Russia

Our trip to Russia couldn’t have gotten any worse after the most uncomfortable plane ride in history. After five sweaty, cramped, sleepless and downright miserable hours, we were pretty happy to be off the plane, and on Russian soil. Customs went smoothly, and the purchase of our train ticket into Moscow went according to plan despite our attempts to communicate in Spanish (it’s a habit we’re still trying to break). The train connected us to the impressively massive and efficient - not to mention quite nicely decorated with chandeliers and lots of marble - Moscow metro system. Without any major mishaps, we made it safely to our hostel where we dropped off our bags and set out on foot to check things out.

With a few hours to kill before check-in, we headed to Red Square which is a vast open plaza from which the rest of Moscow radiates from. After a lovely McDonald’s brunch, we took in the sights such as St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Gum department store, Lenin’s Mausoleum and the Kremlin walls. Red Square was pretty impressive, yet it was a bit strange to see such a large, barron space right in the middle of a city.

That afternoon, we checked into our hostel for the night, Godzilla’s. Despite a pretty cheesy name, and some construction chaos, it turned out to be a pretty good choice of accommodations. Especially given the price. After settling in, we went to reception to find out how to buy our train tickets to St. Petersburg where we were planning to spend a few days during that week. One of the main reasons we booked Godzilla’s was because they offer travel assistance and had assured us that they’d be able to help us get the tickets once we arrived. Normally, buying two train tickets wouldn’t be much of a problem, but with the language barriers, and crazy Cyrillic alphabet, it’s nearly impossible for a non-Russian speaker to buy them. Unfortunately, the person in charge of the travel assistance who we had been emailing with earlier that week had decided to take off to Ireland. Plan B included our receptionist writing out a very detailed description in Russian of what type of train tickets we needed which we were to hand to the ticket agent and hope that she would be a good sport about it. Back into the depths of the Moscow metro system, we made our way to Leningradskiy train station. After waiting in a few very long, disheveled lines (more on that later), we finally met with the agent and handed her our piece of paper. A few head nods, and hand signals later, we had our tickets. 

The following day was pretty leisure. We saw a few impressive churches and parks, wondered down Arbat Street, and saw Puskin Plaza. That night, we set off on an eight hour night train to St. Petersburg. The two other passengers in our four person sleeper turned out to be pretty normal (i.e. didn’t smell bad) and we were able to get a pretty good night’s sleep. The earplugs definitely came in handy though with a little bit of snoring going on from time to time.  

Arriving in St. Petersburg was like a breath of fresh air after Moscow’s tough and cold feel. St. Petersburg is built around a series of canals and is filled with beautiful palaces, monuments, churches and parks. For three days, we explored as much of the city as we could. The weather was great with blue skies, relatively warm temps, and fall was well under way with the trees showing the many different shades of Autumn. The majority of one of these great fall days was spent at Peter the Great’s massive Winter Palace, now home of the Hermitage Museum. In five hours, we hustled our way through the entire museum. There was some nice art, but the grandiose rooms of the Palace is what really impressed. Other St. Petersburg highlights were St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, Palace Square, and Peter the Great’s nicely manicured Summer Gardens.  Our accommodations, Zimmer Nice, were… nice. Clean, quiet, cheap and in a good location. 

After three great days in St. Petersburg, we regretfully returned to Moscow on another comfortable night train where we had one more day to spend filling in our Moscow tourist agenda. We tried going to the State Historical Museum (at Jim’s request), but the lack of a bag-check, and some awkward encounters with the museum staff trying to tell us they had no bag-check, kept us out in the cold. We tried to make the best of our day and explored some more of the area around the Kremlin and Red Square. Eventually though, we ended up heading back to the airport a few hours early. 

It was a surprisingly fun and challenging week in Russia and we’re pretty glad we went a bit out of our way for it. This was Haley’s second trip to Russia, and many things had changed over the past thirteen years – but also many things were surprisingly familiar.  Here are a few of our random observations / experiences from throughout the week: 

- Lots of wealth. Or, at least the appearance of. Everyone seems to be sporting designer clothes, and the LADA (old-school, boxy shaped Russian car) has been replaced with Mercedes, Lexus, Range Rover, Bentley, etc.

- Fish-net nylons and knee-high boots are the female norm.

- When having your picture taken in Russia, we noticed two options. 1) stand straight ahead facing the camera with a blank, emotionless expression, or 2) strike a pose! Never in our lives have we seen so many impromptu “photo shoots.”

- Constant military presence (more so in Moscow). Definitely weird to walk into a park and see an entire military platoon marching along, or to see groups of policeman questioning random people and looking at their documents.

- Based on our flight from Madrid to Moscow, we have concluded that Russians are serious consumers of duty free goods. We were the only two people without one carry-on bag and two duty free bags. 

- Apparently we looked like we knew what we were doing, because throughout the week Russian folks asked for directions no less than ten times. You’d think our backpacks would be a dead giveaway that we had no clue where we were or how to speak their language.

- Line etiquette takes a bit of getting used to in Russia. Instead of standing in a straight line, one behind the next, local custom indicates that you are to stand just off the right shoulder of the person in front of you. And the closer the better. This creates a line that veers sharply to the right often running into and blending with other lines. Cutting is also encouraged. We first encountered this strange phenomenon while waiting in the airport customs line. We thought people were just distracted by the provocative Ja-Rule music video playing on big screens all over the room, but this this trend continued all week.

- Meal times were stressful. Instead of trying to translate Russian menus, we often found ourselves “eating fresh” and “lovin’ it.”