Moscow II

Where we start with a sideways pic of Joanna:


Sorry if that's a bit disappointing, we have more up-to-date shots with a bit more tummy, but you'll have to wait. She has however been told 3 times this week how neat she is for 6 months, so is very proud of that.

When we left you, we were covering our Moscow Tuesday. We went and saw the Armoury in the Kremlin, after the ticket lady told us we didn't have time to see everything and that was the ticket she was going to sell us! It's splendid, although very much a no-photographs sort of place, sorry. Faberge eggs, all the tsar's gold & silver gifts from the last few centuries, and their carriages, thrones and clothes. It's all there. And they seemed to get a lot of presents. None from NZ though, and just a few from Blighty.

Wednesday we couldn't go to the Kazakh Embassy so it was mega-tourist day. After a sleep in, obviously. But when we got to the Kremlin this was the sight that awaited us:


There was a "Young Russia" rally going on, with some serious security. This was the back-up, in case there was trouble:


So we didn't make trouble, and like everyone else quietly walked the long way around to Red Square. We said hello to Lenin (very quietly, no noise in the mausoleum please - or pictures), who was looking somewhat waxy.

Red Square was a bit emptier, the rally appeared to have frightened off some people. Young people had been bussed in fom the provinces and given flags, t-shirts etc ... although some seemed to be taking the opportunity to investigate Moscow's shopping. It's all a bit scary when the Yoof Of The Day support those in power - particularly when they do so so ardently.

We sneaked back past the rally to go see the rest of the Kremlin. It has palaces, including Puti-babes current residence, Stalin's favourite hold-up etc, but you're not allowed into them. Not even the ugly empty one where Communist Party conferences were held. You are allowed into the 5 cathedrals. Yes 5, which seems a little excessive for the Tsar and his family. We guess if they had a falling out on a Sunday morning they could all go somewhere different. The Patriarch (head church dude) has his residence open too, but his stuff has no English. And we weren't allowed to take our camera in, so we'll jump straight to St Basil's:

and it's interior:


Which is quite amazing and not very church-like inside. More like a rabbit warren. Had some nice singing inside though. And some impressive altars and other artwork.

That wasn't quite enough sight-seeing for one day, we also got to ... a shopping mall! Yes, Joanna conquered her fears and made it inside GUM, which it turns out has the only free loos in Moscow. It's too posh to charge. It is, in fact, very very posh. You've had the outside, here's the interior:


So Thursday we were back on the Kazakh visa trail. But we weren't quite quick enough off the mark. Although we made it out of the hotel at 9.30, and to the embassy before 10.30... they still hadn't processed us by the magic shut-off time of 12 o'clock. Come back tomorrow. D'oh. We were quite keen to leave over-crowded Moscow by this point...

So Friday we were very on the ball. 9am opening? We say: get there at 8.30. 2nd in the queue, we were done and dusted by 10. Well, "all submitted, come back Monday" dusted at any rate. So off we went to book tickets to Astana (Kazakhstan), and escape this town... Which took us quite a while, particularly with the world's most confusing train station that liked to send us from desk to desk. We eventually took a bus to Vladimir.

Moscow Part I

(Sept 30 - Oct 5)
We ended up in Moscow all quite a bit longer than planned.

We took an overnight train from Novgorod, with us both on top bunks (4 beds to a cabin in 2nd class). Joanna managed admirably, Ben struggled a little with the serious heat whilst we were trying to sleep... But a great way to travel - your night's accommodation sorted, and you wake up in a new place. At 5.30. Our hostel wasn't to be open until 9.30, so we sat about the train station eating our pastries we'd bought the previous night in preparation. Then we set off on the Moscow metro. Quite busy on a Sunday, but not too bad with our packs - it was only later that week we got the feeling that all >9 million daily users were trying to get into our carriage. Cyrillic reading all going well, we worked out our changing lines and made our way quite north of the city to the "Hotel Street" our hostel was on. Indeed the hostel was located on the 3rd floor of a hotel. We took our time working out where the entrance was, so by the time we got to the hostel office (which was just in a room on the 3rd floor) we were perfectly on time... Shame the hostel people weren't. So we waited... Until nearly 11, having had a good kip on the hotel couches... Apparently our booking hadn't been made, but they had space. Accommodation prices in Moscow take the breath away somewhat - there is no cheap or mid-priced sector really. But you do what you have to. Although we eventually discovered it was cheaper for a double at the hotel than the hostel...

After getting ourselves settled we went into town to have a look at the big sights, wandering around the Kremlin and then onto Red Square. St Basil's Cathedral isn't actually called St Basil's, that's just one of the chapels inside:


Also on Red Square is GUM, the famous mall that had nothing in it in later Communist days - these days it is all designer stores: very Posh.


