We spent today doing a whirlwind tour of Moscow. Sight-seeing is sometimes best done at high-speed. It makes use of the brain's ability to process a boggling amount of inane trivia
in a short amount of time to be then later unpacked and made sense of. That's usually why you end up feeling so knackered after a holiday. Well that and the fact you've probably spent most of it on the
lash.
Moscow is a pretty expensive city all things considered. It has this wonderfully infernal metro underground. Like most East European
undeground systems I have experienced, as far as train punctuality goes they are impeccable. The problem that M and I found is where the trains go. As we had discoverd the day before, each station has various sign-posts on it, always in Cyrillic, but the name of the station depends on what line you are on. So even if you arrive the correct underground, one end of it may well be called a different name than the other. Whilst we were still trying to transform our ж's into zh's, B's into v's, and P's into r's, this made finding anywhere much like doing the lottery.
One thing I feel I must mention here - well several things actually - is the small differences between the underground in Moscow and London. For instance: by default the turnstiles you walk through are open, whereas in London they are closed. It is only when you fail to swipe your ticket do the stiles close. Close, as it were, in a frenzied demonic fashion as if some creature from hell is trying to disembowel you, however this fact notwithstanding, think of how much energy is saved by not having to open the stiles each time a person enters or leaves. Pretty efficient I must say. Another thing I noticed were the doors into the station. They operate manually. Also they are counter-weighted swing doors. This means that everytime you push and let go of a door it flies back - with considerable speed - into the face of the person behind you. Now from the point of view of a repressed, neurotic, English person (who has been brought up an Irish Catholic (you can imagine the guilt weighing on my mind here)) who spends their life holding doors to people out of politeness - as we are so taught - imagine, if you will, holding on for dear life to a door that at any moment could wrench from your hands and knock several front teeth from the gums of a 10 year-old kid going shopping for turnips with their mum of a morning. Needless to say I spent some time hanging on to doors...
We finally found Karzarsky Station: A small quaint little place, somewhat larger then Waterloo and Victoria put together. We began to hunt for an office from which we
could purchase our onward tickets. This ended up being no easy task. In fact it turned out to be an exceptionally difficult task as nobody, and I mean nobody, had the slightest idea of what we were asking for... it didn't help either that we were in the wrong station.
... We are very close to giving up. This is not working out. M is so frustrated she is nearly in tears. There are thousands of people milling around us and yet no-one is willi
ng. or able, to help us. I remember vaguely reading somewhere that there is no-where quite as lonely as a city of millions of people. In this case, we don't speak the language, but in cases before, and places I'll visit in the future, sometimes the loneliest places on earth are not the deserts, the mountains, or the open expanses of sea. They are where you are surrounded by human contact; in the middle of a crowd, in a restaurant, or a bar, and yet you cannot speak to anyone, hug anyone, laugh or share your emotions with a single soul. I often think this is why people give up. Not because they've lost their jobs, or their fortune, instead in one sweep of fate they have been disconnected to the basic humanity we all take for granted. They have nothing to share their lives with. Until you have experienced this isolation you will be unable to comprehend it. It is truly awful.
However right at this moment, our deepest concerns are tickety ...
We managed it eventually. We booked our seats Kupe class to Urkutsk. Four days on a train. It left at 11:30pm that very evening. We headed back to the hostel pretty exhausted for a respite. Then we went to take in the sights
It turned out to be a short stroll down to the Red Square from the hostel. It was well worth it. I felt all a bit surreal being in a place I had seen so many times on television, I'd actually never thought I'd set foot here. The square is vast. A huge expanse of concrete containing the Kremlin, the National State Museum, Lenin's Mausoleum, and St Basil's Cathedral. We spent a reasonably fun, if not chilly, afternoon wandering around taking the sights in.
Apparently the Red Square is a very popular place for wedding photographs. Every now and then a bride and groom - usually with an troupe of guests - would appear and begin elaborate photo shoots. One couple even turned up with a cardboa
rd box full of doves. Unfortunalely Lenin's Mausoleum was closed. It was a like the tomb to a saint. I still find it weird that a republic so vehemently opposed to religion has all the ardent reverence of the worship ingrained in communism.
After doing the tourist thang for three hours we retired to a glass of wine and some food. I can't remember exactly what I had, but I am pretty sure it had cabbage in it.
Then we hot-tailed it back to the hostel to pack. It was here we bumped into Andy and Chris: two brothers who were just beginning there year long trip around the globe. They were doing te double-ard bastard journey of Moscow to Beijing. No stops... Six nights on the train. We decided to share a taxi to the station. We rocked up and got a beer and sat and waited until we could board our home for the next 4/6 days respecti
vely. It loomed out of the chilly Moscow night like a huge insect. I couldn't wait to get started.
... Andy, Chris, M, and I are boarding the train, beer in hand, in high spirtits. The corridors are a spacious and the carriage appears very modern. We are chatting away and at the same time looking for a cabins. They are in 14a and 14b and we are in 16a and 16b. Andy reaches his and pokes his head inside. He engages in a brief conversation before retreating into the corridor. "There are two other people in our cabin." We were hoping to get a half empty cabin so we could hang-out as a group of four.
"Ok no worries. Let's check ours out." I say.
Andy is at the head of the group. He walks down two cabins and stic
ks his head into our compartment. He pauses for a minute then turns back to us with very dead-pan look on his face - one I will come to know in future as his poker face - "Good luck with that!"
We walk past him and poke our heads round the door. Inside are the bright faces of a newly-married Russian couple and their fifteen-month-old baby...
No comments:
Post a Comment