Rather than pay an excessive 18 USD PPPN for the unoriginality of Travellers' Guest House in Central Moscow, we opted for the virtually unknown Hotel Baikal in Moscow's Outer North region. As well as having a casino, a cafe and a strip bar, the hotel also registers guests and rooms boast the added luxuries of bath, shower and TV. After two long nights of travel from Naantali, it felt so good to remove our packs and smelly footwear. I say on my bed and started unpacking the side pockets of my rucksack, expecting to find some morsels of food, whilst Tasha perched on the windowsill. I had just reached the halfway point of littering the floor with my belongings when Tasha let out a yelp, then a scream and darted across the room, jumping and skipping like a chicken in a thistle patch. She had just been electrocuted by some exposed wires connected to the refrigerator and it was only through sheer luck that she had escaped a serious burn, or worse.. Our already meagre faith in Russian health and safety levels plummeted to an all-time low.
We only spent three days in Moscow, deciding that it would be enough to see all the 'essentials' before moving on to some cheaper areas of Russia. The city of Moscow is enormous and it would take several weeks to explore all of it, but the main sites are quite accessible and can be managed in a few days. Stepping onto Red Square was a definite highlight and the feeling of accomplishment was quite overwhelming. At the far end St Basil's Cathedral stands as an indelible testament to mid dixteenth century Russian architecture, with 8 multi coloured turban domes over nine main interior chapels. Along the West side of the square is the GUM (State Department Store) with over 1000 shops and boutiques selling clothes, perfume, shoes and electricals with every brand immaginable - most notably those posh French ones which are impossible to pronounce, but speak volumes about the people who wear them.
The Moscow metro is another masterpiece of inspired planning and design. Every station boasts an underground haven of marble columns, statues, commemerative Soviet mosaics and chandaliers. In contrast are the main railway stations, which appear to attract the worst of Moscow's undesirables. We went to the Lenningradsky Station to buy our onward tickets and were greeted by a scene of dozens of kiosks surrounding throngs of filthy tramps, gypsy families, drunken and beaten men and women and gangs of youths running around in groups of up to a dozen or more through littered alleyways strewn with cardboard, broken glass, discarded clothing and sleeping station hermits. At the bottom of the steps leading up to the ticket office was a man who was lying flat on his back with his eyes closed, arms outstretched and a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. He wasn't dead - I could see his chest rising and falling - but nobody seemed too worried about his condition. Nobody seemed to have noticed. This is the Moscow way - Every man for himself and the struggle of life goes on. A little later that day, having visited one of Moscow's many churches, we found another guy flat on his back - this time in the Metro. This guy was without a shadow of doubt as dead as a doornail. Again nobody appeared to notice, apart from a young policeman, who stood nearby, probably waiting for the stretcher.
More walking around took us to Arbat street, a cobbled road full of painters, buskers, souvenir stalls, breakdancers and lo and behold - a monkey! It wasn't a wild monkey - far from it - she was sat on the knee of a middle aged woman, who was offering photographs with her pet at two dollars apiece, and I'm sorry to say that I had no shame in handing over a couple of notes and embarking on some monkey cuddling... cute huh!
Adding to the plethora of strange animals around Moscow was a camel, which we spotted being led across the All-Russin Exhibition Centre, (VDNKh), which is an all-Russian hangout, offering nasty gold fountains, statues, an authentic rocket braced to its launchpad, two old Tupolev aircraft and a couple of horribly kitsch Soviet palaces - now taken over by shops selling trashy electricals. I dragged Tahsa into one of the old airliners, hopping into the pilot's seat, flicking switches and pulling levers and navigating an imaginary course across the city. She was clearly impressed, but a queue was beginning to form so we stepped back out onto the tarmac and continued our walk through the park.