just such a day to wander and play around without a care in the world.

We continue down a long pathway with a row of tall trees either side that meet in the middle to provide a welcome mottled shade from the early afternoon sun. I pause to try and get a photograph capturing the pathway stretching into the distance, when I notice there seems to something more than simple daylight at the end of this green tunnel. As I move down the path, it slowly reveals to me that the daylight at the end is moving. As I cover the last thirty metres or so, it resolves into a beautiful pyramid made only of white, bubbling water. Water pipes laid in concentric squares are pumping water at different pressures to create the effect. I want to approach and feel my hands play into the streams of water, but fencing and severe signs suggest this isn’t a good idea. I decide the view is enough and drift slowly back to the seashore.

The three of us sit down for a beer and discuss if we’re going to make it to the upper gardens and inside the great palace itself. None of us really care by now, it’s the fountains and garden that drew us here and walking inside any building seems somehow a poor second option. We climb the stairs past the dragon fountain when Don notices an empty statue base. He thrusts his camera towards me then scales it like a spidermonkey to stand on top looking particularly regal. We laugh at Don exercising his inner dictator and then turn to admire the view of the open gardens below.

Apparently the Dragon fountain is in this picture somewhere

Someone wearing a jester outfit is playing a violin to bemused children. Couples walk hand in hand betwixt the tree covered pathways; enmeshed in rays of soft sunlight caught in the gentle mists of the fountain spray. An old man sits placidly on a bench watching his grandchildren run and play around a fountain. Occasionally they run to him with news of their adventures and he listens before sending them on their way with a few words. We move across to the huge open walkway between the great palace and the top of the Great Cascade. A wedding party poses repeatedly in front of the golden statues, the photographer abuzz trying to capture individuals and the whole group against the majestic background. A light wind gust carries the spray mist over them and the bride suddenly has tiny droplets of water covering her raised veil, creating jewels that sparkle in the golden sunlight. I pause to watch other couples spaced around the top of the cascade kissing each other gently as they enjoy the view.

We end up heading back to the dock to catch the last hydrofoil back to the city. This also gives us one more chance to practice the Russian summer sport of queuing and sweating. There is one person selling tickets for the hydrofoil from one small wooden ticket box placed near the edge of the jetty. When we join the queue there are already dozens of people in front of us, but this has no effect on the serving woman. She seems to enjoy a bit of a chat with every person and moves with the sure speed of a diseased tortoise. I’m particularly impressed by the way she has to check the roll of tickets every time she picks one to make sure they haven’t turned into something different in the intervening ten seconds. I see she is a consummate professional of the sport and wonder if there’s any way we can beat her.

Don volunteering to refill this pond

The boat arrives and we all become more agitated as we know this is our last chance to get on it and we feel sure it will leave just as we reach the front of the queue. The tension mounts as we check we have enough small change and prepare the right money. I notice a second ticket box with someone inside it waiting. Nobody is paying them the slightest attention and I wonder if we have a short path to take so we can win the event. I read the signs on the box repeatedly; they speak of other boat trips, but not of the hydrofoil. Apparently out here on the dock at Peterhof I can buy a tour of the city canals. There’s only five more people to go before the fateful moment of our interaction and it seems moments before Lari ends up taking the first ticket. She strolls off towards the boat as I acquire my own. I suddenly feel the urge to shove the whole box into the sea, jump on top of it and row the damn thing back to the city using a plank from the roof while this useless creature within struggles and complains the whole way. I decide the hydrofoil will be quicker, if less satisfying, and follow Lari onboard with Don shortly behind us. Only another ten people make it on after us and we feel relieved as the boat pulls away; knowing our queuing skills could probably do with more practice.

Everyone takes a picture

I decide to head home to attempt to get some sleep in the early evening to make the sleepless night sitting on a train easier to cope with. Don and Lari stay to explore the city a little more. Alisha returns with them after ten and they’re looking at what food we have left. Don waves his hand at the pile of vegetables and meat and tells me to do something clever with it. The times we’ve shared houses together saw me cooking for him fairly often as I dodged as much of the cleaning duties as was feasibly possible. I manage to cook up everything in the fridge to create a lightly spiced stir fry dish with noodles. It is surprisingly good and filling enough to cushion my system for the long night ahead.

Don is trying to copy all his pictures onto Alisha’s computer so she can see what we’ve been up to and how she looks in all of them. It isn’t working so well and he asks me to figure it out for him. My ten years working in the IT industry are of some use and I manage to affect the transfer of his pictures. I then attach my camera and copy my own across for her. I retrieve the scarf my family gave me and get a picture with Alisha wearing it along with her Georgian man hat. She says she needs a cigarette to complete the picture and lights one instantly to pose again. Her slow, warm smile glows at me and I give her a huge bear hug to farewell her properly. As the picture copying process finishes we all leave Alisha the gifts we’ve brought along. Lari has some scented soaps handmade by a friend of hers back home which form the start of our love package. I choose a stubbie holder with an Australian aboriginal colour painting on it, a shot glass with Perth’s city skyline on it, a yellow diamond sign warning about emus and also a stuffed kangaroo. Don adds some koala fridge magnets and some Australia stickers and we present it all to Alisha to thank her again for being so magnificent. She looks terribly shy, but she likes the crazy array of presents and gives us all another hug. We make our final farewells and take our luggage out the door in plenty of time to make it to the train station.

Catherine's Palace and a Storm on a Canal Boat

2010-01-27T15:27:00.000+08:00

We decide to go and visit Catherine’s Palace, Tsarskoe Selo, and jump a train and a bus in that general direction. The palace gardens distract us for hours, they are beautifully laid out and filled with interesting diversions. The pathways lead us through varied garden styles that are all bursting with life in the short Russian summer. From the tall hedges bounding gravel paths near the front of the palace, to more wild forest near the edges, these gardens are glorious. We pause by the lake a few times in different places to drink some water and eat ice-cream.

The temperature is in the high twenties and fairly humid as well, so we are all sweating in the sunlight; something none of us expected to feel in Russia. We stroll down an asphalt walkway near a small stream and Don notices something on the ground. He looks closer then starts taking pictures. I crouch down to discover two bees having sex. The three of us crowd around the strangest pornography show for a minute before continuing our stroll.

Shush Lari

The pathways divide and merge, leading use through different areas of the extensive gardens. We walk by a field of waist high grasses with flowering shrubs interspersed along the edge of the path. It leads down to a tiny stream lined with tall trees shading the water with broad, rich green leaves. The grass field gives way to an open lake with an island in the middle of it. It’s possible to take a gondola ride on the lake, or take a punted ferry to the island, but we’re not inspired by either idea. Apparently the island used to be where Catherine would place musicians such that she could hear them play from anywhere on or around the lake.

We eventually make it back to the palace and realise we have only covered three quarters of the grounds during our almost three hour visit. We notice you can get a ride in a horse drawn open cart that would take us through the final sections. After some negotiations and bartering, the three of us board it and we are transported around the broad pathways near the palace buildings.

Dear Miss Lari cooling herself in the carriage

It seems the right time to finally venture inside the palace buildings so we join the queue. We wait for twenty minutes before really noticing that it isn’t moving very much. I investigate further and discover that in the afternoon, tour groups on buses have priority on the palace buildings and anyone else must hope they have a cancellation or are not fully booked. We decide we don’t care so much and head back to the city.

Because every palace needs a pyramid

On the way I start telling my erstwhile companions about my plan to get a private boat ride on the canals whilst we drink champagne and live it up a little. Alisha is happy to help us realise it and Don and Lari think it’d be good to see the city from the boat in any case. We meet Alisha in the city and hunt along the canals to hire a small boat. After a couple of options and the best part of an hour it’s on. Don and I head for a local shop to find champagne and snacks and the girls wait by the river in a small café.

We return half an hour later with bottles of champagne, plastic glasses, cakes, lollies and weird chocolate biscuits. We jump on board, crack a bottle, give the pilot some and settle in for our journey. We travel down all three canals and out onto the Neva river again, enjoying the iconic bridges and buildings passing by. The pilot occasionally turns around to tell Alisha something about buildings we pass and she translates for us. The history of this amazing city is once more proudly on show and once again I wish I had another lifetime to spend painting it. We settle for drinking champagne and saluting random people passing by as the day begins to lose the sun’s warmth.

While we have been enjoying this expedition, black clouds have been rolling in and a chill wind springs up. The pilot hands the girls some blankets and Don and I make use of the warming effects of champagne combined with the chocolate marshmallow biscuits. As we turn the final corner to head back to the pier the rain starts gently. It seems only a few moments before very threatening, ominous black clouds churn above us. By the time we jump off the boat onto the shore it is going through a calm patch and we hurry off into the darkening city. We only make it to the corner of Nevskiy Prospect when the thunder and lightning break out and a downpour is upon us

Our two babushkas sheltering from the storm

The buildings of St Petersburg are designed more to cope with snow and ice than summer storms, so there is no shelter on the streets anywhere. We see a Japanese restaurant and charge into the door as thunder and lightning crash around us and the rain reaches the pitch of a tropical storm. The three of us are at once elated by the run and the power of the storm, yet still cold, wet and miserable as a result of its effect. We try to acquire some beers while we’re standing inside, but the waiters seem entirely uninterested in serving anyone. After a healthy banter of comments about genuine Russian service, the storm rolls past us. As our group returns to the street, Alisha asks me,
“Is that what you wanted? What you thought about?”
“Yes to the boat trip….it was a lovely piece of decadence on holiday, but the storm was unexpected… but fun anyway.”
I’ve always liked a good storm, growing up in Darwin and surviving multiple cyclones brings it out in you I think. We resolve to head for home to get some sleep on our last night in St Petersburg; thinking what a curious farewell the city gave us.

The Fire and Water Ritual

2010-01-26T17:33:00.003+08:00

I wake up at some later time to find Don has appeared sleeping on the other side of the bed, clutching a bottle of vodka. I roll over and go back to sleep. I manage to stand up around three in the afternoon and shuffle into the kitchen to drink all the bottled water in the house. I get through two litres and some balance returns to my day. I figure we’re not going to Gatchina anymore and there are a lot of missed messages on my mobile phone asking where we are. I go back to sleep and awake to find Don has recovered and is sitting in the kitchen. He doesn’t know how we got separated either. Apparently he spent a few hours staring blankly at train station signs written in Russian as he searched for Alisha’s one. He had also acquired a bottle of vodka with the intention to wake me up to demand I have some so we can keep going and join the group at Gatchina. He fell asleep on the train and was woken up at the end of the line, then kept jumping out at every station on the way back to see if he’d made it home. Finally he did and surged into the street to jump on the marshrutka, only to be stopped by the same two policemen who grabbed me. They must have thought it was Australia day or something as he staggered off. He fell asleep on the marshrutka and ended up back at the train station once before finally making it to the apartment around eleven. Apparently Lari opened the door to see him clutching the bottle and he managed one sentence before passing out next to me.
“I’ve just had the most amazing morning.”

The beach sunset

The girls have headed into the city to lodge paperwork to get Lari registered in Russia. Since she’s just arrived, she needs to be registered somewhere and Alisha is able to do this for her. Alisha actually needs to be registered in St Petersburg herself, so it’s easy for her to fill in the form for Lari at the same time. All Russian citizens have to register in a city in their own country if they are there for more than three months, which she has been. Everyone has one passport for moving around inside the country and must apply separately for a passport to actually leave Russia. The first one is just like the ID cards used in a number of countries as a primary form of personal identification. In order to get that external passport the individual has to fill in a bunch of forms in their home city that get sent to Moscow and used as doorstops for half a year. When its life as a doorstop finishes the person is notified and they then must travel to Moscow once or twice to submit more forms and be interviewed, photographed and otherwise tortured by the bureaucracy. Getting your external passport apparently takes six to eighteen months depending on whether the bureaucrats have already had their hearts and souls removed to feed the demons within the government, or are just working towards it.

Beachside vodka session

That’s only the beginning; however, a Russian citizen wishing to actually leave their country has to submit even more paperwork. They have to tell their government where they will be staying for every night they’re outside the country – and prove it. Hotel booking confirmations, formal letters from people they will stay with, every single day must be accounted for; or they don’t leave Russia. We spoke to one woman in Moscow who used a credit card to book everything online to get the required proof. Once the government approved her journey, she would then go and cancel everything and do whatever she wanted. All of this goes to explain why Russian tourists are a limited commodity. To have the time and money to just acquire the external passport is beyond the ability of most citizens. Even if they manage to get that, then being able to afford to travel is a luxury largely reserved for residents of Moscow and St Petersburg and the odd wealthy family in other cities.

Even Russians pull faces after drinking vodka shots

On their way back Lari and Alisha have decided that we’ll have a fire on the beach tonight and they bring back the firewood. Energy levels are low, and the fruit juice they also bring is helping a lot as we wander very slowly down to the beach carrying firewood and paper. We have no clear idea how we’re going to light it without kindling, but the attempt should be amusing anyway. After I shuffle around logs and some cardboard for a while, Don notices some hot coals and adds them to the mix.

Don questioning the manliness of the fire

I spend a lot of time fanning it and eventually the pine logs burst into flame. For about a minute, before needing vigorous fanning again. We can’t find any kindling, we have nothing to split the logs and it looks increasingly hopeless. The only answer is to have some more shots of vodka, which we all do a few times. The sunset is lazy and cloudy and we alternate between water and vodka shots and take increasingly silly photos of ourselves on the foreshore. I suddenly remember an idea I had back in Australia and lurch down to the water and put my hand deep into it. I then touch Don and Lari’s foreheads with that hand, leaving a vertical stripe above and between their eyes.
“We’ve touched the water of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic coast of Russia. Now we have to swim in the water of Vladivostok at the other end of our journey.”
They both nod lazily. We finish the drinking water before heading inside to sleep again before the next adventure.

One Night in St Pete's

2010-01-22T15:07:00.000+08:00

We find our way to meet Alisha at a Georgian restaurant nearby the Hermitage. I immediately look for the Bozbashi soup and order it with a shashlik board while encouraging Don and Lari to try the same. Don spots the vodka on the menu, discovers you can order a bottle for the table and acquires one instantly. Don pours a shot of vodka for all of us and we suddenly realise this will be our first vodka together in Russia. So we toast to that, friendship and more vodka. It isn’t as smooth as the average vodka distilled in Australia, but it is less than half the price at about two hundred roubles (AUD$10) for a half litre bottle. Alisha reveals she really likes this place and it’s one of her favourite spots in the city. I mention how much I like Georgian food and she points to the low, soft hat with a narrow peak over her eyes that she’s wearing,
“This is a common style for Georgian men. I like it”, she tells me with a smile.
“So you’re really a man?” I ask impishly with my eyes widened in shock.
“No!” she explodes, “…but just like a Georgian man.”

My beautiful Georgian man

With that she looks down and leans back in her seat to place a fresh cigarette slowly, lazily in the corner of her mouth. Then she slowly lifts her face to look straight into my eyes with a devilish stare from underneath the peak of her hat. I still call her my beautiful Georgian man.

The soup arrives and we all dissolve into foodgasms. The combination of simplicity with spice provides a continuously memorable combination that always leaves me needing more. Main course arrives and seems to evaporate somehow, maybe it dissolves in the vodka. Feeling very full we sit back to let it settle as my phone rumbles to life. It tells me one group of Couchsurfers are in a café-bar nearby and are inviting us to join them. We aren’t ready to move for a while and we relax into finishing the vodka. We three Australians settle the bill, refusing to let Alisha pay for anything. She’s already helping us so much and we have to find ways to thank her properly for it; dinner is always a good option and she appreciates it with her typical lazy smile.

I'm a star, shining brightly in the night

We wander off to meet the couchsurfers and arrive at the outdoor part of a café bar to discover a German couple with a table of Russian friends. About half are Couchsurfers and all want to know what three crazy Australians are doing here in St Petersburg. We go through introductions and order beers as we take turns telling our stories of the Trans-Siberian journey. When we tell them we will be in Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk for a week or more each, they all look shocked and ask why. Don and Lari look at me, since I’d made that decision, and I lean forward conspiratorially, drawing them in closer to the table.
“Because they have cool names”, I announce prophetically.
There’s a pause before they notice my evil smile and start laughing.
“Whilst that’s quite true, the real reason”, I further explain, “is more to do with the history of Yekaterinburg and the Total Eclipse happening in Novosibirsk”.
I’m then forced to explain the gentle art of eclipse chasing.

After the beer and vodka, I suddenly feel like a cigarette again. I have never been a smoker in any continual sense of the word, but suffer with many others the connection between drinking and smoking. In Russia, almost everyone smokes all the time, so it’s always easy for me to find the odd cigarette to mix with a beer. Now, since I’m no regular smoker, I much prefer something that tastes good to just anything that’s going. Anything that can kill you that effectively has every right to taste damn good on the way down. This is, of course, my justification for my next sentence to the barman,
“I’ll have a packet of those slim menthols, what are they called?”
“Vogue…it is woman cigarette…for woman”, he announces in stilted English and pauses. Seeing no reaction from me he continues,
”You sure?”
“Yes…I am so deeply in touch with my inner woman that there are actually two lesbians inside me fighting for supremacy over my male side."
Okay, he didn’t understand anything, but Alisha, who is standing next to me, can’t stop laughing for a couple of minutes. In any case, for the rest of the night everyone decides that hassling me for my menthol cigarettes is pretty funny and my responses would make Julian Clary blush.