Here's a view of the whole square:


That was enough for Sunday, Monday we headed to the Kazakh embassy to try to get the ball starting rolling on that front, but no go. In Moscow it turned out we needed an hotel reservation confirmation, which we wouldn't've needed in Blighty. So off we went to try and organise that... which didn't turn out to be so easy. The internet didn't come up with much, and whilst we filled in a couple of forms requesting reservations they still haven't got back to us! We did find a great wee local eatery chain though - Moo-Moo, so at least we had some success on our Monday... After it became clear things weren't happening on Tuesday, Joanna came up with the bright idea of going to a travel agents. Which worked brilliantly. Expensive hotels only available, but reservation was achieved... although unfortunately we got to the Kazakh Embassy at 12.30, and the visa applications shut at 12... and there's no Wednesday service...

So we had a wander down from the embassy again - we got to know the central area reasonably well... There's almost as much stuff being renovated as in St Pete's. Here's the Bolshoi Ballet Theatre:


The next image would've been one of Joanna sideways, as these shots are regularly requested, but this internet cafe doesn't do USB. So just the 5 images I uploaded at an Astana cafe, sorry. We'll have to continue the tale of hot, sunny, overcrowded, over-bustling Moscow someplace else.

Quick slice of life thoughts from the Russian capital though:
- No-one knows where they're going and we look Russian. Everybody seemed to ask us for directions. Although occassionally when we looked quite lost enough people would ask if they could help us with directions... which they generally couldn't.
- Sheets aren't allowed to be big enough for beds in Russia (and we've discovered in Kazakhstan too). Admittedly you don't use the sheet under the pillow, but seriously, cloth can't cost that much...
- They must worry about the great gob shortage in the west of the last few decades. We don't know where the men get all their phlegm from, but it seems to need constant expulsion from their mouths. Even whilst smoking. It may be phenomenal, but it's not a phenomenon that needs witnessing...

We're in Almaty (18 October), which is beautiful and leafy and gorgeously sunny. Turns out we didn't need to pack the thermals. Saturday we have a trip up a canyon before flying early on Sunday. We'll try and get Moscow finished tomorrow...

Update from Kazakhstan

So we're in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. And yes, a bit behind on the blog. Not always so easy to find good places to blog, particularly with USB ports to upload photos (because we know you're all about the photos).

But we thought we should update on a change of plan. We're cheating. We're going to fly from Almaty to Hong Kong. We decided that after the difficulties we had getting our Kazakh visa (Moscow post next up...) - both for what that foreboded with our Chinese visa and with the time it left us; and the difficulties that Joanna's belly was going to pose - both with the picking up of the pack and the fear of the Chinese food we'd be putting in it... we thought we'd better sack the China plan.

But on the plus side, as we're overnighting in Bangkok Ben will be able to complete that part of the drink challenge. And it gives us a bit more time to explore Kazakhstan, Hong Kong, and now: Macau.

Novgorod

We stopped for a night & a day in Novgorod, which is between St P'burg and Moskva. We arrived just after dark, and just went for the first hotel we found. Which meant we had to take a suite with a spa bath, but it cost about as much as a hostel in St P'burg (and less than Moscow), so we probably deserved it or something. Joanna still isn't entirely in tune with the weiners and salad for brekkie though.

This will obviously be your immediate expectation of what inner European Russia looks like:


Yes that is a beach. A river beach. Suddenly it became clear what we'd been reading about Novgorod being an important trading town for the Vikings - they could get their boats up this far. Novgorod is one of a few Russian cities that has claim to being the First Russian Capital. Apparently the Vikings, working on trade with the Middle East (I'm not making this up), were the ones to organise the Slavic locals into civilisations, countries etc. So Novgorod was set up as a trading port a bit over 1200 years ago, and was the capital of the first Russian state (of which there were to be quite a few) 1100-odd years ago.
Here's the Millennium of Russia monument they put up to celebrate it:


They built a great church in 1050, St Sophia's, where we got to learn a bit about Russian Orthodoxy as we tuned into a guided tour:


It was quite interesting. Although 2 hour services with no seats, or even any hymns sounds quite hard work. Also a bit weird watching all the women covering their heads.

Here's a different view of the Novgorod Kremlin (or "fortress" as we non-poetic anglo-saxons would call it):


And yes, we know you can get in trouble for taking pictures of stranger's kids, but we had to show you what was cool in town: autumn leaves. All the girls were collecting them, and some really cool cats knew how to turn them into a hat:


Final historical note for the history geeks: Ivan the Terrible is not popular here. He razed the town with his "storm-troopers" (not just in Star Wars apparently), stopping it being a major trading town forever more. Novgorod had survived the Mongols coming through Russia, as they were put off sacking it due to it being a boggy day when they arrived; this had left it as by far the prettiest Russian city before Ivan's men went to work on it. Oh well, a man can go a bit doolally after his wife dies I s'pose...

