Mockba (Moscow)

The third-class Russian sleeper trains are jammed full of entitled babushkas, young drinkers and military men, and Anya, a fitness instructor at the SP Reebok centre. From SP to Moscow she was the one bold enough to try her English on us. She seemed saddened when Miia succumbed to sleep and there was no one left to talk to.

In the early morning Leningrad station we sipped mochachino's until they closed shop for the 10 am cleaning. I was surly and sick of shuffling around with my pack; Miia was chipper and excited by giant new horizons. We entered what became a new definition of the crush: 10 million Moscavites crammed into one subway system, shoulder to shoulder squeezing flattening internal organs. We bounced from body to body out of our destination and into our hostel, several hours early, and left our pack with a woman who was destined for the hospitality industry because she radiated warmth and welcome. We ate bread and peanut butter in a nearby park with artistically spray-painted benches. I was accosted there by a local nutjob who spewed hot venomous snot from his nostrils and mouth and spit hate at me because I don't speak Russian.

Having so much time to kill we decided to make the walk to Red Square and its surrounding monuments: the Kremlin, St. Basil's cathedral, Lenin's tomb and preserved body, MacDonald's. We joined the gawk-eyed slack-jawed tourists, hundreds of people sharing a sensation of entering history. Lenin himself was creepy and as I walked out of the dark tomb with a guard-enforced sombre atmosphere with a healthy young couple the three of us burst out laughing. I gazed at statues of communism's pillar men and wondered how Russians could restrain themselves from spitting at Stalin's bust or casting it the finger at least. Strange how these men who's ideas and actions are so reviled by so many here are deified.

On our way back to the hostel I met another homeless man who's Russian pleas for help with his pregnant dog were intense and confusing. He gave up on me in time but I probably should have just given him some money. Back at the hostel we met Francois, a Corsican man of the world who enjoyed speaking French with Miia and me (to a lesser extent). He took us to the hostel he runs because the first place was full.

The next day we spent over an hour watching the most fascinating of tourist attractions: the Moscow traffic jam. Large self-interested self-acting steel entities forming, breaking, and reforming a cellular web-like mass, with occasional men in power suits descending from their SUV's to yell or direct traffic until the bottleneck breaks, momentarily. If only the cars could cooperate, take turns, develop a system where the roads had failed them, everyone would have gotten home sooner. But no one could escape their own self-interest even if they wanted to, everyone inched forward toward the congealed centre at every opportunity, and when we finally tore ourselves away the mess looked much the same as when we arrived, despite a few dynamic periods of reshuffling it was one big mess, too many in too small a space.

In the evening we visited a park and a street filled with breath-taking modern art scultures and discovered where the affordable food is found: in street stalls of course! And it's delicious and they usually have veggie options if you guess right. All the ladies treat us so kindly and patiently with our linguistic ignorance and help us find our way, our sustenance, our shelter. The men are a bit more macho but with patience and smiles also have their soft playful kittenish sides.

On our last day in Moscow we met Elena, a friend of Miia's friend Gemma (now residing in London England). She took us proudly to the State Tretyakov Gallery of pre-revolutionary art: skyscape scaled paintings by the Russian masters who reminded us how Euro-centric our worldview is. Elena was so kind and so sweet to us. Her French is good and her English mediocre, so she spoke to us in French and I responded in English. The language parade goes on. It was wonderful to get the inside scoop from a Russian art-lover, who pointed out the most famous and her favourite pieces, none of which we recognized but most of which was splendid.

And in the evening we boarded a train to the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, more to come...

Chris