Moscow

Yesterday evening I had deciphered my ticket correctly and tracked down my very first Trans-Siberian train with a good amount of time to spare. Walking the platform along the immense length of the train I located my carriage and came face-to-face with my first Provodnitsa, a (typically middle-aged and female) member of train staff whose job it is to look after a particular carriage. After checking my passport matched my ticket, she let me board, saying to me what I guessed was the Russian for my seat number. I responded with a da and a fleeting smile I quickly remembered to suppress.

Tash had managed to book me a lower bunk in a four-bed sleeper for the overnight journey to the Russian capital, which was ideal; the lower bunks could be lifted to reveal storage space underneath for luggage, and once you were lying on your bunk, you had to be unconscious or dead for anyone to get at your stuff. That said, I saw little evidence to mistrust my Russian cabinmates anyway, who were three quiet Russian blokes. We exchanged polite nods as we each arrived, but after that everyone stayed mute for the duration of the journey, which suited me just fine.

The facilities of the carriage were basic but more than adequate. There was a coal fire the Provodnitsa stoked which kept the carriage warm and the samovar fired up so that boiling hot water was always available, a real lifeline for the long-distance traveller. The toilets were functional and uniquely smelling, although rarely unpleasantly so, being generally kept clean by the diligent Provodnitsa. It was a fairly comfy and likeable environment in which to travel – and a bloody good job too, as I’d be spending over a quarter of my time in Russia on trains – and that evening, tucked up and toasty-warm, I slept wonderfully as we rocked our way to Moscow.

Confusion initally reigned on my arrival into the capital; the ornate station I emerged into was bizarrely an exact brick-by-brick copy of the station I’d left behind in St. Petersburg. I made my way to the metro station, but a confused crowd was buzzing around outside, and there were barriers up and no-entry signs on the doors. Assuming an incident had closed the station, instead I cracked out the map for the thirty minute walk along Moscow’s huge roads of crumbling concrete monstrosities towards the more appealing centre.

I found my way to the hostel I’d picked out and grabbed a bed. Russian bureaucracy dictates that any visitors to the country register within three working days with immigration, but luckily the hostel could do this on my behalf (for a fee, of course). Armed with my temporary registration in case of any entanglements with the Russian fuzz – they like nothing more than to confiscate check the registration documents of tourists for fabricated allegations visa inconsistencies which can lead to a bribe fine – I let myself loose on Moscow, making a beeline for the Kremlin, within ten minutes walk of the hostel.

Gloriously lit as night fell, The Kremlin was immense. I followed its walls and found myself in Red Square – which, er, was more of a rectangle, really – gazing at the magnificent sight of what we know as St. Basil’s Cathedral (although incorrectly, as it turns out; St. Basil’s is just the name of a chapel inside the cathedral, not the whole thing). In contrast to the Kremlin, which had exceeded its dimensions in my mind, St. Basil’s was smaller than expected, but absolutely glorious, even if I couldn’t get out of my head its similarity to a clutch of iced gems.

I spent a lot of the remainder of my time in Moscow traversing the dangerous six-lane highways around the centre. Once I received my visa registration back, I headed south of the centre to a travel agency that spoke English, and managed to book up another wodge of train tickets for my onward journey with the help of a friendly lady called Natalya. (Most people seemed to be called Natalya here.) The journey gave me the chance to take in my fair share of Moscovian pollution as well as see some more of the city away from the tourist bubble. The reality away from the marble pillars of the Kremlin area was grim underpasses selling tat to women called Natalya and stray dogs escaping the cold.

Back at Red Square in the day, I noticed Lenin’s Tomb, in which he lay in a preserved state; but having never bothered to queue for the “privilege” to see Mao in Beijing or Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, I wasn’t about to start now with this particular Communist leader, but instead headed to a nearby typically Russian “canteen” food restaurant to fortify myself with cabbage, beetroot and potato-based goodness.

I hadn’t really taken to Moscow; it felt inaccessible, impersonal and alien. I guess it didn’t help that I had met few other travellers or Russians, apart from Natalya at the agency, and of course not forgetting Natalya and Natalya working at the hostel. I also felt on edge more than I had so far on my travels. It didn’t help knowing that the police needed to be avoided just as much as the criminals.

Whilst I managed to avoid any entanglements with the former category of Russian during my time in Moscow, the same cannot be said about the latter. Whilst walking along a street not far from the Arbat shopping district, I paused to take a photograph of a building on the far side of a typical Moscow six-lane highway. The next thing I knew someone was shouting at me in the street.

“Militski! MILITSKI! Passport! PASSPORT!”

Terrified, I turned to see a Russian guy in a puffer jacket yelling at me. I quickly worked out he was saying he was police and wanted to see my passport. Although shitting myself, I mentally reminded myself of my birthdate and realised that I actually wasn’t born yesterday, and with a lack of uniform, badge or any identifiable signs of being associated with the Filth, this guy wasn’t getting a thing off me. (As an aside, even if a uniformed police officer asks you for your passport in Moscow, you should give them a photocopy; if you give them the real thing they’re likely to hold it to ransom).

With me busy yelling “Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!” at the chap, he grabbed me by the strap of my backpack running across my chest. “Fotoapparat!” he bellowed.

And there it was: I was being mugged for my camera on in broad daylight on a street packed with Russian office workers walking by.

Finally my brain broke away from bleating a constant stream of nyet and I started to speak loudly in the Queen’s English at the people walking by; something terribly lame such as “Help me, I’m being mugged!”. It did the trick though, as the guy released his grip, and I turned and legged it as fast as I could, still very much in possession of my passport and camera, although a fair bit shaken up.

With hindsight, it turns out what I thought was probably just a mugging could also possibly have been a case of healthy Russian paranoia. It is possible the seemingly innocuous building far across the road I was busy snapping was in fact a government or police building, and a concerned Russian citizen took it upon himself to apprehend the “westerner” taking what he could have viewed as “sensitive pictures”. Incidents like this are not unheard of; Western tourists have even been known to have been arrested for taking photographs of innocent structures such as train stations.

I guess I’ll never know what the real reason was. But to say I was glad to leave Moscow later that day was certainly an understatement.