Red square and beyond

The first day here, I went with a Swiss couple to see Lenin. The queue took 2 hours for a 30 second walk around the big man, but it was probably worth it. He doesn't look quite as waxy and unreal as the guide book suggested, and seems to have worn rather well for an 80 year old corpse.

I then went on a snap-happy tour of Red square
which has St Basil's Cathedral at one end. This was commisioned by Ivan the Terrible to celebrate a victory in a war (not too sure which one, but i guess it was important.) Ivan was a bit of a bastard by all accounts. One of his favourite forms of amusement was torturing and killing dogs and birds. He liked to throw dogs off the Kremlin wall. (I guess after a bit of trial and error he worked out that this wasn't going to work so well on the birds.) So if you were to walk past the Kremlin in those days whilst admiring St Basils, you may have had a startled labrador land on you.

Next day I decided it was time to pick up my train ticket, and remarkably found the place and picked it up without any hassle. Walked back through the city past Moscow University to the river, where the Church of Christ the Saviour is. This was originally built in the mid 19th Century, but Stalin decided that it was in this exact location that he wanted to build The Palace of the Soviet. This building was intended to be the major centrepiece of Communist Russia - designed to be just taller than the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building put together. However, just as they were putting the foundations in, the Nazi's came knocking on the door, so the metal was instead used to build anti-tank devices. The idea was never seriously pursued after the war, but it wasn't until 1998 that the Russian government decided to rebuild the Church exactly as it was.

At the same time, the Mayor decided to build the monument to Peter the Great - which is massive, and a love or hate thing amongst the population. I think it looks pretty sweet though.

Managed a visit to Statue park, which I was hoping would be just like that level in GoldenEye where you have to meet up with Robbie Coltrane and then get captured at the end. Disappointingly, it wasn't like that at all. However, spotting on the way home a chap dressed up in stupid clothes and clearly hating his job cheered me up no end.

Today was the first day that I managed to get properly lost. I'd decided to walk to a big park in the Northern suburbs cos it was a nice day. Only thing was, I hadn't realised that my map changed scale as it went out until it was too late. It also didn't help that they've taken down some major landmarks since the map i've got was made. All in all, it took 3 hours to get there, so after a little while wandering around, I decided it was best to take the metro home.

My train for Beijing leaves in 4 hours. I'm still at the hostel at moment, feeling a little tired and sorry for myself. There's a metro nearby that'll take me to the station i need. I just need to pop out and get supplies for the 6 day journey. The cooking appliances on board consist of boiling water, so it's going to be a whole lot of rehydrated pasta, potato and soup. I just hope I don't get a load of weirdos in my cabin. Oh yeah - I've decided that the occasion calls for a beard. It's looking awesome already.

Obviously I'm going to be out of touch for a while - it won't be until i've got a hostel in Beijing that I'll be able to start the search for an internet cafe.

One more thing: I've managed to meet Russian nobility. One of the guys staying in my hostel is French, but his family originally came from St Petersburg, fleeing during the Russian Revolution (the nobles weren't too popular at that point). Apparently there are quite a few decendants from this around France.

Anyway, that's it from me for the time being. See you in China.

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written by  olliejohnson on August 8, 2006 from Moscow, Russia
from the travel blog: A man from Cockshutt.
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