It’s now around midnight and we have another decision to make. Should we stay up and watch the bridges of St Petersburg rise in the early morning? If we stay in the city, we won’t be able to return to Alisha’s home until after six in the morning when the bridges close again and the trains restart. It is one of the iconic sights of this city during summer, as traffic grinds to a halt with the spectacle of the sparklingly lit bridges opening to allow a constant stream of boats to pass through the sleeping city. We can even do tours by land and water to witness this, but we’re thinking more of just finding a neat vantage point to watch it happen for free. Alisha doesn’t care, she’s used to all night parties from her time in London and is happy to relive the moment here. Our new friends are divided on the bridge watching, but we decide to stay up all night, maybe catch a few hours sleep in the morning and just keep going through to Gatchina in the morning. A few of the other Couchsurfers join us in heading back to the river to await the moment.

The city at night is beautiful and we acquire some takeaway beers along the walk and settle in with the growing crowds along the riverside in front of the winter palace. The bridges, the fortress, even the normal buildings and the Winter Palace are lit by coloured lights; creating a festival atmosphere. We watch traffic stop on the bridges as the moment approaches and then we watch a line of boats cruising quickly down the river. The first few are the low tour boats that can safely pass beneath all the bridges, but they are closely followed by freighters making their dash through the city. We look at the freighters and the closed bridge and wonder if they’re feeling suicidal or something, heading straight for it. We watch in wonder as a row of six boats passes by in a hurry and begin to wait for the clamour of the collision. Suddenly Don’s voice rings out,
“It’s already open!”
We all lean out to see where he points and, sure enough, the last joint of the bridge near the shoreline is open. We’ve missed the fateful moment.

The view is still damn good, but seeing the change would have been perfection. The only solution is to cross back and join the other group in our first St Petersburg nightclub. The nightclub is a converted classic building complete with marble staircase and lush, indulgent foyer. Outside Don has scaled the wall to leave the painting he bought at the Hermitage on one of the huge window sills. He figures this means it won’t get damaged inside. I’m watching the group of bemused Russians who watch him do it and place a private one shot of vodka bet that it won’t be there when we come out. Don and I find some vodka shots, toast St Petersburg and wonder where the night will take us. All four of us churn through the introductions to the changed group of couchsurfers and friends and exchange short chats in-between the loud music coming from the dancefloor.

Don and I are watching one girl who is easily one of the most natural and sensual dancers either of us has ever seen. We are both veterans of many music, dance and trance festivals and have seen our share of amazing dancers. The way this girl moves is at once completely self aware, but without a trace of being self conscious. She moves as an integral part of the music, not with it or around it. She also broadcasts a confident sexual awareness that has every man in a ten metre radius absolutely enraptured; and she lives and loves every moment of it.
“I’m not going to talk to the dancing girl. I just can’t fall in love again in this country. Today”, Don says with absolute certainty.
We’re talking about how we can find out where she learned to do that, and meet her, when one of the Germans taps us on the shoulder and says,

“Your friends are outside and can’t get back in”.

We look at each other and out the door, where they are sitting on the marble staircase looking bored. Apparently they went outside for a smoke and the bouncers want to charge them entry again. We elect to have one more vodka and then discuss whether we should stay here and get onto the dancefloor or follow them. We watch the magical dancer feel her way through another song, which pretty well makes up our minds. Then I receive a message on my mobile from Lari telling me about the café they’ve moved to. We decide we will follow the Germans to another club, but will find the girls first and see if they want to come along.

Don scampers up the wall outside, his long hair flying about him as he jumps back to the ground clutching his picture. We slope through the busy streets to find the girls at another covered gazebo style café drinking coffee. I order a bottle of champagne and we sit down to enjoy a calm moment in the night. That bottle is definitely a mistake. From the point of leaving the café after an hour or so, things are very fuzzy and indistinct. I make them all stand for a photo pose outside after we leave. It takes me a dozen attempts to get a focussed picture with an autofocus camera. The sun is already lighting the sky when we decide to separate, or more accurately the girls leave us to head for the train station. Don and I make a solemn vow to find the second nightclub. We bid them farewell and march off with arms around each other’s shoulders enjoying the night. This is the first time we two brothers have been together in the same place at the same time for a long time. We live in cities a few thousand kilometres apart now, so chances to meet are rare and to be savoured. We both knew extreme intoxication was inevitable, even though we also knew this was a bad idea in a foreign country where we don’t speak the language.

We spend the next half hour lurching up a canal while receiving directions on our mobiles from the German guy. His girlfriend has gone home now, but he’s still out enjoying further refreshment. We make it to the construction site he had been trying to get us to find and round the corner to see him standing looking exactly how we felt – muntered. His face droops and his speech slurs badly as he lets us know he had just been on his way home. Meeting us changes his mind and he accompanies us back into the club. It has a beautiful wooden interior spread over a couple of rooms and a balcony through huge French windows. It has floor standing candelabras that reach above our heads and the bartenders have no problems supplying more vodka to a trio of inveterate troublemakers. I remember talking to different people who seem amazed that I’m Australian and standing in this club. I even remember going rounds with Don ordering vodka shots - four at a time. I also take a moment to buy another round of two shots to pay my private bet about him losing the picture; he still has it under his arm. The sun is well and truly up by now and streaming in through those windows. Our German friend leaves us and we last one more round before deciding we had better head for home before real trouble comes our way.

We stagger out of the club around six in the morning to be greeted with an overwhelming sight. The Cathedral on Spilled Blood, St Petersburg’s answer to St Basil’s cathedral in Moscow, is directly in front of us across the canal. Its appearance arrives as an invigorating revelation to our sodden brains. Somehow we had completely failed to notice this incredible building on our way in. Our cameras come out and we both try to capture the arresting beauty of the colourful onion domes of the cathedral shining in the dawn light. Which is when the two policemen arrive and ask for our passports. We comply as best we can, slowly and with long pauses to open money belts, as we explain we’re trying to get to the metro station. When they discover we’re Australian, they tell us to go home straight away. We agree completely and stand confused for a minute as they walk off, feeling particularly lucky that they let us go so easily. We had both heard stories of visitors to Russia spending time in a lockup or spending money to avoid that threat, or both. Feeling a new urge to return home we make it to a Metro station in record time.
I’m standing on the platform ready to catch the next train when I notice Don is no longer with me. He is well known for wandering off randomly and at this time of morning I’m fading fast and can’t find him anywhere on the platform. I decide I’m angling for home and keep my mobile in my hand in case he calls on the way.

I lurch out of Alisha’s train station and onto the open square in front of it that leads to the marshrutka waiting zone when two policemen bail me up. I’m unable to actually walk standing straight up at this point and I’m leaning heavily to one side, which is seriously hurting my lower back as I try to straighten up. I’m guessing this is what alerted the wise detectives to my condition. They stand evenly either side of me, both facing me on an angle, and demand my passport. I’m feeling a lot less confident than the previous encounter; I’ve lost Don and probably used up my luck in dealing with the Russian authorities. The pair of them are looking particularly severe as I pass it to them, wondering what I would need to be allowed to continue my reckless rampage.
“You’re Australian?” The first man exclaims to me in Russian, a broad smile covering his face.
“Yes, I’m an Australian man”, I manage to reply in Russian.
It sounded good to me at the time and he seems to understand. He passes my passport to his friend and both of them are now smiling broadly at me. It occurs to me how much of a typical Australian yobbo I’m being. My inner lesbians have utterly deserted me in disgust. Here I am in a very foreign country on a trip I’ve been planning for a couple of years and it’s only taken two weeks to land myself fiendishly drunk in a discussion with some police officers about the situation. I suppose I must be grinning like an idiot back at them by now and I have no idea what to do next. They also don’t say anything I can understand. I decide they must want something from me and enter a strange charade of emptying my pockets and handing stuff to them. Each guy looks at it, passes it to their friend and then passes it back to me. I can remember seeing the huge smile on the face of one of them as he opens my wallet and shows me the roubles left inside it, before handing it back to me again. They ask me where I’m going and I point at the marshrutka queue and struggle to remember how to say “123” in Russian. I settle at pointing at the one I need and say,

“That one”, repeatedly, in Russian.
They step out of my way, hand me my passport and tell me to go home straight away. Not believing my luck, I do exactly that and arrive at the apartment just half an hour after Lari and Alisha. I tell them about the policemen, much to Alisha’s amazement and Lari’s horror, before I have another cold shower and pass out.

The Russian National Sport: Qualifying Round at the Hermitage

2010-01-16T16:53:00.001+08:00

The river side of the Winter Palace and Hermitage: The correct side to enter from.

Nobody gets out of bed until around eleven, it’s a rainy day and that helps us all enjoy the extra sleep. We decided that the Hermitage would be the place to visit today, but now we will only have a few hours to explore something that friends have advised me to spend a few days visiting. The Hermitage is the truly amazing and extensive art gallery and museum that resides in two adjoining buildings; the old Winter Palace and the Hermitage itself. The three of us head for the city whilst Alisha makes for work to try and finish something off before meeting us for dinner. The journey into the city doesn’t take long and we find ourselves approaching the Winter Palace filled with anticipation of the experience.

I’m staring at the strangest statue atop an enormous column in the middle of Palace Square. It’s an angel carrying an enormous cross, but it appears to have no head. Who would build a headless angel memorial? What significance that could possibly have? I’ve never heard of this before in any kind of icon Maybe it’s some saint who got beheaded while….ummm…carrying a huge cross. Okay, maybe not. Maybe it’s some Russian Orthodox symbolism at work, who needs a head when you’ve got faith? I’m almost disappointed when we move past it walking towards the Hermitage entrance and the head appears, bowed deeply. Apparently this forty-seven metre tall, six hundred tonne monolith was the largest free standing monument in the world for some time and probably still is the largest one carved from stone. It was placed there after the Napoleonic wars as a ‘gift’ from the Russian people to the Tsar Alexander I. More recently this square also heralded the start of the 1917 revolution. The storming of the Winter Palace marked the first of ‘Seven Days that Changed the World’ as the famous book puts it. However, there’s no reminder of that history standing here in Palace square. The huge mobs of hungry Russian peasants and workers are replaced with throngs of tourists and locals surging around the Hermitage entrance. A few young people have set up easels and are painting the square from different views while another couple are dressed as Peter the Great and his wife to hustle tourists for the photo opportunity. We move to join the queue of people buying tickets.

If you arrive on a sleigh, you skip the queue.

Russia has long been known for its sporting prowess, but there are some sports that have been overlooked by the outside world for too long. It’s time to cast a light on the true Russian national sport; queuing. They love it, they’re bloody good at it and they take every opportunity to practice a little. I think if three Russians stand in a line, more will join instinctively to have a chance to receive whatever is at the end of it. I think Australia had better start funding our athletes before this quiet sport takes over the world by storm. The queue here is about three or four people wide and moving very slowly as each small group passes into the building and the ticket office inside. After about forty minutes of training to make the first Australian entry to the Russian national sporting festival, we finally make it to the door. Having waited another few minutes to actually pass through the hallowed gateway, we’re inside the building with just ten more metres to reach the end of the event at the two ticket windows.

I then notice another ‘Kassa’ sign that suggests if I leave the queue and venture ten metres in a different direction, there are two separate ticket offices. I ponder this for a while. Why would everyone queue only for the two visible ones? Why was no-one else even walking over to check the validity of this sign? Surely the other two windows would be closed in line with the well established Russian principles of customer service:
1.   There cannot be enough people serving. There can be enough serving windows, but they should be largely closed.
2.   The transaction process must be difficult and should preferably involve some form to be filled in with a pen.
3.   There must be insatiable demand for any service provided combined with a complete lack of desire on the part of the workers to perform the service.
I’m with Don and Lari, so I take the crazy leap of faith and walk around the corner expecting confirmation of the principles. I find two perfectly operational ticket windows with just a few people waiting at each one. I read the signs to see if these are special purpose windows, I was already familiar with that trick of Russian service by now. They will place a decoy window with someone doing nothing behind it. You can only do one thing at this window, but whatever that one thing is, it will not be what you want and they will be unable to do anything else under any circumstances. However, that isn’t true here; they are absolutely identical to the other windows in every way. Well, except for one small detail; they lack the hundred and fifty odd people waiting to use them.

This is when I notice that people entering from the river side are just strolling up to these windows, joining the very short queue and getting tickets very quickly. Filled with rage at my own stupidity in succumbing to the herd mentality, I quickly apprise my friends of the situation and we skip around the corner to get our tickets in less than two minutes. I now understand that waiting for the train tickets to be delivered yesterday was simply another aspect of the Russian training program for this new event. There are also summer and winter variations of the gentle sport of queueing; sweating and freezing. Myself and my two friends are now, I think, at the top of the amateur league in queuing Russian style; but only in the summer sport. I’m seeking a government grant to revisit in winter to continue my training; after all, Australians have to be the very best in every sport

These fun preliminaries aside, we ditch our bags and head to join the tour of the diamond exhibition that’s currently open. This involves an English speaking guide showing us through a special, heavily guarded, part of the Hermitage that holds…..well…. a lot of diamonds. It comprises a host of bejewelled gifts for the imperial family from a number of countries as well as some of their more expensive personal trinkets. It includes some paper thin crafted gold jewellery that I’ve never seen equalled before, along with beautifully sculptured metalwork with fine filigree details of grape vines and fruit. The presents from Iranian royalty are the most exquisitely extravagant. Swords encrusted with precious gemstones and diamonds, whole outfits threaded with gold and gemstones that are all overwhelming. The exhibition is truly beautiful and I’m sure inconceivably priceless.

Alexander the Grouse fighting them damn Persians

After exiting from the onslaught of riches, we decide that the best approach to our short time inside the Hermitage will be to try and enjoy every room in the Winter Palace and try to visit as much as we can elsewhere. This begins an almost timeless afternoon where the three of us separate and rejoin randomly over time. Don disappears while we’re exploring a room full of white marble statues and Lari and I don’t even notice for three more rooms. Each room absorbs your attention quietly and divinely. In one room a finely detailed silver partridge sits in an equally detailed tree inside a metal cage. Another room has been painted with hundreds of frescoed stories in the style of a similar room in the Vatican.

It was apparently created as a competition piece. We pose with statues, form a dancing procession on a staircase and duck and weave through the busy throngs of people. Lari and I find Don somewhere later babbling about a throne room. We haven’t seen it, so the three of us spend our time looking for it again in-between the corridors and rooms filled with tapestry and paintings, statues and lamplights, crystal, wood, malachite and marble.

Thrones and fabulous marble staircases feature more than once and it’s during this whirlwind tour I appreciate more and more what my other friends had meant by spending more time. It’s possible to fly through most of the rooms of the hermitage buildings and the winter palace in the space of a few hours, but there are so many places you could happily stay and savour for days. This is especially true during summer with natural light playing across the wooden floors, furniture and rooms. Once again I feel I would have to learn to paint to capture anything of the spirit of this city, I don’t think photographs can ever make it feel the same.

I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's wife. I'm only plucking pheasants it's a pheasant plucking life.

A voice announces that the Hermitage is closing while we’re busy making a pass through the galleries of past masters and then more modern offerings. Perhaps the speed of our visit made me miss things, but the only art on display that really captured me was a wooden sculpture of a woman falling off a chair. The clash of bodies in motion set into permanent suspension by the wood is an addictive revelation.
The detail was perfect and you somehow believed that this unfortunate soul had been transformed into wood by an ancient creature with mystical powers. We are quite lost in the maze of rooms and corridors and end up being herded out by the museum staff, eager to go home themselves. We finally make it back to the familiar opening rooms near the entrance and enjoy passing by the white marble statues before emerging back into normality

Athena with some hot lesbos action

The atmosphere inside the Hermitage certainly feels like some parallel world, even when you can look out of the windows and see the boats on the Neva and people on the street; it still feels separate. I wonder if I’ll get a chance to spend more time in there as I retrieve my jacket and we pause by the souvenir shops. Don ends up buying a framed print of a picture he particularly liked. It’s a rectangle more than half a metre across and half a metre wide that is sure to become an amusing burden. He does always tend to live for the moment and relish them as they flow irrevocably past; life without too much concern for the future. We exit the Hermitage feeling hungry and looking for instant gratification.

I bet she likes to 'Club the Lobster' all night long

Beers and Beaches in St Pete's

2010-01-14T12:16:00.001+08:00

Filled with the kind of overwhelming happiness that only comes from the depths of utter despair, we finish our drinks and surge into the street to begin our journey into the city to discover this Russian pub they call Tolsti Fraer. After the heavy tension of the last couple of hours waiting for the tickets, we begin to relax to our normal level of banter and commentary on the surroundings. The hour trip seems to last just a few minutes and suddenly we arrive to see Elena (another local couchsurfer) waiting near the door. She arranges a table for us and we order some of the beers that this chain pub brews. With your first half litre glass you receive a plate of Russian drinking food. This is a couple of types of hard bread, some dried fish and some salty pretzel sticks served on a small bread plate. We enjoy the novelty value of new nibbly food and order some plates of different Russian sausages and side dishes to try everything. Elena is helping us a lot here with ordering and then Alisha arrives, relieved to be able to relax after her week at work. She quickly arranges herself a beer and her smile grows wider with every sip.