St Petersburg Part Dva

Where we get to tell you about how you can't move in St Pete's for sushi bars...

After the first day wandering about generally being amazed by the beauty of the whole of central St Petersburg (or at least the half that isn't being renovated), the second day we went into St Isaac's (no pictures inside, as usual, sorry) which was spangly. From there we went into the Hermitage (defo no pictures!), which was somewhat overwhelming. We didn't even go into the Gold Room (the room with all the gold). But we saw the 25 Rembrandts and however many Van Goghs, Picassos, Matisses, Monets & Manets etc etc... No glass covers on any of them, not really anything to stop you touching them, save a stern old lady in the corner of the room. It's all a bit jammed in across 3 palaces walls, but if you've got that much stuff (and only about 1/20th of their art collection is on show), it's going to get crowded, even if your palaces are massive and 3 stories high. It seems that Catherine 2 was a bit of an art collector - she certainly wasn't a looker, despite all those stories about her many lovers.

We wandered through the Mars field after, with its eternal flame. The Russians seem quite keen on eternal flames. We had to come back the next day for the Summer Gardens next door, which were in fact, somewhat autumnal:


Peter's Summer Palace is in the Gardens, but isn't very big unlike the Winter Palace of the Hermitage. So on we went ovber the river Neva to the Saints Peter & Paul Fortress. Peter I - the Great - established St Petersburg roughly 300 years ago after taking the area off the Swedes. To make sure they never took it back he built the fortress, with the centrepiece being this cathedral:


Orthodox churches are quite different, there are no pews - except one for the tsar, and one for the patriarch, and they are more thrones. Here's the view down the middle: (photos inside - yay!)


Here's the pulpit - would the Reverend Doctor David Clark like to preach from here we wondered?


All but 2 of the tsars since Peter I have been laid to rest here so the church is full of sarcophagi - and here's the great man himself:


It's hard to move around St Petersburg without bumping into Peter reminders. Indeed the whole of Russia has its share - even Moscow who he snubbed by moving the capital to St Petersburg. At that point it was just a swamp that he was having drained into canals, so the bureaucratic civil servants complained - but he didn't really like them anyway... Who'd have thought victory over Sweden would make you the country's number 1 hero?

Just outside the fort's walls we spotted these late September sun worshippers. Apparently in St Petersburg the only way to get a proper tan is to stand, tan lines just won't do!


Ben didn't get to go to the Liverpool Bar around the corner from our hostel, but they've not been doing so well since we came to Russia anyway. And we're not even mentioning the All Blacks.

St Petersburg

(September 25 - 27)
We arrived in St Petersburg quite late after our train journey from Helsinki. It was rather nice to cross a non EU border without any hassle - the officers just took our passports away and returned them with a nice stamp in it!

Ben was back to reading everything he could in Russian to show off his knowledge of Cyrillic - which came in handy when the first thing we needed to do was hop on a tube train. They come along every three minutes in St Petersburg and even more often in Moscow, Londoners would love it!

Our first day we headed out to walk around all the major sites, and to give you an idea of just what an architectural wonderland St Petersburg is, the next three snaps were all taken from the same spot!

Hermitage: Winter Palace. (Alexander I Column in front - everybody who beats Napoleon deserves a column, eh Nelson?)


Admiralty (now a naval college):


General Staff Building:


This is apparently the typical tourist picture that gets taken at the side of the Hermitage looking back over St Isaac's Cathedral ... but more on that later.


Our walking tour snaked around the city, past the Royal Stables, the house Pushkin died in after his duel and to the Church of Christ the Saviour on Spilled Blood. It seems to be a popular spot for couples to have their wedding photos taken beside ... someone really should have warned them not to wear the same colour!


The church gets its gruesome name as it was built on the spot where Alexander II (he who freed the serfs) was assasinated by the People's Will terrorist group in 1881.

We wandered on past many pretty buildings. Kazan cathedral was very beautiful, but Joanna doesn't like the face she's pulling in that photo.

The city council buildings and many others were former palaces, but back to St Isaac's:


The communists turned it into an anti-religious museum. It's now still a museum, but not anti-religious. It does have occassional services for big Christian events. The huge doors and all the gold and paitings are all very impressive. Actually the paintings on many Russian Orthodox church walls are amazing.

