Sweet Moscow

... in my inner pocket. Getting onto the train was definitely an experience. Once we fought our way to the door through the packets & people, the train attendant started ushering me on, forcing me to fight my way past the other Mongolians who were rapidly throwing packets onto the train & putting them where ever possible. I passed the cabin that was meant to be ours & thrown in, closely followed by Ash, Samuel & Fabien. She locked us in, which was when we ...

After leaving Salzburg early Saturday morning we arrived at Munich Airport at 11am. We boarded our flight and landed in Russia at 7.30pm Moscow time. To tell you the truth we were scared shitless, had no idea what to expect when we walked through the doors into the streets, especially after all the stories we heard.

We we're greeted in the arrivals lounge by a representative from our hostel and his friend. One of them spoke ...

... in and a really nice sauce which was around 7 pounds or so. Moscow is not that cheap we had a beer in a bar before and a small 330ml beer cost me over 3 pounds, not that I brought it, one of the girls did for my birthday! One thing you notice about Moscow is how wide the roads are, all the main roads running through the city are 4 lane motorways and it is pretty busy. There is also quite a few drunks around with ...

... is not allowed but I just could not resist. The painting in the main cupola is so amazing I had to take a photo to share with you all. (I love my new camera, it is so quiet and takes great photos even in low light) From here, I walked across the river to the Red October Chocolate factory which sadly is no longer in operation, I would have loved to smell the chocolate cooking - Yummy!! I was hoping to make it to the ...

... and happily collected our tickets! After a well earned meal we thought that, to avoid a re-run of Warsaw we'd go on a little reconnaissance mission to the train station we'd be leaving from to go to Beijing. We got to the station, located the left-luggage lockers and that was that, we went back to the hostel, wahsed our clothes and played chess - when in Rome and all that! So that was Moscow, tonight we leave for Beijing, 9000kms and 6 nights on the train........

... Having to order another one filled me with apprehension about ever eating, but eventually we all got fed. We caught the Metro just one stop home. Smolenskaya metro station where we started was fabulous with great frescoes dating from Stalin's time. It was also incredibly deep, as the line had to go under the Moscow River, so again we went down escalators where you couldn't see the top or bottom when you were on it! We ...

... eggs (still warm), gherkins, a sugar bun and a banana. Lovely. The scenery is much of a muchness at first glance (forests and yet more forests, with a bit of steppe thrown in), but if you look closely there are a number of changes as you move West. The countryside becomes a little less wild as you leave Eastern Siberia, and you can also see the seasons change each day. In Mongolia a couple of weeks ago it was still early spring, with vivid green leaves on the ...

... try and explore old Moscow itself. We headed for the metro and got of at a stop, Kittay Gaud that should have brought us out right near the Kremlin. We didn't know what direction we should be heading in so we just got in the flow f the crowd and drifted along. This turned out to be a poor option. We ended up heading in the wrong direction, worked out we were gong in the wrong direction so tried to correct and ended up going even further away in the wrong direction. We finally arrived in ...

... I can tell was a half a dozen separate pieces around themes and classical stories of love performed to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Before each section the choreographers would, initially in stumbling prose, describe the piece before going into a very theatrical recital of a passage of verse. Being entirely in Russian I understood none of it. The performance was lively and, given the low ceiling, quite daring but the Bolshoi it ...