You hungry dude?

The beer flows freely and I ask why there’s a mannequin of a guy sitting at a piano in the corner. Apparently he is who the pub is named after. I offer him a piece of the sausage, but he doesn’t seem hungry. Once everyone had eaten, myself Don and Lari pick up the bill (against Alisha and Elena’s objections) and we all agree to go for a stroll through the city. We cross back past the Natural History Museum and walk along past the Naval Museum. It’s just before sunset and the fountains are firing up in time with the huge soundsystem placed in the gardens in front of the Naval Museum. We hear a loud, booming sound and wonder if something bad is happening. Thoughts of Chechen rebels fade as we notice a man with a small, modern looking artillery cannon charging two hundred roubles (AUD$10) a shot to launch fireworks from it. The charge flies out of the cannon and then explodes in the air about 20 metres away. That’s too much for Don, who races over to have a go. He has to put on a metal helmet and poses as we appreciate his pyromaniacal instincts at work. He giggles as the firework explodes, immensely pleased with his effort and we keep heading around the SS Peter and Paul fortress. Alisha and Elena disappear for a few minutes and then return saying they now have supplies for us to visit the beach with.

Alisha with her Winter Palace

We settle down on the beach in front of the fortress to enjoy the slow sunset with the view across the Neva River of the Winter Palace and surrounding buildings. Yes, there really is a beach in the middle of St Petersburg and it’s quite crowded now. Elena produces a series of beers from her bag and we have one or two as we chat. As I sit on the beach enjoying the feel of the sand in my fingers and the constantly shifting golden light reflecting on the calm river waters, I wish this feeling could last forever. Utterly content to merge into the sand I feel the weight of the world slip away from me. The beers are certainly helping this, but here I am sitting on a beach in northern Russia sipping beers with a couple of locals and two old friends. The beauty of the scene mixes with the feeling of friendship to create an afternoon of warm happiness in St Petersburg.

Beachy Goodness

Everyone is herded off the beach around eleven o’clock as they close down the fortress for the evening. We amble around the edge of the park towards a Metro station, enjoying the very last of the sunlight. Elena wants to know if we’d like to stay out and go to clubs and see the bridges rise in the early morning. A few other couchsurfers have already said they’ll be out tomorrow, Saturday, night and we’re planning to join them. Don is still tired from the train trip from Moscow as well, so we make use of the Russian people’s taxi service to get home with Alisha before the bridges rise.

“If I lived in St Petersburg”, I begin once we’re all at home enjoying a nightcap,
”I would have to take up painting to try and capture the ebbs and flows of the city’s moods.”
Indeed, it’s quite a common sight to see people all over the city with easels arranged and brushes at work doing exactly that.
“I like to draw scenes here myself”, Alisha reveals.
“Really, do you have some you’ve done here now?” I ask, fascinated at a new part of my host’s already delightful character.
“yes…oh..in here”, she mumbles; searching her desk for the scrapbook.
It is filled with an array of scenes of people and places, facades of buildings and faces captured in time. She has a straightforward but emotive style I enjoy and we spend time turning through the pages as she explains pictures to me with the self-conscious reservation of a nervous artist revealing their work.
“These are great; you should be doing more of them!”, I finally entreat.
“Maybe….. I like to do them. I’ll make you one before you go, maybe I will have time”, she offers wistfully.
I decide not to push her anymore and hope she really will have time to make one.

Partners in Crime

2009-12-28T16:47:00.000+08:00

Don and Lari attempting to look innocent

The first of my friends, Larissa, or Lari as she’s always known, is due to join me here today later in the afternoon. The train tickets are also meant to be arriving too, so I wind up staying in Alisha’s apartment, surfing the web, looking out the window, reading and doing very little. Around three in the afternoon I finally get tired of inactivity and decide it must be time to go out and meet her. In record time I’m heading for the city and having a bowl of soup and a beer when my mobile buzzes with her message asking where I am. I tell her to head for Alisha’s train station and travel there myself to meet her. Alisha kindly agreed yesterday to let Lari stay at her apartment as well and this morning she’s letting my other friend, Don, stay from tomorrow too. Alisha is rapidly becoming my favourite host ever; her calm, relaxed approach to everything is addictive and fun. I find Lari outside the Metro station and greet her in Russian with “Welcome to St Petersburg”. I introduce her to the way of the marshrutka and advise her about the hot water situation as we head for the apartment.

I’ve known Lari for about fifteen years, a Darwin local always up for fun, parties and travelling adventures. She’s of part Serbian extraction and had spent a year living in the town her father came from; which had both made her curious to visit Russia and wary of Slavic men. So travelling with a six foot tall, huge, crazy Australian like me seemed the best way to avoid problems. We can always pretend to be a couple as required, which generally makes life easier. She is fairly tall and slim with a fantastic figure and broad, cheeky smile. Her eyes speak as much as her mouth does and she still hasn’t entirely gotten over a pushbike accident that left her with some light scarring on one side of her face and her arm. That wasn’t enough to stop the Russian men trying it on with her and I still think her beauty always shines through those huge, soulful eyes.

When she unloads her backpack on the floor she rummages inside it to produce an Australian power adapater for me. I give her a huge hug and thank her profusely for remembering. I plug it in first and then plug in the four point powerboard I’ve brought with me. Her eyebrows rise as I search for my phone and mp3 player chargers and plug them both in,
“That’s a good idea, can I use one of them for my phone?”
“Of course, that’s why I bought it. I figured we’d all want to charge things all the time and this would make it easy.”
She plugs her phone in and we sit and have a beer as I acquaint her with the wonder of Alisha’s window.

We soon make the short trek to the local supermarket and buy a stack of food, wine and beer to last for a few days. By the time Alisha returns home from work we have dinner ready, dessert planned and the wine flowing. It’s at this time that I realise that the tickets haven’t arrived and we’ve had no note or sign that anyone even visited. I jump on the internet again, beginning to feel the anger of desperate helplessness set in. I wrote what I really felt in an email, then deleted it and phrased a simple, but direct and more polite query asking what had happened. I’m more amazed to receive a response in under five minutes telling me that DHL had visited, would visit again the next day and I could check on the website for verification. It seemed I’d managed to miss them in the time I’d been in the city waiting for Lari. Don is arriving in the morning, so we agree to just wait at home until the tickets arrive, then we’ll launch ourselves into the city. It will also be a chance to catch up, since the three of us haven’t been in the same room at the same time for a number of years. With that, we rearrange the loungeroom and pass into a gentle rest.

I meet Don outside the station and we share a hug as I greet him with a ‘Welcome to St Petersburg’ in Russian. He wants a shower and I tell him about the hot water issue. He shrugs and says,
“When in Russia do as the Russians do. Got any vodka?”
I laugh and admit I don’t. Don’s long black hair reaches almost to his waist and he’s cared for it like that for as long as I can remember. His face is narrow and elongated enough that he can do a mad impression of a rodent whenever he chooses; which fits is wiry, tiny body perfectly. His eyes are always alert, watching everywhere and absorbing everything; meaning he can be easily distracted by shiny objects. There are streaks of grey appearing in his hair and I get to hassle him about that since I’m definitely the older brother and still showing no signs of grey. He’s not my brother by birth, he’s my brother from another mother. And father for that matter…and country. Don largely grew up in Jamaica and Africa, before a stint in Fiji leading to Darwin in Australia; which is where we had met at University. I’ve travelled with Don across Australia before, shared houses for three years in Darwin and Melbourne and been involved in countless festivals, parties, events and trouble together. He saw the same Total Solar Eclipse that I did in the desert of South Australia, at the week long trance festival that was held to celebrate it. So it when I was planning my Russian adventure he jumped to join it.

On our return to Alisha’s apartment we sit down to have some late morning beers and catch up on Don’s adventures in Moscow.
“I noticed one beautiful moment when I was in the Kremlin too”, he begins,
“There’s a McDonalds right near it and I saw a pack of sick, skinny, feral looking dogs sniffing around the bins. There was meat and leftover burgers there, but they turned up their noses and kept going. Even pack dogs in the Kremlin won’t eat that crap.”
Don also has his own illustrative story about trying to get a train ticket in Moscow. After an hour of crawling forward in line he finally lurched to the window and presented the piece of paper with his desired trains on it to the sour faced middle aged woman. She looks at the piece of paper, looks back at him and emphatically announces,
“Nyet.”
Don looks at her and at the piece of paper, then points at both the train departures listed and looks hopefully back at her. The answer returns equally surely,
“Nyet.”
Having exhausted his knowledge of Russian and reservoir of ideas he points at where it says ‘St Petersburg’ in Russian on the ticket, then at the date.
“Nyet.”
He pushes the paper through to her, thinking maybe she can’t read it properly and she gets a new idea. She picks up a pen and carefully writes, in Russian, ‘Nyet’. Now he produces the piece of paper in question amid peals of laughter from myself and Lari.

The three of us talk until after two in the afternoon and then begin to wonder if the tickets are on their way. I check on the web link the agent had given me and now it does say they had tried to deliver it the previous day. It also says it’s been dispatched again this morning. Taking some hope from this, Don and I take some time to wander to the shops to find more beer, food and general supplies. Over the next few hours, time slows down to a trickle. Our joint tension grows as the fear of not having these tickets becomes more and more real. We begin talking about what else we can do and how we could find the guy in Moscow. This had been on my mind for more than ten days now as the tickets continued to remain conspicuously absent, so I’m feeling flashes of anger. Lari points out that we can all post incredibly bad references for him at the website we had used to buy the tickets in the first place. I’m actually drafting the reference when the doorbell rings. I answer it and a voice says, “DHL”, in a suitably Russian accent. My heart leaps into my mouth, I can’t believe this might be the end of the torment. I buzz him into the building and sign for the envelope a minute later. It’s just after five in the afternoon, we’re over 10,000 kilometres from Vladivostok, it’s light and I’ve got my sunglasses on. I tear the packet open to find three envelopes inside; one for each of us and I distribute them so we can check through everything. It’s all there, for all of us. Our Trans-Siberian adventure is now officially ready to begin.

Mammmoth Ahoy!

2009-12-22T14:16:00.000+08:00

I wake up late, feeling particularly calm and relaxed. The day has other ideas for me that it lets me in on when I try to have a shower. There is no sign of hot water. I think that maybe the heater might need to refresh after Alisha’s shower and wait for a while. Still no sign of hot water. I wonder what’s going on and send a message to Alisha asking her if she knows. Apparently I’m now enjoying one of the privileges of living in Russian apartments. They use hydronic heating, which pumps hot water throughout the building, this same hot water is the supply for all the showers and kitchens. During summer they turn the system off for weeks at a time and claim to perform some kind of maintenance on it. Alisha thinks they just do it for the hell of it since it can happen in winter as well.
“So what do you normally do?” I ask, unfamiliar with the experience.
“Boil a kettle of water, pour it in the broad plastic container you’ll find in the bathroom and use that with the hand towel to wash yourself. You get used to it.”
“Does this happen often?”, I puzzle aloud.
“Every year, all the time. This is very normal for Russians”, she explains in a resigned tone.
”You should be happy to have the real Russian lifestyle experience”, she chides with an impish giggle in her voice.
I smile to myself and put the kettle on.

I think I could sit at the window all day doing nothing but absorbing this ever-changing view. It’s a meditation on the ephemeral nature of existence and I enjoy it immensely. I finish the Nasi Goreng (Indonesian fried rice) I’d made for us the night before and decide that since I find myself in one of the most famous cities in the world; I had better get outside and see it. On my way out of the building I notice a sign in Russian that declares the hot water will be turned off for three weeks from today. I don’t remember seeing it before. During the marshrutka ride a beautiful, young Russian woman gets on and demands to exchange a thousand rouble note for all the driver’s small change. He resists and a few people support him, I don’t understand her answer; but he does eventually give in. I suppose that’s another way to get small change in Russia, but the rules change everywhere for beautiful women. On the train I spend some time thumbing through my guide and eventually resolve to check out some of St Pete’s Metro stations before heading for the Zoological museum to get amongst the mammoth collection. Mammoths have always fascinated me, so the chance to see a whole collection of them can’t be missed.

Pushkin in Pushkinskaya metro

The St Petersburg Metro stations are all deeper than the Moscow versions; you stand on the escalators for over a minute heading down. Apparently this is partly to get the subway lines far enough under the river and partly to serve as bomb shelters. Whilst sporting some fine statues and marble walls, I never found one as purely excessive as those in Moscow. The mammoth museum I’m heading for is positioned on the strelka, ‘spit’ of Vasilevskiy Island just next to the Naval museum and very close to the giant rostral columns in front of that. The columns were originally lighthouses used to guide shipping through St Petersburg’s busy port. They stand about thirty two metres high, are painted coral pink and have the prows of boats protruding from them – just like the one underneath the giant statue of Peter the Great in Moscow. Apparently each boat represents a naval victory, but there’s no simple way to tell exactly which victories these might be. Probably not the under 20s kayak championship. Maybe more like something involving warships firing cannons at each other and perhaps the occasional skirmish of men with swords swinging onto the decks of an opposing boat yelling ‘Arrrrrgghhh’. In any case, at their base are four sculptures representing four great rivers of Russia; the Vodka, Beer, Urine and, of course, the Big Vodka. Well, I’m sure that’s not entirely true, but the Russians I meet on the train later think it’s probably more accurate.

The zoological museum is a lot larger than I expect and contains a vast array of stuffed and preserved animals. The horse that Peter the Great rode in the battle of Poltava in 1709 is stuffed and mounted in the entry stairway. I briefly wonder if horses ever think to do the same for their humans, before realising they have no opposable digits and wouldn’t really be that good at taxidermy.
“You’ll do better next time Ned… I know it’s hard to hold the knife in your hoof”
“Mbruuuuuha.”

On reflection, I suppose language would help them learn more too. After that introduction the museum has everything from mammals to birds and reptiles, whale skeletons to mounted dioramas of Rockhopper penguins. Okay, so I love penguins and I often use a photo of this particular kind of penguin as my avatar on the internet. Imagine my joy and surprise at finding a whole family of them mounted in a rocky landscape inside a glass case in the middle of St Petersburg. I then stumble across a glass cabinet filled with albino animals, including a peacock and, unbelievably, an albino emperor penguin. My penguin fetish well and truly satisfied by this completely white version of one of my favourite animals, I look harder for some hot mammoth action.

I’m delayed by a display of Australian birds and pause to check the labels, all written in Russian. I’m dismayed to find a few of them are incorrect, but not entirely surprised. I’m not entirely sure how good Russian-Australian scientific relations are, but if what I hear from other disciplines about how carefully the Russian government prevents scientists from sharing data, then I’d be more amazed if the labels were correct. Just when I thought I was at the mammoth section, buried deep inside the building, I come across a stuffed angler fish. These denizens of very deep ocean have a bioluminescent globe suspended in front of their mouth on a long antennae-like stalk; just like a fishing rod. Scientists are divided on whether this is just to attract food or their mates, but the reality is any light in the absolute darkness probably does both. I think they actually run deep ocean nightclubs with tiny shrimps acting as DJs inside their mouths; they turn the light on and off rapidly to create crazy effects for the tiny dancing fish. I also begin to suspect that cold showers do strange things to my thought processes. My arrival at the mammoth section comes suddenly and with a strange feeling.

They have preserved baby mammoths that had been trapped under the Siberian ice for about 40,000 years. This is a strange idea for me. Mammoths have always been gigantic, hairy elephants with excessive tusks. This diminutive version is the size of a large dog. I am caught by this anomalous entity for quite a while before finally noticing the array of full sized mammoths beyond it. I hope some scientist somewhere is working on bringing the world a tiny mammoth through the wonders of genetic engineering; mostly so I can have a little one at home. I already know that scientists have already isolated the genes that control size, so you can make animals eight times bigger or smaller than they normally are. So imagine a one foot tall mammoth running through your house to meet you as you arrive home from work. Your young children could ride it around for fun as it sprays them with water from its trunk. This thought keeps me distracted for the remainder of my visit as I wonder how you would order a mammoth around and what language would be best suited to the task. As I leave the museum I’m picturing myself and a group of friends, each astride an adult mammoth charging through the Siberian tundra – yelling commands in Russian. I just think Russian would be the best language to order around mammoths.

Ya Mammoth!!

Nevskiy and the Canals

2009-12-08T17:11:00.001+08:00

After our very relaxing Monday together, Alisha decides she will return to work in the morning and hands me the spare key to the apartment. This allows me a delightful sleep-in before launching my first real journey into St Petersburg. I decide I’ll return to the city and walk along Nevskiy prospect to absorb the feeling of the place again and allow whatever takes my attention to consume my day. I pass through the St Petersburg Metro like an old hand already – thanking my foresight in learning to read the Russian alphabet for the fortieth time. I emerge in the middle of the city again, through Nevskiy Prospect Metro station and into the surging street. I can see the spire of the Admiralty building at the end of the street, sitting on the edge of the Neva river; St Petersburg’s river and heart.

Because pavements are for cars too...man.