The view the other way from St Isaac's, across the river is brilliant too:


Massive fountains just in the middle of the river. Beautiful museums, and the Saints Peter & Paul Cathedral. The Cathedral is in the middle of St.s Peter and Paul's Fort. We went there on the day we left St Petersburg, but are having trouble finding a place we can get the photos off the camera. So we are going to do St Petersburg in 2 posts, as this one's been waiting for ages. The other one will be much smaller.

Helsinki

(September 23 & 24)

So we made it back to Helsinki and the saga of parting from our faithful Clio continued. We had a few near misses with one charity and a former work colleague, but it wasn't meant to be so the Finnish Government "kindly" took it off our hands for free! We were given this tip off by a nice lady at the British Embassy who had come up against the same problem. Customs just give you a piece of paper and that's it! So here's us with the clio in our last moments together:




As it took us quite a while failing to give the car to anyone charitable, and then running around finding a customs person who actually knew the correct procedure, we didn't end up doing anything touristy in Helsinki. The buildings were very pretty though:




We went down a street museum which had what the "street furniture" was in different decades from 1800 on, but that didn't make for good photos.

Here's Ben completing the Finnish leg of his drinking challenge though:

As Finland wasn't on the original itinerary, we had to find out the drink ourselves. It turns out not to be Finlandia, but Kossu, and even better a liquorice version of Kossu called Salmari. It tastes just like chewing on a stick of liquorice. The barman, intrigued by our story also gave us a shot of a version the kids are all drinking these days: Fisu. It tastes exactly like chewing on a Fisherman's Friend sweet. Weird.

(we're currently in Moscow in mid-twenties sunshine. Our heavy coats we brought are all a bit much...)

Turku

(September 21-22)
Turku was once the capital of Finland, under Swedish rule. When the Russians took over in 1808, they put their provincial capital at Helsinki. Finland was never a country until this century, but somehow still managed to keep its identity.

So the main thing to see there is the castle:



The castle would appear to have been fairly rubbish, because although Finland stayed Swedish for several hundred years, it was always getting conquered. It's surprisingly big on the inside compared with how it looks from the outside. It had us busy for several hours despite the fact very little of the explanations were in English. Finland's second language is Swedish, so there was no chance of us understanding any of that either!

Hence, there was lots of cool stuff like this very old fresco, but what with our lack of Finnish or Swedish we can't tell you anything about it ;0)


And here's Saint Martin watching over Charlton Athletic's fortunes. He was apparently a 4th century French bishop with a penchant for helping beggars who was for some reason very popular in Finland:


We popped into a Viking Festival they nicely put on for us. The Reindeer was yummy! But we'd just learnt in the museum the potatoes it came with weren't at all traditional.


Our first night was in a hostel that was nothing special, but they had no room for us the 2nd night and we ended up at a great B&B. They even have their own "Hotel Inspector", here investigating Joanna's pack:


We caught up with a family friend of the MacKenzies. Tiina came out to see us even though she had a poorly foot and gave us a good rundown of Finnish culture and history. She still can't believe we made it to Turku before Ma and Pa Mackenzie. We put them to shame!


And lastly, some of Finland's beautiful autumn colours - they were gorgeous all over the country:

Clio gone!

We've just donated the Clio to one of the world's least corrupt organisations: The Finnish Government! So it will be efficiently dealt with and cleaner than it's ever been when it's sold at auction! We tried to donate it to a charity but they were unfortunately unable to take it - although they did take the car safety kit and our tools! Finland's import duties are prohibitively expensive so that's why we couldn't simply give it away, but we hope it will find a good home. We'll post pictures of our last moments with the Clio when we get to a better cafe in Russia; Finland doesn't really do full featured internet cafes, just fully priced.

Next chapter: packs on our backs and the train to St Petersburg tomorrow. We'll still update this blog even though the Tales will no longer be from the Clio ...

Tallinn

(18-20 September)

The rain seems to have been following us around lately, which is very disappointing. There was a torrential downpour when we arrived but it hasn't coloured our judgement of Tallinn's Old Town. It's absolutely gorgeous and the sun even came out for a few hours on the second day so we could take pictures of it in all its glory.

The Öld Town didn't suffer too badly in WWII although large sections of the outskirts were destroyed in one night of Soviet bombing in 1944.

We'll let the pictures do (most) of the talking about the Old Town's beauty:

Town Hall:

Wall:

Russian Orthodox Church:

Parliament:

Overview:

Tall Herman:

Lutheran Church:


The main thing was just to wander around the Old Town, but we popped into the City Museum and the Museum of Occupation for a good dose of history too. Fascinating seeing different country's views on the past... At the City Museum there was a very cool exhibition of clothes made by Estonian women during the Soviet era showing how they managed to keep up with western fashions with recycled material and a few buttons! The 80s gear was especially impressive - Dynasty eat your heart out!

Finally Ben also met his drinking challenge, Vana Tallinn: