Moscow

Thursday arrived, the last day in June. Anna had only been able to book us into our hostel for three nights so at some point we had to move hostels. We decided to get it out of the way and do it first thing. We walked to the new hostel as we had to walk to the Metro station any way and the hostel didn't look to be that far away. The directions for the hostel were excellent and it had a sign on the outside of the apartment building it was in. Great and such a simple thing! We dumped our bags and headed into town towards the Kremlin. We got to Red Square with plenty of time and asked any guard who we could find about getting in to see Lenin. I had talked with a guy at our old hostel and he had said that it had taken him three hours to get in, I didn't really want to wait that long. I joined the queue and Anna went off to see if she could dump our bags ahead of time, she couldn't. For some reason the bag check doesn't open until 10am, when the mausoleum opens! In the end we did get in quickly, unfortunately we were laughing the whole way in. It was an effort for me to be quiet, luckily I managed it. Inside the mausoleum it was a lot colder, which Anna loved, there were loads of guards and some guys in suits. If they had been American I would have said they were Secret Service, I guess they were from the KGB or whatever it is these days. I think Lenin looks like a wax work and not all that different from Mao or Ho Chi Minh, I was probably in there for all of three minutes. On the way out I saw Stalin's memorial, which is just a bust and very small. I don't think he would be impressed by this. At one point he had shared Lenin's mausoleum but he was moved.
We had brunch in the GUM department store at a Russian buffet restaurant. The food was really good and the beer great. It was so tempting to just sit there but I chivvied Anna along and we left.Anna and I jumped onto the Metro and went to Izmaylovo market, Anna really wanted to go and pick up some souvenirs. I had conveniently forgotten that I also had to buy souvenirs and didn't think I needed to go. I did. I walked out of the Metro station and couldn't see anything, the guide book had said that all you needed to do was follow the crowds from the Metro station. Unfortunately as we had come on a weekday there were no crowds to follow. We got directions and headed off in the right direction, I saw this mock white,German castle. I thought it was some theme park,it turned out to be part of the market. Cool!! The market was pretty empty and not all of the stall holders were there, but we were prepared for that. What I wasn't prepared for were the surroundings. It's like a German castle, straight out of Bavaria. I was so happy that it was empty, you can revel in your disbelief. What made it complete was that there were couples having their wedding photos taken their. Awesome! Total generalisation but Russian women have a way of posing for photographs that really needs to be seen. Betsy and I had seen an example of this when we were in Cambodia but I hadn't realised that that kind of behaviour was typical. Fantastic! Deeply amused. And yes I did actually buy something.
I was happy to leave the market, we always seem to end up walking through the heat of the day and I always end up improving on my farmers tan. Nice! The next thing on the list was to get back to the embassy to pick up our passports. As I write this I am still in denial about how much the transit visa cost me. Obviously there was nothing I could do about this but still...We got to the embassy with loads of time to spare and parked ourselves outside the door, we were both determined to be the first ones in. I was the first and handed over my receipt, I was confused when Anna handed over a different receipt, then I got worried.Luckily I thought, I had both but the woman didn't want the second payment receipt. I got my passport and left Anna to it. It turns out that Anna had only brought the payment receipt with her and not the passport collection receipt. The woman told her to go and sit down, I was having kittens. I can't imagine what Anna was feeling. There was no way she could get back to the hostel and then back to the embassy in time and the embassy only allows collections in the afternoon. We were supposed to be leaving at 4.30 the next afternoon. Eventually when everyone else had collected their passports they called Anna back in and gave her her passport, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Next on the agenda was to get our train tickets for the next afternoon. I wasn't stressed about this as there are multiple trains everyday and I just didn't think it would be a problem. Famous last words. We went to the train station we had been told that we could buy our tickets from, no ticket office in sight. We went to the train station across the road, literally, found a ticket office but that wasn't the correct one. Finally we were sent to a building that was nothing but ticket counters and found a lovely lady who took us to the exact counter we needed with a member of staff who spoke English. Hallelujah! Then she told us that there was only one seat available on the train we wanted. It never rains but it pours!! We got on a morning train for the next day, it would take longer but it would get us to Warsaw and get us through Belarus before our visas expired. I was exhausted. We walked about to our hostel and got settled into our room.
The only thing I hadn't managed to achieve during the day was to post my postcards. On our way to find somewhere to eat dinner we also looked for a post office but no joy. We walked towards the town centre looking for somewhere to eat, anywhere would pretty much do. We walked past this bar, Anna smelled beer and saw people eating and decided that it was good enough. On the bonus side it was really busy, always a good sign. We got a seat by the window and looked at the menu, all in Russian of course. I sound as if I expect everyone to speak English, I don't. However I am surprised when pretty much everyone in a major city doesn't speak a word of English. This bar was interesting, they had the lunch menu in Russian and English but not the full menu. A man at the next table took pity on us and went through the menu, making sure we were able to order food and then when we needed another beer getting the waitress' attention. He and his wife were lovely and were our last random person photo in Russia. If you ever go to Moscow, take the time to just sit and watch the world go by. I have never seen so many high end cars in one place. In London you can see a lot of the two seater super cars, that's not the case in Moscow. Most people seem to have drivers and that means that they have big fancy saloons and/or SUVs. And most of them are black. Anna noticed that as the rush hour traffic eased the standard of cars got lower. At the beginning it had been all Audis,Mercedes' and Beemers with the occasional old car. At the end it was mostly old cars of any colour, not the black that we had gotten used to seeing.
The next morning we had breakfast at the hostel, there is a French bakery on the ground floor and our train wasn't until 10.30 so we had a bit of time. When we got to the station one of the first things Anna saw was a sign for a post office, so we were able to get rid of our postcards. I even managed to write a few more on the platform and get them posted. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute. Then it was on to the train. The question was would I have an issue getting out of Belarus?