I spend the next few hours drifting and floating on the waves of people crowding the city. I decide I’ll walk away from the river first, back down to Vostanniya square and Moskovskiy station; where I had arrived the previous day. I pass a huge building that has scaffold placed along its entire frontage and wonder what it is. There’s no signage I can find, so I consult my guide to discover it is the huge bazaar they call Gostinyy Dvor. Inside is Russia’s answer to the department store. Broad passageways about twenty metres wide lead around the whole building on two main floors. You can move between the floors via regularly placed stone staircases. In those passageways are an endless series of stalls and shops of various sizes and types; each one run by a different person or people. Sometimes the whole passageway is taken up by an electrical goods supermarket or a fabric shop. Other times there are just a couple of benches or display cabinets with a single, bored looking shopkeeper hoping someone will stop. I find one that only sells batteries and take the chance to stock up, since they are less than half the price of exactly the same battery in Australia. I find myself wandering through the passageways faster and faster, enjoying the endless flow of different shops with people swarming in every direction. There seems to be one shop I see over and over again that sells the same set of jewellery, umbrellas and t-shirts. I wonder if its some kind of weird franchise stall as I sail into a hobby shop filled with radio controlled devices. The experience is strange to me, different from the bazaars in Istanbul; somehow more modern and consumeristic.

Then I turn around and amble along most of the length of this fabulous road to land at the Admiralty and the statue of the Bronze Horseman. Crossing the Fontanka canal at the Anichkov bridge I wish the amazing four statues on it weren’t under restoration. The statues on the bridge are by Pyotr Klodt and are all very beautiful renderings of men taming wild horses; engaged in the battle of strength as man bends the natural world to his will. This is a particularly appropriate place to have them displayed so centrally; in this city that represents that idea to perfection.

After Peter had travelled in Europe for a year (1697-98), working to learn boat building and absorbing culture everywhere he went, he returned to Russia with an astonishing plan. Russia would have a port on the Baltic Sea that would be the equal, or superior, of any European city. This was the first time any Russian leader had taken this view. So he did what any six foot eight inch Tsar with a mission does; he started a war with Sweden. In just a few years, in 1703, he had secured the mouth of the Neva River as the location and started building the SS Peter and Paul Fortress (the double S there is for the two Saints) on an island there. Opposite was a shipyard that he planned would become the birthplace of Russia’s navy. He fought Sweden and enslaved prisoners for another six years until the battle of Poltava where he led a decisive victory against their forces; Sweden had been one of Europe’s most powerful countries at the time. Amusingly the fortress was never actually used or defended during that war, but by then, the city was being planned and built at a reckless pace.

There's more than one way to TAME a horse

His determination to see this city come into being drove him for the rest of his life; and considerably shortened the life of the tens of thousands of Russian serfs he conscripted to the cause. The land was a foetid bog that flooded constantly, it is far enough north to have limited sunlight for half the year, as well as the river and ground frozen at the same time. Despite everything being piled against this proposition, his will held iron to the end, in 1712 he made it the Russian capital, when he died in 1725 there were 40,000 people in residence and many more in labour camps nearby.

Kazan Cathedral

Strolling down the Nevskiy Prospect is something I enjoyed doing quite a few times during my time in St Petersburg. So many beautiful buildings. The canals, statues and the constant buzz of the people is addictive. There is little sign left of the torment and death that went into producing this city, it has been replaced by one of the most photogenic and inspirational landscapes I’ve ever seen. This is a testament to a further three centuries of history, construction and life in the heart of the empire. The Dom Knigi (House of Books), Kazan Cathedral and a host of other buildings form a constant flow of visual feasts. each have their own style about them and all locals have their favourites.

The Fontanka, Griboedova and Moyka canals are calling me to get onto a boat tour. I notice a sign pointing to an English language one and head for the ticket box. I’m not sure if the boat will have drinks on board, so I spend the fifteen minute wait acquiring some beer from a local shop. On arriving at the boat I can’t help but notice that there’s only myself, the captain and two Russian crew members on board a wide canal boat with tables and chairs to comfortably seat forty. They gesture for me to sit down and wait. In a few more minutes a beautiful young Russian women descends the gangway and, glancing my way, walks over to speak with the captain. It turns out I’m lucky enough to have the boat to myself.
“Hello, I’m Ivana”, she says with a curious smile,
“I may as well just sit here then.”
She joins me at the table as I introduce myself and give her a beer to help settle into the best value for money tour in St Petersburg this year

We travel up the Fontanka, down the Moyka and then out onto the Neva past the winter palace (now part of the Hermitage museum/gallery) and the SS Peter and Paul Fortress. Looking back and forth across the river I can see the huge, towering spires atop the Admiralty on one side and the belltower of the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul on the other. Both seem impossibly tall and slender and on top of the Admiralty spire is a weathervane in the shape of a frigate; on top of the Cathedral is one in the shape of an angel blowing a trumpet. The two spires look particularly beautiful glowing in the warm Russian summer afternoon sun. I see for the first time the beach in front of the fortress swarming with people in bathers enjoying the day. Beaches and St Petersburg are still two ideas I find hard to associate, but here they are. We float gently past gardens and palaces, cathedrals and churches, bridges and waterways. I discover my guide is doing this work to help fund her university studies and improve her English, which is already very good.
“What hotel are you staying in?”, she asks me.
It seemed an odd question to me when I first arrived in Russia, but it’s quite common for locals to ask where I’m staying to get an idea of what kind of tourist or traveller I am; a businessman staying in the Sheraton or a backpacker in the cheapest place that has a spare room.
“I’m Couchsurfing with a local, staying for free”, I explain.
“Couch…what?” she replies, looking very confused.
I spend some time explaining the idea to her. It’s greeted at first with the base suspicion that the unknown always causes, then she warms up quite a bit, enjoying the novelty of a new kind of traveller.
“You have to visit this local franchise pub called Tolsti Fraer!” she exclaims.
She marks my map where a couple of them are located and tells me to go to one in particular. It’s the one she and her friends often visit on a Friday night. I decide I have to go there this Friday with a group of Couchsurfers to see what happens.

“Are you familiar with the Russian way to ask for another drink without saying a word”, Ivana asks me pointedly. I think for a moment and reply slowly, still thinking,
“No. I don’t think so.”
She turns the palm of her right hand away from her body and raises it to the side of her neck, where she flicks her throat gently with her index finger. I smile and say,
“That’s sure to come in handy while I’m here.”
She returns the smile and adds,
“Do you know why we do that?”
Again I think and admit I have no idea.
“Well, when St Petersburg was a much younger city, not long after Peter the Great started building it, there was a time where storms with high winds were lashing it for days on end. One day in these high winds the angel shaped weathervane on top of the cathedral’s belltower broke and stopped being able to turn properly. Peter feared the new spire would be torn asunder as the high winds continually caught the weather vane.”
I grimace, picturing the towering Tsar being made aware of the problem and likely suffering more than normal from his facial tic.
“So Peter called for someone in the new city brave enough to climb the tower and fix the weathervane. Soon enough, one crazy Russian man approached and said he would do it, but the price would be free drinks in all of St Petersburg’s bars. Peter agreed to this, since the act would take considerable courage.”
I had read in my guidebook that the spire rises 122 metres from the ground, glancing at it right now assures me it would indeed be quite a feat to climb it even today.
“The man took rope and the tools to fix it, consulted with the builders (the cathedral wasn’t completed until after Peter’s death) on the best way to repair it and set off. The winds were still high and no-one believed he would make it to the top, let alone actually fix it. Somehow he stayed firmly attached to the spire, repaired the broken angel and descended slowly amidst cheers and celebration of everyone present. Peter arranged for a certificate to be created directing all of St Petersburg’s publicans to honour this man with free drinks, signed it and handed it over personally.”
“So I’m thinking this guy isn’t working very much anymore”, I quip.
She smiles and continues,
“Well, you would be right, he spent many nights getting very drunk and more than once he lost the certificate and had to beg Peter for a new one. Peter got tired of this process and arranged to have the certificate tattooed on the man’s neck, right here”, she explains, flicking her throat again,
“So all he had to do for endless vodka was flick his throat! …and all the Russian people still use this action to get another drink today”.
She sat back for a moment as I consider this awesome story and sip at my beer. I smile suddenly and offer her another beer from my bag,
“Oh that’s not what I meant!”, she exclaims, blushing.
“But..since you have enough for me….”
She trails off as she opens the fresh can. I look out the window again as the buildings drift past.
“I don’t know if the story is true or not, I only heard this last week and liked it”, she explains between long sips.
“Nothing lives as well as a good story, I like it too”, I agree, knowing that I will be telling it again.

Onwards to St Petersburg!

2009-12-04T01:35:00.000+08:00

I say my goodbyes to Anna and Natasha as I have to change trains to get to the inter-city station I need for the journey to St Petersburg. This is my first experience with these trains and I have no idea what to expect. I find the station and the platform surprisingly easily; this information is printed on my ticket in Russian. The train is already there when I arrive around midnight, half an hour before departure. I acquire a couple more beers for a nightcap and then a litre of water to help me out. I then find my wagon and hand my ticket and passport to the provodnitsa. Each wagon has its own provodnitsa who is a combination of ticket officer, cleaner, caretaker and general boss of the wagon and everyone in it. I experience some trouble finding my cabin, partially from all the beer I’ve been forced to consume and partially because I’m expecting to see four beds arranged in it and can only find two bunks on the left hand side. The disabled sign on the door also leads me to believe it must be for someone else. The provodnitsa comes by and indicates brusquely that it’s correct and points at the lower bunk. This is the first time I notice the number affixed to the wall above it that confirms it is indeed my bed. Jackpot! A two bed cabin on my first train journey in Russia!

I stow my backpack by lifting my bed to reveal a ready made storage area. As I’m doing this, a young Chinese guy enters the room and greets me in Russian. I return the greeting and smile before continuing,
“Do you speak English?”
He smiles and concentrates for a moment before replying,
“Only a little.”
We move to stand at the window in the corridor and between my bad Russian and his bad English we manage to talk for a while. He’s a student here in Moscow, but he’s now going home to china for the summer holidays. His parents are also on the train, since they had come to visit him before they all returned home together. He shows me the four berth cabin his parents are in and then I head for a cigarette and nightcap before turning in for the night. Imagine my surprise when I find his parents in the two bunks in our cabin. I stand, baffled for a while, until he reappears and says we can use the beds in the four bunk room while they sleep here. I look at my suitcase and wonder where it will go, not happy with the idea of sleeping further than arms reach from it. I’ve heard bags, or their contents, have a way of disappearing on these trains and Natasha warned me again about this just before we parted. I must look upset at the idea of moving, because as I’m trying to console myself with it, he moves his parents back to their cabin and tells me to lie down. I have no idea what else to do and have no energy left, so I curl up on the bed and fall into a black, silent sleep.

I wake up feeling dazed and confused, but sporting a smile in memory of the arse slapping antics of the previous night. I grab the water I’d bought in the station and drink a litre of it in about ten seconds. I watch the landscape of St Petersburg roll past as we head for the city station. Already the place feels very different to Moscow. Certainly the classic soviet apartment buildings dominate, but somehow here they seem further apart, less frenetic and hurried. As the train approaches the centre of the city these buildings give way to an amazing array of 18th century architecture still in remarkably good repair – or at least the facades are kept scrubbed.

Alisha, my host, is meant to be working, but she messages me saying she’s sick and has stayed at home instead. Navigating the Metro here feels easier than Moscow, there are less lines and I only need one change to get to her station. This does involve walking down a short stretch of the famous Nevskiy Prospect – the road at the heart of St Petersburg. It’s busy and directed, with the flow of people relentless in every direction. It seems St Petersburg too is in the midst of a construction frenzy; with scaffold cradled buildings a common sight. The street feels burstingly alive; like an artist wracked by inspiration and struggling to capture it all and make it real before this moment passes. This feels like a breath of fresh air after the twisted depressiveness of Moscow and I wonder how much of this style is still the living expression of Peter the Great’s dream of a European capital. I stroll out of Alisha’s Metro station and message her that I’ve made it; she says she’s still ten minutes away. I sit with my bag near the Metro exit and immerse myself in the constant flow of people. This station is to the north of the city centre and right on the Gulf of Finland. I notice again the flower shops that seem to always exist at station exits in Russia. I imagine in a country that knows winter too well, flowers are a welcome blessing anytime.

A woman with dark brown hair and huge sunglasses walks laconically towards me. Her every movement is a study in smooth efficiency that seems like a lazy dance. Alisha’s smile comes slowly, with the same calm fluidity, and lights her face from within with a warmth you feel to your bones. She holds my hand as I kiss her cheek and then explains we have to go and catch a marshrutka. We walk towards a line of yellow minivans as she explains them to me.
“They run a set route, but you can wave them down and get on or off anywhere at all along it.”
Her voice is husky and earthy, but her sniffles give away her sickness.
“You need the number 123 to get to my place, just sit on it until the end.”
Her accent is fairly soft, but definite. As we scramble with my suitcase into our marshrukta, I ask,
“How often do they run? When do they stop?”
“All day as long as the trains are running. They drive to the other end of the route and wait there and have a smoke or something until some people get on. It costs ten roubles, which you pass down to the driver after you get in”.
I settle down as someone takes it upon themselves to sort out change for everyone in the back half of the minibus and passes a single handful of notes and coins to the driver. In all the times I travelled in these across Russia, I never see anyone try to get away without paying, but locals tell me it does happen.

The trip takes about fifteen minutes and the last stretch is along the coastline next to a large park. The final stop for the marshrutka is at the end of that road, right in front of Alisha’s apartment. With much grunting and sweating I manhandle my suitcase out of the van and into the complex. We enter her building and it again meets the standard of being pretty decrepit on the outside, but giving way to a lovely and recently renovated interior. Her apartment is on the third floor and looks out across the park and over the water of the Gulf of Finland. Another friend of hers is waiting for us, a woman in her thirties from near Novosibirsk (the capital of Siberia); just like Alisha who is from Barnaul (a few hours drive to the south of the capital).

Alisha really is sick, her friend is as hungover as I am and the effort of manhandling my suitcase has drained the rush of energy the city had given me. We alternate sitting in her loungeroom and kitchen, drinking fruit juice and staring out the window at the ever changing view over the sea. The view from Alisha’s window becomes an integral part of my days in St Petersburg. At first I’m watching her staring at the horizon dreamily, then I get caught by it as well. Every day the combination of sunlight, clouds and the water itself provides endless variations on a beautiful scene. Adding to that is the small river mouth to the right that features a steady flow of boats and the park in front of us with people walking alone, in couples, with dogs and sometimes in small groups. Much farther to the left is the mouth of the Neva river (St Petersburg’s primary watercourse) that produces even more shipping and the hydrofoils that take happy tourists to visit Peter the Great’s amazing summer palace. It’s possible to stare out of this window at any time of the day or night and be rewarded with a view that is at once profoundly relaxing and invigorating. The slow movement of the water and boating is offset by the faster pace of people walking through the park and down the street. I try to capture this a few times with my camera, but the relatively narrow view always renders the result at best a dull reminder of the feeling in the moment. This is one of the first times I truly appreciate what might be captured in a single painting that might take a lifetime to find in photography.

The Sunday Session

2009-11-30T03:03:00.000+08:00

In the morning I pour Victoria tea and find the last couple of Tim Tams to put with it. “Hey thanks for letting me stay here last night. I wouldn’t have been good company for anyone”, I offer as some kind of backhanded apology.
“You were better off staying home last night, it rained most of the time and we ended up mostly being cold and wet, huddled under umbrellas”, she says sadly, before brightening up and continuing,
“Did you find something to eat?”
I’m sure I look guilty for a moment before answering,
“I found some pasta and used some random vegetables. I’ll get some more today.”
“Oh from that jar in the front of the fridge?’
“Umm… the pickled stuff..yeah.”
“Oh don’t worry so much about that, it’s been there forever”.
I smile and thank her again before heading out into the street. I’ve just realised that I haven’t actually been inside the Kremlin itself yet and want to see the Armoury before I leave Moscow tonight.

I’m glad to visit it, the electronic audio guide I pay for takes me on a neat cruise through the rooms discovering the crazy array of weaponry, clothing, dinnerware and carriages that Russian royalty had enjoyed over time. I haven’t seen a sleigh-carriage before and there’s a crazy array of them to choose from here. By the time I finish the Armoury I’m eager to keep moving and return to Victoria’s apartment. Whilst I’ve enjoyed my time in the city, I’m more than ready to leave Moscow. The place hasn’t exactly captured my imagination, but Moscow was never the reason I wanted to come to Russia. Those experiences lie on the other side of the Ural mountain range.

