Mockba the Magnificent!

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Trip Start May 07, 2003 Previous
Entry Trip End Sep 05, 2005 Next
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  Moscow, Russia
Monday, August 8, 2005

We left the pretty city of Irkutsk, after stocking up with shedloads of supplies at the excellent city market, on the best train on the Transiberian line - train #9 - "The Baikal". We left Baikal the lake behind on Baikal the train. This was our first Russian train, the others had been Mongolian. We had heard stories of the infamous moodyiness of the "provodnista", usually a more mature lady complete with suspect badly bleached hairstyle who looked after each carriage, normally they moaned at passengers, kept the bogs spic and span and the old boiler stoked up; indeed our Mongolian carraige mums had been very difficult. But we were infact blessed with a lovely helpful young lady who could even speak a bit of English. We shared with two more Babuskas, thankfully they turned out to be a hell of alot nicer, than the Baikal Battleaxe and woke us up in the morning with fresh tea and tasty deep fried samosa-like thingies. One of them insisted we eat all her food - "I don't need it, I'm fat enough already" - we were of-course only too happy to oblige

001 Market in Irkutsk

. Although we were sad to say goodbye to them in Novosibirisk after only 24 hours, we were overjoyed to see that we had the whole cabin to ourselves and could make it as stinky, messy and noisy as we liked.

1st day was a poor show on the vodka front, everyone was too tired and no one was in anyway feeling banterous at all, plus we had the two old babuskas in our cabin to think of. 2nd day however was a different matter entirely, with the ladies leaving us to our own devices we able to make an early start. The Californian couple, the lovely Tim and Jess, we've been with for over a week now started off proceedings with a bottle of wine and a few beers. Before long we were getting wired into the vodka and in no time had attracted other carriage dwellers, including the Ozzies from the UB-Irkutsk leg. By the end of the night I was running up and down the carraige making new friends with all sorts of people, of-course in the morning I remembered only a few of them but had the joy of unknown people coming up to me afterwards - "hey ya crazy Scotsman, how the hell are ye?"

Anyway other than that, the journey was quite uneventful, very quick with no border crossings and no problems. We travelled around 5800K's in 3 nights and four days. That's 6 timezones, I think...

002 The first in a new series...

. Who knows... it was really confusing as we travelled thru space, also thru time, what was the time? Nobody knew. We rolled thru the biggest forest in the world, the Taiga, which is the size of India and therefore only got glimpes of the countryside thru the trees which dominated our train window. This forest contains 25% of thw worlds wood reserves. We did see some massive cities, punctuated with enormous powerstation chimneys and quite what we expected of Siberian cities - terrible Soviet town planning - they installed these huge chimneys near the city centres! So, I finished a couple of books, hammered a few people at chess and ate and slept as much as I could!

Before we knew it, we arrived in Moscow. This has been the biggest surprise of my entire last 2 years. We all expected a dull, drab city, bogged down with the communist legacy. We were actually greeted with one of the most beautiful and interesting cities I've ever been in. If you don't bump into the lamposts while gazing at the incredible, unique and colourful architecture you certainly will do as the legions of Russian super-models pass you by and leave you in a slavering mess. Even the marbel clad subway system here is a piece of artwork and a historic relic in it's own right. Red Square is simply stunning, they don't call it that for nothing: most buildings are either painted red or use red bricks. The scene is dominated of-course by the otherworldly sight of the incredible St. Basils cathedral and the enormous Kremlin lying adjacent with the old man Lenin's tomb. Moscow is buzzing at this time of year, we've been enjoying blazing sunshine, 26 degree temperatures and the numerous beer gardens that seem to have been set-up round the city centre. The nightlife here is meant to be some of the best (and most expensive) in the world - who know's if the wallet can take it - eeeak!

Tomorrow, we'll be braving the guards at the Kremlin to go poke Lenin in the eye, maybe sqeeze in a river tour too. But this place is WAAAAAYYY beyond our budget, geezus it's pricey. We must leave here too: in a blur. Maybe for visiting some ancient towns round the Golden Ring, most probably to St.Petes for the weekend, then for the ferry over the Baltic from Tallinn.

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003 Simply Beautiful!	01 Oor train from Irkutsk to Mockba - the # 9	02 The lads	03 Getting some feed on the go
04 Ok stop the train, we've ran out of beer	05 Big pulling engine	06 Typical stop in Siberia	10 Red Square at dusk
11 St. Basils cathedral	12 Gate to Red Square	13 Kremlin clock tower	14 Incredible colours
15 Looking back up Red Square for sundown	16 Basil's domes	17 Partying by the fountain	18 Looking up to Basils from the Plaza
19 Horses in the fountain	20 Late night subway	21 Down to the depths	22 Ornate metro station
23 Church on RED sqaure	24 Gate to red square	25 Lenins Tomb	26 St Basils from the other side
27 Kremlin clock tower	28 Looking up into Red Square	29 St. Baz closeup	31 Wee girl by the fountain
32 Babuska Watch	33 Cathedral near Kremlin	34 Peter the Great Statue	35 Sickle
36 CCCP	37 Stalin Gulag memorial	38 Looking thru the swing to Peter	39 Peter the Great Statue
40 Cathedral in the Kremlin	41 Cathedral in the Kremlin	42 Cathedral in the Kremlin	43 Cathedral in the Kremlin
44 Cathedral in the Kremlin	45 Forty Tonne Canon	46 Forty Tonne Canon	47 A few bevs wi the Transzip crew
48 Back o Red Square at Dusk	49 Kremlin at dusk	50 Red Square by night	51 Red Square by night
52 Babushka overload!	53 Suzdal Cathedrals	54 Suzdal Cathedrals	55 Suzdal Cathedrals
56 Suzdal Cathedrals	57 Suzdal Cathedrals	58 Suzdal Cathedrals	59 Babushka watch
60 Suzdal Kremlin	61 Star spangled blue domes	62 Auld Wodden Church	63 Babushka Watch
64 Babushka watch	65 Fortress Walls	66 Babushka Watch	67 Cryllic place names
68 Sickle

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