Day 10 continued - in Moscow

Day 10 - Moscow

The train pulled into Moscow marking the end of an epoch of our journey. As with all sincere travel, we felt a mixture of emotions: panic, arriving in a city where we can't read the Cyrillic alphabet, and don't know a single compound Russian phrase, other than "my name is billy Joel", which I recall from the video of Billy Joels Leningrad tour in the late eighties; insecurity, leaving the safe and predictable environment of our train home for the last week (cabbage, we have christened it, a cross between cabin and carriage); awkward sadness, the travelers dilemma of making acquaintances during a shared and brief journey where you can slice through the layers of personality like a paring knife through an onion, and then vanish into the metro; and, adrenalin rush of a new city, new country and a beautiful sunny day to enjoy it.

Despite the incomprehensible names, the Moscow metro lives up to expectations: clean, cheap, efficient and, other than guessing which train to get on, easy to use. Within one hour we were off the train, having thanked our Chinese attendants and donating all our spare renminbi, past the farewells to our great travel companions, through three stops on the red line (central line?) of the metro, and exploding our bags in the hotel Budapest.

We showered, such joy, then walked 15 mins to red square.

Quite awesome, incredible, what a treasure of Europe. The first step into red square is like nothing else. If you imagine walking into the centre of Venice, Prague, Paris, London and, dare I say, glasgow at the same moment in time and knocking back an espresso, stavopramen, cognac, half pint of bitter, and a wee dram, and, ignoring any feeling of nausea, the light-headedness would make you feel you were somewhere like nowhere else.

After an obligatory big-city-square-expensive-cappuccino we took the metro to gorky park, " follow .... Down to gorky park.. And wrestle with the winds, of chaaaaanngggee". Robert is much braver than me and went on a g-pulling, corkscrewing roller coaster. I looked after our bags.

More metro, then a quiet dinner and bed.




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Location:Moscow