I explain to Victoria that I will take my suitcase to the Sunday Session party and then go straight from there to the inter-city train station. She suddenly realises and exclaims,
“So I won’t see you again!”
“Well, not for a while…..but I have something for your collection of stuffed animals and teddy bears.”
On her windowsill, a coffee table and a desk of drawers in her room are an amazing array of these little keepsakes she has collected on her travels. I give her a small Koala to add to them, to remind her she has to come and visit me in Australia sometime soon. I then also produce a section of an enormous scarf my sister-in-law had made for me the previous Christmas. Karen had spent a lot of time knitting it, capably assisted by my nephew and nieces as required, to remind me of my connections to the rest of my family. The full scarf is well over five metres long, composed of different coloured sections made from different kinds and styles of yarn. At one point we had it wrapped around all my family sitting around the loungeroom in Darwin. Karen wanted me to take it on my travels to be my reminder of all of them. When it was completely rolled up it formed a disc over twenty centimetres in diameter and over ten centimetres tall. When I was leaving Australia, I cut off a section a bit over a metre long that was small enough to take with me. My aim was to get pictures of my hosts and their friends to remember both their connection to me and for me to my family. Victoria poses for a lovely shot wearing the scarf and her glorious smile. With that formality finished we hug and I drag my suitcase into the street.

The Sunday Session is an Australian pastime to deal with the problem of wanting to have some beers with your friends, but not wanting to be hungover Monday morning. So the answer is to start drinking around midday Sunday and finish up by nine to give you plenty of time to recover. A couchsurfer from Perth, Ben, is living in Moscow and he’s arranged for a Sunday Session to happen at his apartment today. After trying to find my way alone, I decide fate is pushing me to try a taxi. Two drivers are sitting inside the second taxi on the rank sharing a cigarette sheltered from the rain. I smile and say hello, in Russian, and hold out the piece of scrap paper I have written the address on in Russian. They look at each other, have a brief discussion and decide who will be taking me somewhere. My driver waves me to sit down and we lurch into the traffic, turning completely in the opposite direction to where I thought we should be going. I’ve heard taxi rides in Russia can be a fun experience for foreigners, but since my own brief attempt to find my way met with abject failure, I decide to trust him for a while. With his next turn we enter the street I’m looking for. During this time I manage to tell him, in Russian, that I’m Australian, I’ve been in Moscow for one week and I like Russia. He tells me it’s raining and that’s about as far as we get when he points at an apartment building with the number emblazoned on it.

Ben meets me downstairs where he checks the paper sign he’s posted advising the Couchsurfing party is at this door.
“The babushkas in the building don’t like anything foreign or unusual, so when I‘ve done this before with a note in English, they’ve pulled it down within an hour.”
Ben’s apartment is true to the style I had already discovered, decrepit on the outside giving way to luxury inside the front door. There must be a lot of work in doing renovations in this country. I’m somehow relieved to be talking to another Australian, especially one from my adopted city of Perth. I’m about to suggest I go for a beer mission when he shows me the slab of half-litre cans of Baltika 7 he’s acquired. He smiles and says,
“No worries, there’s plenty here, if we need more later, we can just get them from the shops downstairs.”

I love his proper Aussie style and crack one open with him. I’m running Moscow early, being exactly on time at four.
“The other Sunday Sessions I’ve had here had people arriving from six or seven and staying all night”, he says.
“They don’t really get the idea of the session.”
“Nope, but I kind of like their style too, they party like Australians.”
“They do know how to keep a session going”, I add with a broad smile, remembering Friday night’s madness.
“So what do you make of Moscow life then?”, I ask.
“I liked Moscow when I first arrived”, he begins thoughtfully,
“but after a few weeks I grew to hate it, everything’s difficult, it’s like the city hates you. I’ve spoken to a few other people who’ve moved here and told me you go through a time of hating everything about it and then you seem to form a truce.”
“I don’t think I like this city, it’s just another big city to me. Sure it has things that are different, but it’s still just another big city.”
“Maybe…I dunno…I wonder what I have left to eat?”. He distracts himself, wandering into the kitchen to check the fridge.
“I have some vegemite with me if we want to make something Australian”, I offer.
He smiles and says sadly,
“I have no bread”. So with this patriotic need established, I stride off purposely to find some bread.

After walking for a few minutes I begin to doubt I’m even vaguely in the right place. Nothing looks like it should and I keep looking back to his apartment block trying to find his window; hoping he’s on the balcony. While searching for the apartment I realise it’s on the other side of the block. Now oriented, I walk back and find the shop more easily. This navigating within the nests of apartment buildings can be tricky. Inside the shop I meet some of the people from Friday night while I’m acquiring the bread and a one litre can of Baltika 7 so I can get a picture of myself holding it.

Nastya and Ben

Ben and I immediately set about preparing vegemite sandwiches for everyone, eating a few ourselves before switching into a mass production mode. All Australians love to share this spread with everyone around the world, mostly for the incredibly distasteful expressions it normally causes. It is an acquired taste and, for me, is best consumed with bread with butter. Thus prepared, the two of us hand them out to the six or seven people who have arrived, waiting expectantly for their faces to contort. They don’t. They love it. I’m lost for words. Ben looks thoughtful for a moment,
“Oh yeah…I gave some to some Russians when I first got here and they liked it too”. I shrug and keep making more as everyone tries and enjoys it. This just isn’t meant to happen and I find myself wondering what it is in the Russian palate that makes vegemite such an agreeable option. Only one person doesn’t like it so much, but doesn’t really mind it either. I’m almost disappointed to miss out on the normal reaction, but at the same time I’m amazed with the unexpected connection with the Russian people.

The Sunday Session has begun in earnest and over the next few hours grows with more and more Couchsurfers and their friends arriving. I spread the word about my eclipse chasing madness and discover that one of the girls there, Irina (who made the Irish Cream on Tuesday night), will be a part of a group who will ride horses through part of the Altai Mountains at the time. They will see Totality from a small village in the hills. I’m impressed with her dedication to the cause and we agree to meet up afterwards to trade photos and stories.

Someone asks me what I think of Moscow and Russia.
“I like the Russian people but I don’t really like this city”, I begin and then pause, thinking how to continue.
“In so many ways it’s just another city. I think when a city reaches a certain size it becomes its own country”,
“Moscow is not a Russian city”, Sasha the Siberian interjects, “I’m glad you’re going to visit the real Russia beyond the Urals. Life is different there, people are different. So many tourists only visit Moscow and St Petersburg and think they’ve visited Russia.”
There are nods and noises of agreement from all the Russians who are listening, even the Muscovites seem to agree.
“It’s not really a Russian city, but it’s still my city”, Irina adds.
“I think there are plenty of cities that don’t belong to their country anymore”, I begin, thinking out loud,
”I mean, they’re still inside that country, but not any part of it. London, New York, Sydney, Moscow and others. It’s like they all belong some another country”. It’s the first time I’ve really seen it this way and I start to wonder what kind of country it is exactly.

Nastya and Maya

Suddenly an exuberant redhead taps me on the shoulder and looks at me expectantly. I don’t recognise her or know how to react until she says,
“Hi, I’m Natasha”.
I surge from my seat to give her the hug Healey had asked me to pass on. Formalities aside, I duck into the kitchen to the fridge to rescue the packet of Tim-Tams I’ve brought for her. She is one of the Couchsurfing Ambassadors in Moscow and I especially want to meet her, since she knows a Couchsurfing friend of mine from Perth, Healey. He’d stayed with her when they were both in Poland a few years earlier, so he had more recently entrusted me with a packet of Tim Tams to deliver to her personally. She stashes them in her handbag and we shift to the balcony to trade news while she has a cigarette.

Natasha and Sasha the Siberian

What follows is a long session of laughter, photographs and increasing madness as the beers take hold of the group. At some point I fetch the small number of tiny clip-on Koalas I had put aside to give out today and make sure everyone that I’ve met more than once receives one. Ben then puts his huge Australian flag across the door to his loungeroom, which leads inevitably to even more photographs of Natasha wrapping herself in it and posing salaciously. One of the very cute local girls, Nastya, asks

“Do you have any more Koalas? I missed out before.”
She looks so sweet and forlorn it’s hard to refuse, but I look at my suitcase in despair.
“I have some more, but it would take time to get them out…. and I need to keep them for the rest of my trip.”
She looks so sad, that I add,
“If I get a kiss, I’m sure I could find the energy.”
She withdraws at first looking shy, then both her and her friend, Maya, who also wants one, decide to provide the necessary encouragement. Maya is a very beautiful young lady with huge, soft eyes that make me feel like I could drown a sweet death inside them. Koalas suitably distributed I notice my scarf on top of everything and proceed to spend a long time taking photos of almost everyone wrapped in it.

Natasha’s friend Anna and I have our picture taken together and Natasha thinks we look like we’re a good couple. We immediately agree we’ve actually been married for a few years already and have been keeping it a carefully guarded secret. We then pose for some more pictures to prove the point and I ponder that it has taken me just over a week to find myself a Russian bride. Around eleven I start to pack everything away and then hear the sound of slapping and giggling coming from the entrance of the apartment. I venture into the area only to have my arse suddenly slapped by two different women, one of them is Natasha. Ben has explained to everyone this is an ancient Australian party tradition and I confirm it wholeheartedly by returning the favour. After a frenzy of arse slapping madness we find eight or more people all standing against the walls between the doorway, the bathroom and the kitchen. Every time someone ventures into the zone a solid slapping session commences leaving us all howling with laughter. I realise I have to go and fetch my bags from the loungeroom to get them to the door. Natasha and her friend, Anna, also have to leave. So after lengthy goodbyes to everyone, I’m escorted back to the Metro station by my wife and her beautiful friend.

There goes a day...

2009-11-23T20:19:00.001+08:00

Sometimes I think I cram two or three days into just one, which is the best excuse I can summon for losing a day every now and then. After the amazing day and the night's festivities, I awake suddenly only a few hours later being evacuated for the cleaner to arrive. I have another shower to try to become at least semi-conscious and shamble into the street, still riding on the effects of a six in the morning beer. I can’t say I remember much of how I spend the next few hours, but at the end of it I’m lying on a bench outside her apartment building waiting for her to respond to my troubled query on when I could go back to sleep. I think the effects of the beer have well and truly worn off by now and I’m left with only the body sickness that comes with a good hangover. I had acquired some Mors juice and finished a litre of it, which was helping a little. This kind of juice is something Victoria introduced me to, its made from different berries from the forest and is something Russian people still make for themselves. This version is packaged, available all over the country and utterly delicious. When I receive her message, I’m working on finishing the second litre carton. It gives me enough energy to shamble back upstairs and pass out again just after one o’clock.

Victoria wakes me around five to tell me,
“I’m going to a celebration that the American embassy is running and I’m wondering if you would like to come?” I check with my proprioreceptive nervous system on this question and discover that whilst all my limbs and organs still seem to be intact, none of them like the idea of working together to move anywhere. I try to negotiate with the warring parties and can find no resolution to the problem that doesn’t involve sleeping for another twelve hours.
“I don’t think I can move anywhere right now”, I say meekly, hoping she won’t beat me mercilessly.
“Oh I thought so… I just wanted to ask in case you were planning on going. Oh..you know you won’t be able to get outside without the key.”
“Yes, I think I’m not going to be able to go anywhere until tomorrow”.
With that response she checks her bag and pockets for everything before waving goodbye and heading out the door. Being locked inside her apartment seems entirely a better prospect than roaming the city with a torturous hangover. I know she isn’t entirely happy, but I still thank her quietly for letting me lie and suffer by myself.

I wake up again after eight feeling significantly less like my internal organs have been blended into a kind of sick slurry and venture to the kitchen to see if I can find anything to eat. It’s moments like these the guidebooks never seem to cover. I now cannot leave the apartment, since I can’t unlock the deadlock. I don’t have any food here. I can’t drink the tap water and there’s only a litre bottle left that isn’t mine. I hope for forgiveness when I replace everything in the morning and turn to the cupboard to try and find something filling. I can’t understand the Russian written on most of the packets, so figure I’ll have to go with something I’m pretty sure I know. I’m overjoyed to find a packet of instant spaghetti and set about getting a pot full of water boiling on the stove. While the pasta is cooking I see if I can find something to use as a sauce and come up with a few gherkins and something pickled in a jar involving tomatoes and…..other things. In the interests of the exploration of international cuisine I give you “Pickled stuff and gherkin on a bed of spaghetti”; a delightful mixture of Russian and Italian mainstays brought together in a moment of desperation. It isn’t bad actually, so I finish it and check my email on Victoria’s laptop. I return to bed again and sleep provides blessed relief from the torment I do like to inflict on my body.

The Demon's eyes in the Russian night

2009-11-16T21:13:00.000+08:00

The Tretyakov Gallery

It’s Friday and today has been an emotionally draining time. Later in the day I discover the train tickets are still not ready and I ask him to send them to my couchsurfing host’s apartment directly. I’m glad I’ve already been talking to Alisha for a couple of weeks about my visit, so this is no problem. It does add to my worries; without those tickets, this is going to be a very strange journey in Russia. The thing that’s really twisting my mind is a painting I saw in the Tretyakov gallery this morning. The gallery is awesome and I had already seen a number of the paintings before, but there’s nothing like the real thing. I can’t find a good picture on the internet of the painting that is haunting me and I suspect no picture can capture it. You just have to be there.

It’s called ‘The Demon Prostrate’ and is kind of a picture of Satan just after his exile from heaven. And it kinda isn’t. The body in the picture is angular and beautiful, with dark skin; but it takes a while to be able to notice that, because the entire picture lives in the eyes. Betrayal, fury, disappointment, confusion – like a child punished savagely for someone else’s crime. These eyes beg for sympathy, but warn of a purely malevolent intent. They draw you closer to empathy, but reject you with spite at the same time. There is pure animal madness in them as well as the savage pure discipline of a conquering hero. I’ve never felt anything like the flow of emotions this picture draws from me effortlessly. You’re left feeling somehow robbed and richer at the same time.

My guide tells me Vrubel produced this piece of mad genius when he was on the verge of the massive nervous breakdown that heralded the end of his career and soon life. Already driven by his own demon, it seems Vrubel tried to take control back by overthrowing him and instead captures the moments before it claims him entirely. He repainted the eyes in this picture over forty times. Even after it had been exhibited to some acclaim, he continued to change them until they reached this final state. Probably exacerbated by third stage syphilis, this was the beginning of the end of the artist’s mind and provides a dark and complete insight into his internal struggle. If you’re passing by Moscow, I’d highly recommend a visit.

On the street in Arbat

I still feel like my insides have been rearranged with a cricket bat when I meet Ludmilla at the entrance to the Metro station near the café. I just want the demon’s eyes out of my head. The place is certainly very new, modern and belongs more in Europe than Moscow. Ludmilla’s English is not conversational, but still so much better than my Russian, so we chat in stilted fashion while we peruse the menu. Alexander arrives just after our drinks and this helps conversation a lot. He asks me to call him Sasha, so I should take a moment to explain Russian names. Everybody has at least three or four. Your first name and family name are pretty set, but there are standard shortenings for first names that everyone uses with friends. Alexander and Alexandra both get shortened to Sasha, but Vladimir is Volodya, Dimitry is Dima, Nataliya becomes Natasha and Anastasia becomes Nastya. To further confuse this there is not a huge variety of first names in Russia, so it’s quite normal to have two or three people with the same name at any gathering. To add to this you also have a patronymic name which is derived from your father’s name. It has male and female versions so you can always tell someone’s sex from their patronymic name. Lenin’s father’s name was Ilya, which is why he is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Volodya to his mates. So in the interests of identifying this confusing array of Russians with the same name, I’ll add my own epithet to their short name. So anyway, it turns out that Sasha the Siberian had been a top English graduate in his hometown of Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia. We all chat much more freely as more people arrive and soon we have a group of eight or so Couchsurfers, including the Dutch guy, Hanspeter, and Tanya, one of the locals from Tuesday night. Tanya is short for Tatiana by the way.

During dessert Ludmilla and the other locals discuss our itinerary before we gather together and leave. What follows is an incredible trek across the city to discover places that were full, weren’t open yet or were too expensive for some of the group to want to pay to get in. We see a lot of the streetlife at night and not so much of the nightclubs. I’m amused to see large black vans filled with beautiful women parked next to the entrance of a casino. I ask what they were doing and my hosts diplomatically explain it’s for rich men to have some fun. We end up getting beers at pavement shops twice during the mission and drink them on the way to the next place. On the way I find myself explaining the Australian love of shortening words to Sasha the Siberian.
“Anything with three syllables is going to be pinched, even two is a little long. A heavy Australian accent is made unique by the way words are shortened and slid together into an endless stream of whiny noise.”
“Yes, we like to shorten words too…everybody’s name, places…it’s common to not say the whole thing”, he says.
“True? I suspect all languages do it to some degree, but one of my favourites is un-fucking-believable.”
He laughs at hearing the sausage word created,
“But that’s longer!”
“True, but it’s spelled u-n-f-k-n-b-l-v-b-l”
He bursts out laughing and we toast with the beers we’re carrying as he says the letters over and over again.
“But it’s not the best one, the best Australian saying is ‘No wuckers’. It was originally ‘No worries’.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that before”, he says, nodding.
“Somewhere it became ‘No fucking worries’, then ‘No wucking furries’…Until someone realised that’s too damn long and made it ‘No wuckers’.”
He laughs with each variation and his eyes shine with the amusement of learning the final part.
“You don’t get that one so much in cities, I’ve heard it more in the country”, I add.
“So Australian changes around the country?”
“The accent certainly does, words do as well, but you can normally understand it everywhere.”
“Russian doesn’t really change across the country, we speak the same language everywhere.”
“Really? Over such a big country I’d expect so many more variations!”
“Not really, the Trans-Siberian line connects everyone and we all move around doing national service too. So the culture might be different, but not so much the language”.
I make a note to see if I can pick different accents as I cross the country.

