Indie Travelers.com Travelogue: Russia with a shrug

Well, I have been in Russia for a whopping 10 days now and there is much to report. So much in fact that I am going to be breaking up my thoughts into several entries. (Hopefully I will be able to make more regular blog postings from now on.) Anyway, I shall naturally begin with the first city of Russia: Moscow.

Stepping from the luxury and safety of Delta business-class and into the noisy, bureaucratic, and curiously labeled (cyrillic) Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport marked the beginning of a new and exciting chapter of the trip: the first one. Apart from a strange inability of Russians to queue correctly in lines without cutting in front of me, and some lengthy scrutiny of my dark terrorist-esque passport photo and driver's license by the border guard, I immigrated into Russia without a hitch.

We got to our hostel "Godzilla's Hostel" (yes, that's the name) after proudly conquering local transportation, as Nelle earlier explained in her entry about Moscow. It was quite a rush, let me tell you. The metros here are pretty intimidating. If you don't insert your fare card correctly (or if you try to go through without paying), motion sensors in the turnstile set off a REALLY loud alarm and these gates swing in and hit you in the thigh to block you from continuing. You then need to back up and try again, more slowly, as other commuters wait impatiently (they certainly are called "Rushin's" for a reason!), and the guard-babushka looks on disapprovingly. Once you pass through, you are unshered into these giant tunnels and onto the world's longest and fastest escalators that whisk you to the metro level, ~100ft or more below the ground.

Most other aspects of the metro were fairly routine, except for the whole 'other language and alphabet' thing. Although it was quite remarkable how frequently the trains run. They have a clock running at the end of the metro station which marks the interval between trains in minutes in seconds. During peak times it rarely broke 2 minutes, and all other times it was usually less than 5 minutes. This, a far cry from the 25 minutes I routinely waited for the Orange line of the T in Boston.

Anyway, after settling in the first night at Godzilla's we hiked down to Red Square and checked out the scenery. It was pretty incredible, standing at the very heart of the cold war bogeyman. At least, that's what Dad said. I was impressed with St. Basil's, but somehow I imagined it would be bigger than it was, and the interior, as we discovered the next day, was nothing to write home about. We cruised into a Russian cafe and a Mc Donald's and ordered no problem (Mc D's charges for ketchup here! wtf?). Back at the hostel I met and talked to several other travelers who were in various states of coming and going via the Trans-siberian railway, and all had interesting stories and advice about what to do and what not to do, what to see and what not to see. It seemed so effortless to navigate through Moscow, make friends at the hostel, and do this whole traveling on the cheap thing. "This is easy," I thought to myself.

Reality hit us like...err, a sack of Russian potatoes. General rudeness, difficulty of reading and speaking Russian, lack of traffic rules, long walking distances, noxious pollution, expensive and bland restaurants, random closures of museums, rigidly gestapo local police and military, unhelpful hostel staff, and my first case of Traveler's D all conspired to make our first stop on this world tour my least favorite city I've ever been to. I really think the aggressive and disinterested vibe we got from most people in Moscow is a holdover from the USSR, where "service with a shrug" was the order of the day, according to our guidebook. Pity, really, given all the great attractions and the incredible first impression we received. Save our one good meal at TGI Friday's with a zealous english-speaking waitress, we could not wait to move on.

Comments

Standing in line seems to be universally around the world something only tourists do?? Or perhaps it's simply an American practice??

Live and learn.. Travel on dude

Ray

PS your mom was geeked getting to SkyPe with you last night.

Posted by: CaptainBultaco | July 4, 2006 08:48 AM

That sounds disturbingly like my experience in Prague--dismal, polluted, vaguely hostile--when Nikki and I happened to buy the wrong train ticket and ended up in a "situation" with some rather shady Czech police. Watch out for those guys.

And we got charged for ketchup, too. On the upside? Cheap glass vases and beer. Take care, you guys!

--Jen

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