Moscow at last
only three days on a train so far.
| GLocation: 55.756172,37.614312 |
well, moskva at last!
it's been one heck of a mission so far. the hardest being getting around this city. in the underground, the people move around in a direct purposeful way, in the same way they do in London. however, the western European tourists stand out by a mile, as they stand in the middle of the people torrents and try to decipher the signs. and we've had to be the same!
but, back to the beginning: the trip from Wimbledon to Waterloo was fairly uneventful, and so was the ride from Waterloo to Brussels. Bruxelles-midi station was it's usual drab self - needless to say, unchanged from when i used to go through there to get to maastricht.
the highlight of the stretch from from Brussels to cologne was the adennes (also incidentally the most geologically varied - who'd have thought, Belgium geologically varied); they were lovely green rolling hills - and very lush to boot. got to savour the Jupiler beer too along the way.
Cologne would have been nice, the cathedral is predictable stunning, except that we opted for a meal at a traditional looking restaurant which took ages to arrive. in the end, we only just made it - we got onto to the platform as the train arrived. that was some stress we didn't need.
as we got on to the train, we spotted a kiwi bloke travelling alone - he looked very glad to see us. turns out he was squeezed into a carriage with Vladimir and Irina - an older Russian couple on their way to see Paris - who couldn't speak a word of English. so we kept Jonathan, ie the kiwi, company for a lot of the trip.
Like us, Jonathan didn't realise that they don't have a dining car; all the from Kohln to Moscow. So he didn't have enough water, and all we had were snacks (which we'd fortunately bought too much of in Kohln). So, for the last three days, we've been living off crisps, chorizo, and the odd beer. Thereby arriving in Moscow dehydrated and undernourished. We're trying to get decent food at the moment (we're in a shopping centre under Red Square at the moment) but the price of things here easily compares to London. in other words, we're still eating junk. Oh yes, and we managed to buy 'mineral' water from little old ladies peddling stuff (dried fish etc.) in Brest - however, it tasted like they'd scooped the stuff out of a pond somewhere just NW of Chernobyl, and allowed it to mature in old oil barrels.
Getting back to the geology of the trip, or the lack there of: i missed most of Germany, cause we left in the dark. by the time we woke we were in Poland. It is an unbelievably flat country - perfect for rolling tanks into, I'd say. the monotonous country side of Poland was punctuated by a somewhat drab Warsaw. after that, we traveled through the even less impressive Belarus. Western Russia, in comparison was quite exciting, with bit's of ground that sloped so much that there were mini lakes about. I should mention though that concrete apartment blocks aside, Belarus' main city, Minsk, had some good looking buildings, if eerily empty so early in the evening.
No trip through eastern europe could be complete without a mention of border crossings. on our way out of Deutchland, we got woken up at about 1h30 by a whole bunch of customs officials storming into our compartments and checking our passports. The Polish bloke was okay, by the Stasi^H^H^H^H^HGerman man insisted on switching on all the lights. we'd already been alseep, thereby making us stand blinking and dishevelled in the compartment. Becky ran into some trouble going into Belarus- the woman (you could tell this by the multi-coloured eye shadow pasted on her eyelids) didn't think that Becky's photo looked remotely like her. anyway Becky was made to stand in the corridor with her glasses on then off, and her hair down, and then up etc. meanwhile, in my mind, i was planning Bex's release campaign when i got back in Feb. Anyhow eventually the woman seemed vaguely satisfied, and off we went for the wheel change..
the railway line gauge changes (by about 5cm) from Poland to Belarus/Russia, so we had to have a wheel change. i found this fascinating: they unclip the wheels somehow, jack up the whole train (with people inside), and then put a new set on. i took a whole lot of photos. apparently this isn't allowed, and the train workers kept shouting an waving at me. but i no speako Russian i shrugged, and took another picture. still go my camera :-]
anyway, that's all the i can remember now. will add more if i remember.
//richard (moscow)