Beery goodness from St Pete's

Actually the beer stops introduce me to another curious part of the Russian psyche, when in a group; everyone likes to wait for someone else to take responsibility for leading. It doesn’t seem to be for politeness, more that nobody wants the burden. We stop to pick up the beers and then ten minutes later we’re still standing around sipping them and finishing second cigarettes.
“What are we were waiting for?”, I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Well…Davai davai”, I chant, trying to move everyone. This is followed by more of the same as all the foreigners present agree they also thought we were waiting for something or someone. The locals agree that indeed we aren’t waiting for anything and we stand sipping beer for a while longer. I’m not sure who moves first, but a few of us start walking saying,
“Davai davai”.
They point in the right direction and we surge onwards. After a little while it occurs to the two of us at the head of the group that we have no idea where we are or where we’re going; but somehow we’re leading everyone. We pause and wait for a couple of our local group members to stroll by and start following them. After a short time, they realise we aren’t quite heading in the right direction and cross the road and curve back slightly in the direction we had come.

By the second stop I’d figured out this would probably happen again and keep up the pressure to keep moving. The only other explanation of these pauses is that it is technically illegal to be walking down the street drinking beer, but everyone does it. So if we finish beers near the shops, we’re less likely to be hassled.
“When was the last time any of you have been bothered about this law?”, I ask.
They look thoughtful and generally agree it’s been a long time. All it really takes is someone prepared to say, ‘Davai davai’ and everyone will follow pretty directly – just as Ayuna had done yesterday. Finally, we resolve to head to a place called ‘Soup’ to actually sit down for a while. The walk across the city has stretched into a three hour tour and we all just want to sit down anywhere. Well….anywhere with a beer.

We’re led to a table and I’m forced to order a beer and two shots of vodka. Sasha the Siberian smiles and does the same. Some of the others order soup, apparently it really is well known for the soups they make here. This is apparently a common format for Russian clubs; you enter in a group, are seated and enjoy table service. You could head for a dancefloor, if it has one, but this one has more of a café style atmosphere. I enjoy sitting down more than anything and learn some new Russian toasts. Most of the Moscow locals were horrified at the thought of saying ‘Ha zdorovie’, a traditional Slavic toast meaning ‘to your health’. It’s probably the first toast any foreigner learns and I discovered I had to find some new ones to be really Russian. To make it more difficult, when I ask for another one that was the equivalent of ‘cheers’, their faces cloud over and then they say, ‘there’s too many’. I laugh and demand they pick one. Sasha the Siberian tells me the Russian word that effectively means ‘to our future’ and we drink our first shot together. A while later he tells me another one of his favourites, which means ‘Let’s do it’, so we can finish the second one.

Thus armed against the cool night air and regenerating our tired legs we make for Krisis Zhanre. Apparently the live music only gets started there about midnight and when we enter the first band is only a couple of songs into their set. The clubs name in Russian glows on the wall and the place is packed and vibrant. Sasha the Siberian and I stash our coats in the coatroom I find hidden at the back of the dancefloor and he volunteers to find some beers while I wait with the rest of the group. We finish them quickly and all of us launch ourselves onto the dancefloor with mad abandon. The band finishes, we don’t, but the DJ keeps us going as they setup for the next band.

This new drug called 'B' will explode your mind

Dancing, beers, vodka and shouted happiness prevail for a few hours. At one point all the Couchsurfers join together in a circle with arms around each other and keep dancing together. This only lasts a minute thanks to some filthy looks from bouncers, we have to break it up. I’m baffled as to what was so bad. Konstantin, one of the locals, leads me to a back area for a cigarette. We travel past the end of the bar, finding ourselves in a group of tables and then open French windows that lead to a small outdoor location designed for smoking. The back ‘wall’ of this area is a canvas tent that conceals a building site. Konstantin produces a cigarette which I then drop on the floor almost instantly. As I bend over to retrieve it, he looks appalled at the idea and stomps on it whilst producing another. I can’t picture anyone in Australia doing that; a single cigarette is worth up to seventy five cents. However, in Russia a whole packet costs the same; which would help to explain why almost everyone smokes, everywhere. Konstantin leans forward after lighting up and explains the bouncer’s reaction to our mini-mosh. Apparently the worst thing you can do is to be moving together in a big group like that, it’s banned in every pub, club and venue. Moshing is strictly forbidden thanks to the bad reputation it has for causing unforeseen injuries as the mass hysteria takes over and everyone in the room is heaving together as one. People have been suffocated, trampled and generally damaged. Which is probably why I love the mosh so much, I’ve already been in many good ones and loved every minute of it. The surge of energy I get from moving both together with the crowd and by myself within it is spectacular and invigorating.

Somehow we get talking to a pair of Mexicans who are visiting Moscow and I discover this club is a huge hangout for ex-pats in general. I’m more than happy to throw myself into the night and see where we all land. For most of the next few hours I find myself drinking beers and returning to the smoking area to enjoy random conversations with Mexicans, Americans, Germans, Serbians and a host of Muscovites. I meet an extraordinarily drunk local who gives me his card so we can go out drinking again tomorrow night. He’s out with his girlfriend and an old mate who’s in town for the weekend. All three of them are at the level of drunkenness that would get them removed from an Australian pub with vigour, but none of them seem to have a problem finding another round. I pass Tania on the dancefloor and she leans in close to be heard,
“Are you coming back with us all to my place after this?”
“Definitely! When are we going?”
She shrugs and says,
“Soon maybe.”

One of the rarer effects of drinking too much Russian Vodka

It’s while talking to an American journalist about where the country is going under Putin that I realise I have no real idea where I am in the city. We walked here after the monster trek, leaving me with no orientation for a Metro station and I’m not entirely confident about organising a Russian people’s taxi with my poor language skills. The idea of being alone and lost in the middle of Moscow makes me feel suddenly vulnerable, so I move to return to the group. To my horror they have disappeared. I look in every corner of the club and can’t find anyone. I retrieve my jacket and begin to work through my options on finding my way home. It’s just after six in the morning and I’m floating on a sea of beer inspired warm comfort. I think if I can get directions to the Metro I can navigate myself home safely without a problem. So when I walk into four members of the group standing together outside, I give a little cheer. They look up at me and smile.
“I thought you’d gone home already!”, I accuse them.
“You’re still going!”, the chorus of voices chime.
“I couldn’t go, I have no idea where I am right now.”
They laugh and Hanspeter says,
“Moscow!”
“Really? I thought I was in Africa somewhere! How the hell did I get here?!?!.....What happened to Tania? One minute she’s saying we’re all going there and now she’s disappeared with her friend.”
“Oh they left half an hour ago, I think they were looking for you, but you’d disappeared.”
“I was out the back in the smoking tent talking to drunk Russians”

And that's what Moscow really looks like

They laugh as we meander to the Metro station. As we separate at the circle line station I wonder when exactly the best time to send a message to Victoria is. I opt for an SMS five minutes before I arrive back and follow with a phonecall when I get there. She buzzes me in the building and ushers me inside the apartment with a tired smile.
“Good night?”
“Was extensive and great fun; good people, good music, good conversations, what more is there to cram into an evening?”
She smiles evilly and adds,
“Oh maybe one or two things, but you can’t have everything.”
I laugh on my way to the shower. By the time I return she’s already sound asleep again, so I stretch out onto my mattress setup on the floor and blissfully follow the trend for unconsciousness.

Novedevichy with a side of Beach Volleyball

2009-11-13T20:36:00.001+08:00

I decide that the Novodevichy convent and cemetery will be my primary destination for the day and bounce into the street to find my way there. I stop at a small pavement shop to get something for breakfast and discover they can’t change a thousand rouble note, so I can’t buy anything. I don’t know what to do exactly, so I wander back into the street, still hungry and looking for a bigger shop. I end up being refused at two more pavement shops and start to wonder if it’s because I’m a foreigner or if they really don’t keep change. I now wish I hadn’t already spent the last of my small change; fifty and hundred rouble notes. I soon walk past a supermarket and this time manage to acquire a packet of chips and a curious flavoured liquid yoghurt drink. There is always a broad range of milk based food and drink in any shop in Russia. This varies through milk, butter and cheese from different animals to yoghurts with consistency from almost cheese-like to pretty much milk. This drink is a chocolate flavoured milk-like yoghurt and goes well with the sour cream and chive chips. It doesn’t, however, encourage me to have more later; the yoghurt is just too bitter for my taste. I’m used to drinking Iced Coffee from a carton almost every day while I’m in Australia; a habit gained during my misspent youth. It has too much coffee and too much sugar, but in perfect balance. It sets your heart beating and your eyes spinning; I know anything that feels that crazy good has to be bad for me and I love it.

The Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk in the Novodevichy convent truly is gloriously beautiful; the iconostasis is the best I see in Russia. Five tiers high and richly ornamented, it dominates the room entirely. I have to tear myself away from the incredibly detailed visual smorgasbord to appreciate all the other amazing frescoes on the central pillars, walls and ceilings. One dour looking nun watches over the visitors idling through the building that has already stood for almost five hundred years. I walk around the convent grounds and decide to sit on a bench under tree for a while, absorbing and luxuriating in the calmness of the gardens. The strange and twisted history of this place (as a prison, refuge and storehouse) doesn’t seem to sit heavy upon it today. I sit and soak in the warmth and idyllic calm of the convent atmosphere.

Some time later I stroll next door to the cemetery. I decide I don’t really want to pay for a tour this time and just wander in to drift around the place. There are plenty of large, spreading trees providing shade to the cool cemetery grounds. I tag along with an English speaking tour group for a few stops before tiring of it and decide that since I can read the gravestones, I can figure out who’s in them and the more decorative ones are probably more famous people. I turn from Gogol’s grave to discover Anton Chekhov’s almost opposite and figure I’m half right, Chekhov’s grave is decidedly unornamented; but is unusual in that it’s a simple Gothic arch shape with his name printed on it. The cemetery is the resting place of many figures from the worlds of Russian politics, arts and the military. Stalin’s right hand man, Vyacheslav Molotov, lies here. It is after him that the Finnish people named the Molotov cocktail. This was the humble petrol bomb they used to great effect against Russian tanks during the Winter war of 1939/40. Since then the Molotov cocktail has been used by many countries and has become a universal symbol of both a people’s resistance to armed forces and a university student’s idea of a fun night in Paris.

However, it’s Boris Yeltsin’s grave I’m interested in visiting. I did have an idea of taking some vodka with me to either leave there or pour at its base, but wasn’t sure how it’s be viewed. The grave is a sculpture of a Russian flag waving in the wind, his name on the piece is faint at first, but certainly visible. I did always like his style in the early years when he faced down the military coup in 1991 by standing on a tank and making speeches before staging a one man breaking of the siege. That he then oversaw the final demise of the Soviet Union was just as amazing, becoming the first president of the Russian Federation. Somebody had to be there to make the changes happen, but his decision on an economic pathway certainly seemed to destroy Russian finances for many years. I also loved the video of him trying to conduct a band at some official occasion whilst being monstrously drunk. The real conductor was standing behind him and conducted only while Yeltsin had his back turned and his arms waving in a crazed frenzy trying to conduct. Every time Yeltsin turned to check on him, the poor conductor froze and acted like he was doing nothing. Such a lovely moment, it must be something Australian to love seeing political leaders heavily refreshed in public and enjoying themselves.

Boris' final resting place

After some more time enjoying the variety and styles of the graves here I decide I’m hungry and have to go and check out the crazy Georgian restaurant, Genatsvale, on Old Arbat St. Entering it seems like a strange ritual as you leave Moscow and enter some small, ancient town in the middle of Georgia. The uneven cobble stones outside lead you through an enormous broken clay pot to heavy wooden doors. I open them and step inside to find a waitress who shows me to a table. Even inside, the restaurant has different levels; like the uneven streets of the old town. On the left is a waterwheel turning lazily in a small stream with tables above, below and around it. Fish swim in the carefully lit stream and there are different sections around the huge room; raised verandahs and an open cobbled square in front of the bar. She gives me a menu, with English translations thankfully, and I set about ordering up a storm. Lavash bread, Bozbashi soup and a kind of open kebab with grilled meat and vegetables served on a wooden board. My first taste of Georgian food starts a lasting love affair, it is easily the best food I have from any of the old Soviet republics. Spicy, but simple, filled with flavour and always made me want more. The Bozbashi soup is mutton meatballs in a spicy, red, cloudy broth of paprika, onion, tomato and dill. It becomes a staple of mine across Russia. Everyone prepares it slightly differently, but the core was the same and delicious with lavash bread. This is baked in discs about twenty centimetres in diameter and rises in the centre to about two centimetres. It is always sliced up, is quite soft and absorbs juice from your plate or soup perfectly. The main course had deliciously grilled lamb and the salad, tomato and cucumber that came with it balanced it perfectly. It also came with freshly made Adzhika sauce. This ‘sharp’ chilli sauce is another instant favourite and I find a bottle of it later to have ready at hand for the rest of the trip.

After a fantastic lunch like that, I can do nothing but waddle the fifty metres down the road and slide into my favourite internet café again. I’m particularly happy to find another Couchsurfing meetup began about fifteen minutes ago. Ayuna, a Moscow local who was at the last meetup, has arranged a meeting right next to the beach volleyball competition that’s going on at the moment. I bless her genius and wonder how such an incredibly Australian style of sport had caught on here. I decide to leave and join the group to see what it’s like.

The Beach Volleyball Outdoor Stadium

There is indeed a temporary stadium setup at the foot of the hill of Victory Park that I stumble into almost immediately after walking out of the Metro station. It also seems there really is a beach volleyball competition going on inside it. As I drift around the edges of it finding the meeting spot, I love the sheer randomness of finding such an event in Moscow while I happen to be passing through. More importantly, I would never have known it was on without the Couchsurfing connection. Ayuna finds me quickly and says they had decided not to pay any money and sit on top of the hill instead. I figure I might choose to go in later and follow her to meet the group. This time we have four nationalities represented and we sit on newspaper on the grassy hill watching the sun get lower in the sky. We talk about what has brought us together in Moscow this fine day. I suddenly think to ask about the problem with changing the thousand rouble note that morning. Ayuna bursts out laughing and explains,
“Oh that’s everywhere; the small shops often can’t do it at all, which is bad because the Bankomats like to give out the big notes. Some of them only give out thousand rouble notes that you can’t use anywhere.”
“I try to get smaller amounts out, but the machines don’t always let you”, adds another local girl.
“Sometimes you can get it in hundred rouble notes, but I’m not sure which one that was.”
As she finishes, she drifts off into silent thought for a while, before seeming to decide she really doesn’t know.
“So, what’s the best way to change a big note?” I ask in blank curiosity.
“Ummm…supermarkets normally can, Metro ticket windows…the bigger the shop, the more likely they can do it”, Ayuna explains.
“But you can’t change money, you have to buy something, nobody will just change money for you”, advises her friend.
I nod slowly, trying to remember to always carry smaller change in the future. Ayuna takes the moment to launch a barrage of questions,
“So what are you doing in Russia? Where are you going and how long are you here?”
I tell them of my planned Trans-Siberian adventure and then my eclipse chasing history.
“That’s what has really brought me here. To Russia.”
I stare into the distance for a moment, enjoying the city view.
“You’ve come all the way to Russia to look at the sun?”, Ayuna asks with a bewildered expression.
“Well, really it’s not to look at the sun, so much as much as the moon sitting perfectly in front of it. The black sun. Have you seen one?”
The group looks puzzled in thought for a minute, before one of the German girls remembers,
“I saw one about 2000 I think, we had to use special glasses and a pinhole camera so we didn’t look at the sun directly.”
“But did the sun turn black? Could you look straight at it without the glasses and see the corona around the edge for a few minutes?”
“I…don’t know…I think so….”
“I think if you had seen it you would know….maybe it was only partial where you were, the Totality follows a narrow path only one hundred kilometres wide.”
This explanation has become almost a mantra to me,
“It is not eclipses that I chase; it is Total Solar Eclipses. It's not the same, when I say the word 'Eclipse', I mean Totality. The partials and hybrids are something else, something lesser”, I pause, trying to find the right words.
“It’s like trying to describe a six foot high ice-cream, multi-flavoured, decorated wedding cake to someone who has only ever seen a mars bar.”
The idea makes them laugh and then consider.
“The black sun lives for a few short minutes and your brain is pushed out of its comfort zone. The sun never looks like this, for your entire life it has always done the same thing every day. Sunrises and sunsets change, the length of the day changes and even the colour of the sun can change. But it doesn’t turn black in the middle of the day”. I’m lost in my passion again.
“Totality taunts you with the failure of your expectation of consistency. Nothing is permanent, everything changes. Even the sun is an exception to its own rules”.
I stop talking and let the view absorb me for a while as the girls chat.

Ayuna suddenly says its time to go and the group follows wordlessly down the hill.

The peak in Victory Park

Russian Party Action with the local Couchsurfers

2009-11-06T16:31:00.008+08:00

Russian Beery Goodness.

