Riyad and Sarah's Travels

Moscow, Russia

Moscow was a city we could have settled in for a while.  There was so much to see, great food and nightlife, and a rich literary and cultural history.  Yet our stay was only to last two days.  Obtaining a tourist visa to Russia is an expensive, time consuming ordeal and almost impossible to do from outside of the US.  After four consecutive days visiting the Russian embassy in Mongolia, we secured a transit visa permitting us two nights in Moscow between arriving on the Trans-Siberian railway and leaving for Finland.

Having no time to spare, we stepped off our long train ride from Mongolia and picked up our normal pace to race around seeing the city.

Russia requires all visitors to register their location each night with the police (our hotel did this for us) and carry their passports with them at all times.  The militia can stop anyone at anytime to ask for identification.  I was a bit worried about police harassment – apparently this was a bigger problem a few years ago – but it turned out to be unwarranted.

Our first night was unseasonably warm for autumn; we walked around without a jacket amidst the crowds of tourists. The city came even more alive as the sun set – restaurants and cafes’ outdoor seating was full and musicians were in the streets. 

Moscow is centered on the Kremlin, the walled complex of government buildings and former head of the Orthodox Church.  To the south of the Kremlin is the Moscow River; to the east is Red Square and St. Basil’s Church.  Surrounding ring and radial roads make the city very compact and walkable. 

The triangular Kremlin is surrounded by high brick walls and twenty-one watch towers.  The palace and towers were off-limits to visitors, but we were permitted to view the national Armory containing Russian thrones, artifacts, and treasures, and inside the three historic cathedrals of Annunciation, Assumption, and Archangel.  The Bell Tower of Ivan the Great stands out as the tallest structure in the Kremlin.

Red Square still displays the embalmed body of Lenin, the first premier of the Soviet Union, despite communism’s end twenty years ago.  Having seen the bodies of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi and Chairman Mao in Beijing we of course had to see Lenin.  The procedure for visiting was similar – everyone had to pass through a metal detector without cameras and bags, but unlike the other two, there was no line to see Lenin.  The Mausoleum was empty except for the bored guards.  We had our time to gape at the body, which was in better shape than the others despite being 50 years older.

At the north end of Red Square is St. Basil’s Cathedral, completed in the sixteenth century on the order of Ivan the Terrible to celebrate Russian military victories.  Its colorful towers and onion shaped domes are instantly recognizable as the iconic image of Russia.

The Cathedral of Christ the Savior is the most impressive church in the city.  Built after the fall of the Soviet Union on the site of a former one dynamited by Stalin, it is the tallest Orthodox Church in the world at 340 feet high.  The inside was even more impressive than the outside featuring amazing murals and icons (no pictures were allowed).

The weather stopped cooperating with us on our last day; the rain put a damper on our plans to walk through the parks and cruise along the Moscow River.  Fortunately, one of Moscow’s more interesting attractions, its subway system, is underground.

Deep, deep underground.

Escalators leading down are very steep and fast yet take forever to reach the bottom.  After a few seconds, we felt a strong sense of vertigo – it didn’t help that billboard ads were posted parallel to the escalators rather than level.

The stations are architectural wonders, featuring sculptures, chandeliers, bas reliefs, and stained glass.

Some were very futuristic…

some were traditional…

…but all were immaculate and impressive. 

Each station had a unique history; we could have taken a subway tour – but we unfortunately ran out time.  Finding our way around the system was not easy, since signs were all labeled in Cyrillic alphabet. But getting lost (as we did a few times) wasn’t the worst thing as we were able to see a few more stations.

We returned to our hotel exhausted from moving for two days straight, packed up our bags and left Moscow as we had arrived: by an international overnight train to Helsinki.

The Trans-Siberian railroad linking Moscow to the Pacific Ocean was completed a century ago and remains the longest railway in the world.  This journey traversing Russia was an attraction for us on its own right – and also had the benefit of getting us from Asia to Europe.

Our train pulled away from Ulaanbaator on Tuesday and was scheduled to arrive in Moscow the following Saturday.

Four days was a bit too long to share a 4-berth second class cabin, so Sarah and I paid a slight premium for a private first class one.  Our money was well spent – the compartment had a lockable door that turned it into a very small hotel room.  The cabin was stately, with two couches covered by green felt facing each other, a small table fixed underneath the large window, and mirrored paneling on three walls. Bedding and pillows converted the couches to beds at night.  Electrical outlets lined the hallway and the end of the carriage had a samovar filled with hot drinking water.  During the peak season the train can be fully booked weeks in advance, but because we were traveling in October, we had the first class carriage (and more importantly, the bathroom) to ourselves.

Our carriage was staffed by two middle aged female attendants, called provodnitsas,  who vacuumed the halls, cleaned the windows and scrubbed the bathroom daily.   Neither spoke a word of English yet managed to communicate by pantomiming.  They were very helpful, locking our compartment when we wondered off, and letting us know when the bathrooms were being locked.  At each station stop they would don their official looking jackets and stand outside the carriage smoking cigarettes.

The train chugged along for several hours at a time, stopping occassionally for two minutes to three hours.  Arrival and departure times of station stops posted on the wall (albeit in the Cyrillic alphabet) were adhered to throughout out trip.  During the longer stops we were permitted off to stretch our legs, buy food and drink, and take a few pictures while the locomotive was being swapped out and safety personnel tapped the wheels with a metal pole.

Around midnight on our first night the train crossed the Mongolia-Russia border.  Mongolian officials conducted immigration on board, examining our passports, looking us up and down several times, peering under our seats and in the top compartment over our beds (why would someone stow-away into Russia?) before bringing a small dog through the aisles to sniff for who knows what.  Outside on the tracks were a few guards perched with guns.  After our passports were returned to us, the train moved across the border and the process was repeated by Russian officials with a larger dog.

After the border crossing our ride proceeded smoothly.  Train travel is very relaxing – time passed by quickly watching the scenery gradually change and the kilometer posts indicating the distance from Moscow decrease.  Siberia wasn’t the barren tundra I was expecting, looking not much different than New England in the fall.

Had we been able to obtain a longer visa we would have broken our journey at Lake Baikal; everyone who had been there said it was their favorite place in Russia.  The train did run along its banks for several hours before stopping at a station 500 meters away. (The prodvanista denied my request to run down to the shore.) 

The stop was short but we were met by young girls selling smoked Baikal fish.

We had heard mixed reviews about food served on the train and station stops, so we boarded with four days worth of coffee, tea, instant noodles, bread, cookies and crackers and other junk we quickly grew tired of eating.  Fortunately a few stops did have food; hot cabbage and potato pierogis were far better than another cup of noodles.

We had one amazing, but expensive, Russian meal in the restaurant car of beet soup and salmon blinis.

When we weren’t enjoying the view, we read, played cards and chess or hung out with the five other Western tourists on the train – one American woman who left at Lake Baikal, and four Americans and Australians sharing a second class cabin. 

After crossing the Ural mountains and the Europe-Asia border – Sarah saw the white obelisk marking the continental crossing but I missed it - cities grew larger, appeared more frequently, and were accompanied by electric billboards and traffic jams. 

Eventually we were on the same tracks as suburban commuters on their daily train to Russia’s capital.  Shortly thereafter we arrived in Moscow, covering a distance of four thousand miles three minutes ahead of schedule.