I’m early for tonight’s couchsurfing meetup, so I distract myself within the inevitable cluster of pavement shops around the station exit. I find one that not only has beer on tap, but they will sell it to me in large plastic bottles or even a half litre cup. I’m forced to buy a cup of невское (Nevskoy), a beer from St Petersburg to see if it’s any good. It is, especially on a sunny day. I then spend the next fifteen minutes trying to identify people who look like a group of Couchsurfers. This is a constant problem and a funny idea; there is no standard Couchsurfer. We come from all walks of life, ages and attitudes; but all share the love of travel and the experiences that come with it. I can’t see any likely looking group and send messages to the meeting organiser, Max, and Nikolai (who helped me with my train ticket), to see if they can help me. I receive calls from both of them and shortly discover that neither of them can understand me very well over the phone so we can’t figure out what is going on. I find myself crossing between the two Metro exits for the station wondering if I’m going to be able to find anyone. It’s with immense relief that I finally recognise Max from his picture on the website and I call out his name to check. He turns towards me and smiles, starting my first amazing night with the Russians.

In the meetup group there’s a French girl, a Swiss guy, two Kazakhstani girls and the other eight or so people are Russian and mostly from Moscow. Now that we’re all together, we collect supplies (beer and picnic food) and then walk through a massive park that starts next to the train station to find our spot. It turns out to be by a man made lake with an island in the middle filled with bird life. This makes watching the sunset even more beautiful. The circus tent setup on the other edge of the lake pumping out crazy hits of the seventies certainly adds a certain je ne sais quoi. The Kazakhstani girls are pretty well Moscow locals now and they’re more interested in whether I have any Australian money with me than anything else. I still have the fifteen dollars that I left the country with and happily give out the five and ten dollar notes. They, like everyone else, are amazed that it’s made of plastic and looks like monopoly money. For a moment they think I’m playing some kind of joke. I also give them some coins, which are also passed around everyone to have a look at our Australian money and the crazy animals we have on it.

The Russians however, cause me consternation by knowing only one other thing about Australia. It’s somewhere near this amazing paradise, a utopia they call New Zealand.
“Have there been some Kiwis…err…people from New Zealand visiting here this week or something?” I ask in bewilderment.
“No, no….we just always knew about New Zealand”, ventures Olya.
“So what exactly do you think is so perfect about New Zealand?”
“It’s warm all the time, it doesn’t rain or snow too much, the weather is so good…everyone owns a tractor and has their own farm…it’s really safe…and there’s plenty of jobs for everyone”
So this is Russian utopia.
“You’ve described Australia better than New Zealand, except the tractor part, that’s not even true in New Zealand.”
“Oh no, I’ve been talking to a guy from New Zealand on email and he told me everything”, she says defiantly.
I smile and appreciate the Kiwi’s effort.
“He just loves his country and wants you to visit. So do I for that matter, but after you go there, you should visit Australia and discover the true paradise”, I say.
“New Zealand is not known for good weather or being warm, more for fantastically beautiful and mountainous countryside…oh and adventure sports. You’re saying ‘New Zealand’ and describing Australia.”
“Maybe, I don’t really know, but you’re Australian, of course you like your country more, you’re just saying that.”
“New Zealand is largely further south than Australia and suffers from Antarctic weather much more. A poorer economy means that half the people from New Zealand now live in Australia.”

She’s unconvinced, as are they all. This belief in the New Zealand utopia seems to be held deeply and completely. My views are absolutely baffling to most of them, so I invite them to go look it all up on the internet and see for themselves. After all, it is a beautiful country to visit. The hours evaporate with laughter as we all drink more beer and share stories. The sun finally sets some time around eleven. This is the cue for about half the people to start moving to catch their trains home, the last Metro is at one, so you have to start moving if you need to cross the city.

The plan had always been to move to Max’s apartment after the park, but I didn’t quite realise that would be around midnight, but go along with it anyway. The group of us wander around a small supermarket in pairs and groups acquiring more beer and snacks. We land back in Max’s apartment and the festivities continue. Nikolai is telling me about his job doing scientific demonstrations for children. We end up discussing the fun I’ve had making hydrogen from household ingredients and then exploding it in various ways. I promise to email him the recipe. This leads me to realise it’s now after one and I have no idea how I will get home. Nikolai says I can just couchsurf his place that night when we decide to leave. I send a message to Victoria who responds straight away saying it’s fine and to have a great time.

Olya and Max in a shirt made for two

I’m feeling very warm and happy, filled with nice beer and surrounded by good people. I’m most amazed how natural it feels to be in this apartment surrounded by Russians and feeling completely at home. After growing up with so many impressions of what the country and people must be like, it comes as a small revelation that they’re just like me; only speaking another language. I think the singing begins when Max puts on a bunch of Queen songs and starts joining in. Nikolai sings during a few songs and I lend my voice too. This results in me singing a few more songs by myself and having Max ask me to quiet down; my voice is very loud when I get carried away. Well, I did study it at University and have been known to break out into opera at inappropriate moments.
“Do one more proper opera song”, Tania, one of the locals, implores me.
“Well, I have one that’s both short, beautiful and not so loud”.
So it is that I sing Lasciatemi Morire in Russia for the first time. It means “You leave me to die”. This is the song I will sing during the Totality. My own offering made at the end of my pilgrimage to see the dark sun.

Nikolai Twinkletoes at work.

They love it and want more, but I promised to stop so, I grab another beer before heading to the balcony to talk to the smokers for a while. Irina then brews up some homemade Irish cream for everyone, which disappears quickly. Even Hanspeter, the Dutch guy, makes a break from his vodka consumption for it. This is also a strange moment of realisation for me, the only person drinking vodka isn’t Russian.
“So why aren’t we all drinking vodka?” I ask generally.
“Plenty of Russians don’t really drink it away from special occasions”, Nikolai advises me. One of the locals decides she wants to dance and the dance floor is created in an instant. The guys who know how to, take turns dancing different styles with her and a couple of the other girls. So for the rest of the night we groove around the salsa, waltz and swing dancers keeping the party moving in the middle of the small loungeroom. I find myself spending time on the balcony smoking the odd cigarette with the people there and staring out into the city. The night view is beautiful. It’s of all the nearby apartment blocks giving way to the general city and is of a kind I can’t say I’ve seen before. We trade stories of travel and dreams until the sky lightens with the first touch of dawn’s light.

Suddenly it’s five o’clock Wednesday morning and Nikolai and I aim to waft into the street to find a taxi of some sort. Well, we do eventually make it out after many fond goodbyes, final dances and final drinks. It’s around ten degrees at this time of night, after being in the low twenties during the day. Finding a taxi is a curious process which involves flagging down some random man who’s driving past and asking him to drive us to Nikolai’s house. Apparently this is quite normal here. For three hundred roubles (AUD$15) we get home safely in the hands of a complete stranger. Which leads me to mention the glory of the Russian people’s taxi service.

Every car in Russia is a potential taxi. This is one of my favourite elements of Russian culture. On the one hand I need a ride and will pay for the service, on the other I will trust in a complete stranger to safely deliver me home in the middle of the night, or anytime really. I now have more faith in the Russian people’s taxi service than any business with the same role. The longest we ever wait for a car in any city is five minutes. That’s for a long trip with two dropoff points and we only have to ask three drivers before we find one who’s willing to do it. I have never found a business capable of delivering nearly this level of convenience. You also get to chat with an average person living their daily life, not someone who has been on duty for ten hours already and will be doing this six days a week.

Nikolai shows me a bed and one quick shower later finds me drifting off into a happy reverie.

First Couchsurfing in Russia

2009-11-04T19:08:00.000+08:00

I’ve been walking for just ten minutes dragging my suitcase through the streets of Moscow and already I’m lost. I printed out the directions Victoria gave me to find her apartment building, but correlating the map and the reality before me seems impossible.

I think I’m on Victoria’s street, I’ve tried to follow her directions about archways and building numbers and after another ten minutes of walking around the area not being sure what building I’m in front of, I have to call her. Russian apartment buildings have a strange logic of their own, which is worse since I’m not used to navigating within any kind of large apartment building development. Like most Australians, I’ve always lived in houses or small blocks of flats. These arrangements of huge rectangular monoliths, dropped on the landscape like Tetris bricks, baffle me. I can’t say there was ever a clear development strategy for their placement and since Tetris was written by a Russian, perhaps it was originally designed to assist with this process. In any case, it takes another few minutes on the phone to establish that I am close to her apartment block, but on the wrong side of it and at the next building. This being rectified, I see her waving at me from her balcony a minute later.

Russian apartments are deceptive creatures. I think the maintenance schedule on them finished at some point twenty or thirty years ago, so it’s normal for them to look incredibly run down. The elevators are genuine seventies (or maybe earlier) technology, with hard buttons that stay in and pop out when you reach the floor. I often find myself saying a quiet prayer whilst moving in them and sometimes take the stairs down for…ummm…the exercise. Victoria is standing in her doorway with her huge smile warming the whole building. She closes the vast and heavy outer door behind me and turns the deadlock closed. This is always where the outside of the buildings, right up to the apartment doorway, give way to a routinely lovely interior. It’s quite normal for every outer door to be different or customised in some way; it’s the first taste you have of the personalities living within. Victoria shares the two bedroom apartment with another woman and ushers me first into her bedroom to leave my suitcase and then to the kitchen for some tea. The Russians have a permanent affair with this drink; it’s everywhere. She tells me she has a student coming soon and it’s quite normal for them to be in and out all day. Sometimes she meets them somewhere else too, so I will have to check with her to find when I can get back into the apartment later.
“I’m just planning to be out wandering in the city again today. Is there anything else you think I should check out?”
“The Novedevichy Convent has the most beautiful cathedral, you have to see it! The graveyard next door is interesting too, but the convent is wonderful.”
The way she looks when she speaks about the convent tells me I absolutely have to visit. The graveyard next to the Convent is the resting place of more famous Russians than you could poke a tree at whilst suffering some kind of spasmodic fit and I already plan to visit Boris Yeltsin’s grave there.
“Oh and I should warn you about Russian beers too”, she continues.
I look up with absolute interest, exploring the beers here is definitely on my agenda.
“You can get the European ones you already know, but they’re all made inside Russia and they’re all terrible. The only good ones are the real Russian beers like Baltika and Nevskoy.”
I nod sagely and try to commit everything to memory. Well the bit about staying off European beers anyway, this aligns perfect with my evil plans for Russian beery mayhem.

As Victoria starts to become absorbed in her laptop and work, I move back to her bedroom to sort out my suitcase and sleeping gear. She has laid out a thin foam mattress with blankets and a sheet. I’ve also brought a compact air mattress, not the self-inflating foam type; a real one with long tubes that fill with air to lift you about three centimetres off the floor. It rolls down to the same size as the compact, ultra-thin sleeping bag I brought to match it, so I put all that together to form a very comfortable corner of her room. As I prepare my small backpack for a day of wandering, I remember she has a plate of chocolate biscuits on her kitchen table. In the interests of spreading a little Australian culture I happen to have packets of Tim Tams with me to share the joy of a Tim Tam Slam with my hosts. This is when you bite off diagonally opposite corners and use the resulting creation as a straw in a cup of hot coffee. The result is the coffee melts the inside of the biscuit, giving you a few seconds from the moment you feel the coffee reach your lips, to when you must place the whole biscuit in your mouth and luxuriate in a foodgasm. The chocolate shell of the biscuit only lasts a short time after the rest has dissolved, so if you’re too slow it will cover your hands in sticky, chocolatey napalm. The molten coffee, chocolate, sugar and wafers create an altogether addictive experience. So I explain all this to Victoria as I hand her a packet to try it with. I also find myself picking up a glass to fill with water from the tap before stopping myself again.
“Can you drink this water?” I ask, pointing to the tap.
“No. Not at all. You must boil that first, you can’t drink the water in any Russian city.” Thus informed, I put down the glass and resolve to buy more bottled water when I’m out during the day.
“There’s a bottle in the fridge if you want some now”, Victoria adds.
“Thanks! Are you coming along to the Couchsurfing meetup tonight?” I ask hopefully while drinking a glass.
“I won’t be able to make it, but you should definitely go and meet more of the local guys”
“When should I be back here?”
“It doesn’t matter, really. You can be out until all hours, just give me a quick ring and I’ll let you back in the apartment when you want”. I feel a little surprised and happy, she had written this on her profile on the website, but it’s always good to hear it. I’m especially glad she’s happy with the kind of random wanderings I specialise in.
“Wow! Thanks for that, but I should be back before midnight I think. When does the Metro close?”
“Midnight’s fine, I’m normally awake past then anyway. Last trains are around one in the morning.”
“Thanks again, I’m so happy you’re relaxed about it.”
“Don’t worry, I know what it’s like to travel, you never quite know what’s going to happen and I like to party all night sometimes too! …but on Saturday morning the cleaner comes and you’ll have to be out of here for a few hours starting at ten.”
“No worries, I’ll catch you tonight!”
“I hope you enjoy Moscow!”

After watching Victoria’s lips during the conversation I begin my fascination with how russians speak. They have the most amazingly agile lips. This provides a curious juxtaposition of happy activity within a usually stern, dour face.
She breaks the standard russian look with her smile and waves me goodbye with her free hand, the other still holding the cup of tea. With her words and smile in my head I wander into the warm streets. I’m feeling the sun on my back again and wondering if anyone will believe it’s hot enough for me to be working up a sweat just walking through the Russian capital.

The Moskva River

2009-11-02T13:19:00.000+08:00

I wake up with the domes of St Basil’s Cathedral on my mind and decide I’d better go back and see the inside. Outside the day is warm and sunny, so I decide that the best way to get there is on a boat. I start walking to the nearby river where my guide says I can catch one, but I’m not ready for the impact the russian foreign ministry building has on me. It is one of seven Stalinist gothic wedding cake buildings here in sunny Moscow. They are apparently known as the seven sisters and must have been built during one of Stalin’s lowest moments of self esteem, since they are intense, massive, imposing and entirely unforgettable. They are all similar, but this one did something to me every time I came close to it. I have a vague memory it was used as the building front in the film 'Brazil', the really imposing horror story public service building. Seriously, it looks like it should be hanging around in a dark alley sporting a golden tooth and twirling a club. A feeling of menace exudes from it, the building sinks your spirits just walking past it. It’s like hope went there to be tortured to death by fear and paranoia. Even the ex-KGB headquarters doesn’t have this kind of feeling about it. Which isn’t to say that the ex-HQ on Lubyanka square doesn’t have its own horror. It has a terrible calm about it, like a black hole you disappear into without a trace and no scream could ever emerge. It’s just that the foreign ministry building would knock at your door in the middle of the night and shoot you in the stomach for fun.

The ferry jetty is easy to find and for a fee I can spend an hour and a half on a cruiser drifting along the Moskva River through the middle of Moscow. What I don’t appreciate at first is that I can also buy a beer onboard and just kick back to let the city drift past me. After all the walking in my first two days, this is perfection. I’m amused to find they don’t actually stock any Russian beers on the boat, so I end up enjoying some fine products of the Czech Republic instead. As I relax on the upper deck I watch industrial buildings give way to beautiful parkland and one beer give way to the next. I pass Gorky Park without a care in the world, or any real desire to actually visit it; I am happy to enjoy a relaxing afternoon letting Moscow flow gently by. Sparrow Hills arrives all too quickly and I decide to leave the ferry and climb the hill. Victoria had mentioned how beautiful the the view is on a sunny day. I pass by the ski ramp that’s setup next to the jetty. Apparently in winter this is a huge attraction, but in summer it looks as out of place as fur hats on an Australian beach. On the way up the hill I walk through the very beautiful ecological gardens. The pathways lead you through verdant forest replete with lush undergrowth and flower patches. The bright, warm sunlight trickles through the forest canopy to cover the ground with gently moving speckled patches of golden warmth. I feel like I’m in some kind of European fairy tale and would not have been surprised to see a little girl wearing a red hood skipping down the pathway with a basket of goodies for her grandmother. I wonder what kind of wolves would await her in a Russian forest and start picturing the foreign ministry building wearing a fur coat.

I see the gothic wedding cake building of the Moscow State University building perched atop the hill in all its monolithic glory. I begin to wonder if some modern architect would design a building that looked like this, but with huge statues of a man in a tuxedo and a woman in her wedding gown on top of it and a giant slice cut out of it. Now that’d be real art-chitecture. Naturally there’s a nest of pavement shops around the Sparrow Hills lookout and there’s even a bride and groom having their pictures taken with the view of Moscow in the background. It really is a spectacular view of the city itself, with the river in the foreground, the stadium across the water and the rest of the city stretching into the distance. I quietly thank Victoria for inspiring me to be up here on such a great day.

I eventually descend the hill again and get back on the ferry, which I have to pay for again. Apparently you can ride it all the way to the end of it’s path or get off at one of the many stops along the way, but the ticket works only once. I enjoy floating past the scenery and notice a tall building that looks like a flying saucer has landed on its roof. We pass by it and I take photos of it with the building in front of it that has a giant treble clef mounted on its domed roof. This must just be the area for cool roof ornaments; every building should have one. I then spend the rest of the ferry trip taking more pictures of Moscow in this wonderful afternoon light. There’s enough cloud cover to stop it from being overwhelming, but it has such a crisp, clear quality that everything seems somehow more sharply real. The golden spires of the Christ the Redeemer cathedral positively glow golden and white in a city of brown and smudged. I can’t say I’m in any way prepared for the most shockingly overdone statue of Peter the Great I think could ever have been conceived. I suppose Moscow just wants a piece of the Peter story and history as well, but….I mean....having a rostral column with the boat prows sticking out of it would have been enough...they have two of them in St Petersburg being lighthouses....but then they stick an enormous boat on top of it...with an even more enormous statue of Pete himself the size of the frickin mast...and there's a city at his feet...on the boat.....okay, they're trying to summarize the magnificent career of this crazy epileptic that shaped modern Russia more than any other individual...but the effect of it is almost comical ...So anyway, after I take a few hundred pictures of it, we move on down the river and finally float past the Kremlin. I see a glimpse of St Basil's from the river side before jumping off the boat to find my way inside..

The cathedral is a glorious building with many beautiful frescoes and the central room is especially hard to leave. A male voice choir is in attendance and they are singing seriously beautiful Russian hymns. Hearing their voices in this room gives me a musicgasm as I become absorbed into the resonant richness that at once calms and lifts you on its gentle persistence. Each time they finish a song nobody moves or makes a noise until one of the singers breaks the spell first The music leaves me feeling serene and blissful; calm as a hindu cow. I make a visit to the souvenir shops carefully placed at every possible corner inside the building and completely fail to find some souvenirs of the single towers turned into ice-creams, back scratchers, massagers and ummm….delicate massagers. As I wander back into Red Square I feel that the view of the onion domes from the outside is truly matched by the art and music on the inside; it really is damn good even though everybody says it is.

The Moscow Metro and the Russian ticket window women

2009-10-31T15:25:00.000+08:00

Victoria had told me about Novoslobodskaya Metro station, her favourite of all of these works of indulgent art and wealth; created by Stalin to show how prosperous and happy communist Russia was. So the only issue with my plan to visit a bunch of the more opulent ones is navigating the metro system itself. Acquiring some Metro tokens is no real problem; holding up ten fingers gets you the ten trip pass. The real challenge for anyone who doesn’t read Russian is to find where you’re going. If you can’t read Cyrillic letters at the very least, you are doomed to spend a phenomenal amount of time lost and confused, hoping that someone passing by will speak English and help you. Or worse, you are condemned to spend your time following around tour guides getting the diluted official version of the place. Thankfully my preparation worked fantastically (for once) and I found the whole Metro system incredibly cheap, efficient and easy to use.

Entering any station you notice at the bottom of every escalator that there is a middle aged woman sitting in a tiny booth looking eternally up the moving stairs. I’m not entirely sure why they are there, perhaps to take action if something breaks or watch for people causing trouble. However, I think this must be one of the most demoralising and soul destroying jobs I’ve ever encountered. They don’t even get to talk to anyone, just sit staring at the escalators as everybody else moves past them, leaving them as a little island of loneliness in the city.

Novoslobodskaya Metro 'Dude, we can really put the O in Moscow now'

In any case, there is no way anyone can do justice to the Moscow Metro stations in words. I had seen pictures of them before, which prompted my afternoon’s plans, but in real life they are much more overwhelmingly sumptuous. I feel like I’ve accidentally stumbled into someone’s mansion and I keep expecting a butler to appear and usher me quietly outside lest the police become involved. Novoslobodskaya isn’t at the top of the list in every guidebook; but it should be. I have to agree with Victoria, the stained glass windows give it a different and nicer feel to the other more famous stations. Visiting Moscow without spending an afternoon exploring these glorious stations would be like visiting Egypt and not bothering to see the pyramids.

On leaving Kievskaya station I decide I should try to acquire my ticket to get to St Petersburg next week. Victoria had told me about a business centre where they spoke English and written down what I wanted in Russian for me. However, there is nothing you can do that will prepare you for your journey into the world of the Russian train ticket window women. The ticket windows are manned solely by disinterested middle aged women who clearly feel that talking to people who want tickets is something akin to removing leeches from their groinal region. It’s something you have to do for your own good, but the experience is largely distasteful and slightly painful. It takes twenty minutes of essentially circling the buildings and diving into every door to finally find the ‘Бизнес центр’ (business centre) sign, tucked away to the left of one of the entrances. The queue is short, only a few people. Filled with optimism I approach the counter and ask, in Russian, if she speaks English. She simply replies ‘Nyet’. I ask if anyone speaks English, looking at the other women serving and receive another emphatic ‘Nyet’. She looks at me like I’m a particularly troublesome leech she can’t quite disengage from feeding on her valuable blood. I begin to wonder if the training for this job largely involves standing in one of those booths at the bottom of the escalators for twenty years; building up the kind of hateful resentment required to provide the correct service level. I show her the note that Victoria had written for me. I point at the sentence saying ‘Mozhna’, which means ‘Can I?” or “Is it possible?”. She looks at it and then gives me an exasperated look putting her hands in the air and rolling her eyes. I say goodbye and wander towards an information desk I’d seen that had English signs on it.

Whilst the two men there are trying to be as helpful as they can, the older man speaks no English and the younger man speaks about as much English as I speak Russian. So we establish we’re all fine, it’s a sunny day and Moscow is a beautiful city. I then ask, in English,
“Is there anyone here that speaks English to help me buy a ticket?” After finally understanding the question, he shakes his head and says, in Russian,
“I don’t know”. I stare at him, the floor, the wall and the ceiling for a minute before bidding him farewell and wander into the general purpose ticket window area. Perhaps one of the women here will speak English for some reason and I just have to find the right window. I stand in the middle of the area for a while looking at all the windows trying to decide who looks the most like they speak English, before realising this is another exercise in pointlessness. If the women in the business centre don’t speak any English, why would someone in the normal windows be any different?

So with this in mind, I start walking up to friendly looking strangers and ask, in Russian, if they speak any English. I have no idea how many people I ask that question, but it becomes a strange game for me. I start picking people based on the colour of their shoes. Then I only choose young people for a while, then only old people. Then I start choosing young, beautiful Russian women and realise I’m getting distracted from the task at hand. I check the time and discover I’ve just spent an hour in one of Moscow’s busiest Metro stations without making a single step of progress to acquiring a ticket. I need a new strategy. I realise I have an ace up my sleeve, so I send an SMS to another local couchsurfer I’ve been talking to online begging him for help. Nikolai calls me back with laughter in his voice asking me,
“Are you seriously trying to deal with the ticket window women in a station?”
“Well, I thought I’d make some attempt. I’ve got the train I want written down in Russian on a piece of paper here.”
“They are bad enough when you’re Russian!! Real Soviet days service from the women who have done only this job their whole life. I will be near Red Square at five. Come and meet me there at the statue of the guy on horseback and I’ll arrange it for you”.
I already know that statue, so I thank him profusely and vow to buy him some drinks at the earliest possible occasion.
“You know there’s a Couchsurfing meetup at Krisis Zhanre on Friday night? ..it’s a live music bar the local Couchsurfers are normally visit then”, he tells me.
“Yar, I saw that on the forum, I’ll definitely be there!...and see you soon”, I reply happily. When I meet him he manages in a few minutes with a couple of questions what I couldn’t manage in one frustrating hour. He does take me to an agent in the street rather than a window in a train station. Apparently this is the trick to avoid queues and get better service. I hand over my passport details and money to the ticket woman and the deal is done.

I meander my way slowly back to my hotel, wondering if the Trans-Siberian train tickets have arrived; I told the agency to send all of them to my hotel today. I, and my two friends who will join me in St Petersburg, all ordered them online to guarantee we get the trains we want during the very busy summer season. As I approach the counter I feel the first pangs of worry as they search and discover that the tickets are conspicuously absent from the hotel. I immediately jump on the closest computer and send an email asking the agency what they’re doing. We still have almost two weeks before we actually need them, but I start trying to think what I’ll say to my friends….
“Yeah funny thing about the tickets….you know how we spent all that money to get them in advance to guarantee seats? Well it turns out the guy has no address and doesn’t feel like giving us any tickets….or our money….no please put down the knife, I’m still going to need my kidneys…oh really? You can sell one? Okay then…take the left one, I never liked it as much”.
I return to my room and watch Russian pop music for a while before I turn it off and slide into an uneasy sleep filled with dreams of kidneys competing for prizes on a reality TV show.

First impressions in Moscow...

2009-10-30T22:23:00.000+08:00

“I’ll meet you at the big cow outside Moo-Moo”, Victoria tells me over the phone.
I amble my way back to the bovine statue and it makes me smile again. She will be my first couchsurfing host in Russia, but that will happen in a few days. Today she has volunteered to show me some of the city. I don’t know how to best describe the bundle of focussed energy we call Victoria. Beautiful Eurasian looks, black hair and a cheeky smile is a good start.
“Welcome to Russia!” she exclaims happily. She has a wonderful Russian accent on her flawless English and a vibrant energy that never dulls. I think if she wasn’t doing something at any given moment it’s possible her heart would stop; which would be a terrible waste of such a warm one.
“What do you have in mind for today?”, she asks brightly.
“I’ve just been wandering in Arbat, drinking in the feeling of the streets, the people, the signs, the smells of the city….”
I look around me again slowly; absorbing the place.
“Okay, Davai davai”, she exclaims, then walks off along the paved street.
‘Davai’ generally means ‘let’s go’ and is a great word to motivate people to move.
“We’ll walk this way and I’ll show you some of the good places.”
We start walking and almost immediately she points out a small stand on the side of the street that looks like its selling beer from a single tap.
“Have you had kvas yet?”
“Oh no…I’ve read about it..is it like beer?”
“Not really and not much alcohol in it at all, it’s sweeter. You should get some later”, she advises as we walk towards the centre of the city.

She leads me past a small pavement shop that has a huge sign promising audio and video goods, but is actually selling hotdogs and chips. I smile and notice more fully the ever present small shops on the pavements of most streets. They are effectively self contained rooms the size of a small caravan with a tiny window in one side for the occupant to sell a variety of products to anyone passing by. Normally it’s all about snack food and soft drinks, beer and cigarettes. So when you need a beer to carry you through a long walk, or a lemonade to brighten your morning, you only have to stop for a moment.

On the way to Red Square we pass a gold hypermarket that a number of spruikers are advertising and she points at it with disdain.
“It is cheap, but not very good and not much gold in anything.”
We walk alongside the wall of the Kremlin for a while and then through Alexander Gardens.
“When they first planted out huge flower gardens like these around Moscow in the nineties, everyone picked them all on a nightly basis. Nobody expected they would stay for long, so they made the most of it. It took years and a lot of guards before people left them alone.”
We round a corner past a huge statue of some guy on a horse to be greeted by the twin towers of the resurrection gate to Red Square. There is a huge bronze disc on the ground that Victoria says marks the zero point of the Russian highway system. There are people standing in the middle of it throwing coins behind them.
“If you stand there and throw come coins away behind you while you make a wish it will come true”, she advises me.
The gates house the Iberian chapel and an important Russian Orthodox religious icon within it. It is this icon that holds the wish-granting power. I look at the long line of people all waiting for their chance to be in the centre of the disc and decide I’m not very interested in queuing, so we pass through the gateway arches and into Red Square.

It is a vast, open expanse of ancient cobblestoned parade ground, punctuated around its edges by iconic Russian buildings. We’re strolling past Lenin’s tomb, then looking at the ГУМ (pronounced ‘goom’) department store and checking the time in the clock face of the Saviour’s tower as we walk down one side of the Kremlin walls towards the amazingly colourful and exuberant onion domes of St Basil’s cathedral. It is a showcase and museum of Russian history and architecture. A part of Moscow life for five hundred years, it has hosted markets and celebrations, witnessed invasions and reclamations and been the location of official pronouncements of the Tsars and soviet officials. Russia’s first public library and university had their homes around this square and the Great Patriotic War (World War Two) started and finished here for Russia with a military parade. My previous memories and experience of this spot mostly involve seeing video of the May 9th Victory Day military parades. These are the ones featuring a vast array of military posturing overseen by dour looking officials in thick coats and furry hats. This is probably why my first reaction to the place is,
“Hmmm…I was expecting something bigger”.

Transcending the initial disappointment of a child’s impressions melting away doesn’t take long. I’m also completely failing to listen properly to Victoria’s calm voice telling me about the place. The domes of St Basil’s really have me captured now. The rainbow of colours across the domes has always struck me as pointlessly excessive in exactly the way I love. Seeing them first hand makes me smile like a little boy given his first crayons. However, what I had never appreciated so much before is the different textures of the domes. Each one has its own style and running your eyes across them feels like a strange kind of massage. I find myself following the spiral swirl of the green and gold one thinking it would make a great brand of Australian soft serve ice-cream. The green and red one with raised pyramids across its surface would make a phenomenal back scratcher, whilst the raised yellow diamonds between the green lines of another would make a great massage tool. Perhaps the blue and white smooth curved one in the middle could be fitted with a small motor and used by lonely Russian women to provide happiness during the long winter nights.

St Basil's Home entertainment centre

She leads me into ГУМ with a warm smile, saying we have to look at this one shop. The interior of the section we’re in is laid out like a series of market stalls. She leads me to one of the stands, at the corner of which are large conical glass containers, suspended in the air by metal stands and filled with fruit juice.
“One of my strongest and happiest memories of childhood was coming to shops like this with my mother, getting a glass of juice and then moving on through the day. It wasn’t an opportunity to stop, just a brief pause for refreshment whilst passing through”, she explains.
Then she pauses to look at me quizzically, wondering if I’m really listening. I think I’m still largely absorbing this curious new world.
“How do I get a glass?...and what kinds are there? Do you want one?”, I ask, suddenly wanting to share that experience.
“No, I’m fine but you should get one”.
She darts over to another counter to buy a ticket from a bored looking girl standing there. She returns and soon another bored girl is pouring a paper cup of this sweet blackberry syrup for my delectation. It is indeed, cold, sweet and refreshing and makes an interesting counterpoint to the coffee shop we arrive at a few minutes later.

My first real test on reading a Russian menu is a rollercoaster ride of comprehension. I can understand the choice of coffee on offer as most are the same Italian words we use in English, but spelled with Russian letters. However, I can’t make the word for cappuccino appear before me and ask her,
“Is there cappuccino here?”
She frowns and points to it.
“Do you need everything translated?”
The moment she points at it, I read it perfectly and wonder how I missed it. I explain how I spent eight months beating my head against the wall of the Russian language and had got as far as reading newspaper articles with the heavy assistance of a dictionary and some grammar notes – and a lot of time. She works teaching English and Russian to private students, so understands me well.

We drift out and back towards Arbatskaya, then stop suddenly in the street as she points up to a second floor balcony that is filled with classic bird nest boxes. Apparently the owner is a bit of a Moscow icon for having these pigeon boxes, each one hand painted with small dots. An old man sits calmly on a milk crate on the balcony with his side to the street and glances down at us briefly. I leave Victoria near where we met at the crazy cow and wonder how to best engage the Russian capital.

Welcome to Moscow

2009-10-26T17:33:00.000+08:00

I walk into a mobile phone store to get myself a Russian SIM card and someone asks me what I want, in Russian. I suddenly understand how different written and spoken language truly is; all the time I’ve spent learning written Russian is useless now. Maybe I'm tired, I just spent forty hours awake getting here from Australia, but even then I know that I never really practised speaking and feel like a complete idiot. I fall back to asking in English for a SIM card and the guy turns to the woman working next to him to see if she would like this customer. We have a faltering three-way conversation during which I manage to sign away my life with my passport number to acquire a card that I’m assured will work in every city I’m going to visit across Russia. As I’m leaving the shop to return to my meanderings on Old Arbat street here in central Moscow, I become aware that something is terribly wrong.

In Russian, that's pronounced 'Moo Moo'

This is a franchise Russian fast food joint.

My experiment back at my hotel on combining Russian, English and continental brekafasts is causing political turmoil in my stomach. I think the continental breakfast has surrendered, but thrown in a processed meat hand grenade for the rest to deal with. This probably doesn't mix well with the sausage and egg English assault who are negotiating with the Russian blini for the return of the cheese it's sheltering. None of this is going back the way it came in though. No, some dissident bacon has opened the back door and is determined to lead a revolt. I know I have about five minutes to find a toilet or suffer terribly. My hotel is still fairly close, and I decide that making it back there is the best option. Why I don’t just head into McDonalds, I don’t know; but it does always feel like entering a temple to the worst kind of soul destroying denizen from the nine hells.

I do, however, make it back to my room just in time and I’m greatly relieved. I return much more happily to my wanderings up Old Arbat street. I notice a sign that looks like a snake drinking a martini. For a moment I think they must have some wild club inside that serves wildlife oriented cocktails. Maybe they have shows involving women and snakes and a drunken pig in a fishtank underneath the bar. Perhaps for a fee you can get photos with the pig.. or the women...maybe both, who can tell what these crazy Russians are into. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I read the Russian writing next to it to reveal it’s just a pharmacy. If you visit Moscow and find that club with the fishtank, by the way, please let me know where it is so I can visit and claim my free drinks for the idea.

I would like a fishtank for my pig please.