Relentless is the best way to describe train No 69. After three nights and two and a half days from Irkutsk we are now just 1100km East of Moscow with about 18 hours left to travel on this, our final leg from China. The Trans-Siberian is the life-blood of the hundreds of villages, towns and cities that are strung out along the track. Stops are frequent, but even with stops of over an hour in the largest cities, we still keep a fairly constant rate of 1200 kms per 24 hours. That's roughly 50 kph, which translates to a day-time travel speed of 100 kph for a 12 hour day. Have we been on this train too long? Not only have we done amazing calculations like the one above, but we have counted down many a "mile" post to capture important features like the official Western boundary of Siberia at the 2102 km post and the most Northern town, Kirov, at 956, which is coming up in exactly 74 kms. Oh yes! We HAVE been on this train for far too long!
5 October, Vega Hotel, Moscow
What a surprise. Moscow is an amazing city! Our perceived ideas on Moscow couldn't have been more wrong. It is modern, clean and sophisticated, while retaining its historical origins - surprising given the Soviet tendencies to demolish same.
Our first outing was by subway to the historical heart of the city - Red Square, site of spectacular military parades during the Soviet era, as well as revolution and the massing of troops prior to mobilization to the Front in the Great War. Red Square is one of those places you feel you have been to before, simply because you have seen its image so often. Our first duty was to complete the trilogy of (dead) great Communist leaders of the 20th century. We have visited Uncle Ho (twice), Mao and now Lenin. The queue was nowhere near as long as we experienced in Hanoi or Beijing. The great Communist leader looks well, given he has been dead for 90 years, after dying at 53 of a massive stroke.
Leaving the tomb, we walked across the square to the famous Gum department store to meet our guide. She had been late arriving at our hotel, so we had taken off without her. The Gum is just incredible. For those who know the Queen Victoria building in Sydney, think of something of a similar style, but 10 times bigger!
As the day brightened following a dull start, the good folk of Moscow came out in their droves to experience a spectacular Autumn day. We walked for most of the day, getting a great feel for the city. The area of green space is surprising for a city of this size.
We are fairly adept at managing subway systems. No, we are very good at it! But Moscow's system has had us scratching our heads. There is no English signage, not always a game breaker where colours and numbers are used to identify lines. But, while Moscow uses this system, the big flaw is its use of different station names at transfer stations. On one line the transfer station might be 'A' and on the intersecting line it could be 'Z'. Difficult to explain, but those who are familar with subway systems will see the problem. Never mind, we have only been lost once so far.
Our thirst for Impressionist art was well satisfied by the Pushkin Gallery of American and European Art. Floor after floor display the greats, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir - to name a few, many probably not often seen by Westerners. The source of this great collection is reputed to be the confiscated private collections of rich Russians.
7 October, Sapsan train 758
Sapsan is the Russian version of the German ICE, (high speed train). We are "on the rails again", heading for St Petersburg, a 4 1/2 hour journey at 250 kph, a pleasant change after the Trans-Sib.
Moscow has been a real eye-opener for us. Yesterday we spent most of the day in the Kremlin. Far from the mysterious centre of President Reagan's "evil empire", the Kremlin Fortress has preserved Russian's imperial and religious history. We had imagined that most of the artifacts from the Tsarist era would have been looted by the Communists. Instead, five well-preserved Orthodox churches stand proud in their gilded glory. All contain priceless Icons and other religious and historical relics. The Kremlin Armoury, however, was the real thrill for us. Room after room of priceless items from the collections of the Russian Tsars rivalled, even exceeded, anything we have seen before.
As the outer suburbs of Moscow slip past us at close to 200 kph, thousands of small dacha (Russian holiday cottages) fill the flats, giving the area the appearance of an enormous miniature city. These small plots are similar to the allotments so much loved by the English, a place for city folk to re-connect with a rural past.
Our Sapsan pulled into St Petersburg right on schedule at 1800. We had a bit of a haul to our hotel through crowded, rush-hour streets. Our packs felt like they weighed a ton by the time we staggered through the hotel doors, but we were gazumped by a bus-load of French tourists, who crammed the lobby, leaving us huddled in a corner. All was well, though, as Paul had time to duck off to the supermarket for a few beers.
8 October, Dostoevsky Hotel, St Petersburg.
Toddlers, like our 18 month old grandson, Jack, often contribute to the family vocabulary as they grapple with language. Jack's contribution to our lexicon includes the phrase "Oh wooow!", which is his way of expressing amazement. As a result, we have been "oh wooow'ing" our way around St Petersburg today. To us, St Petersburg is to Moscow as Shanghai is to Beijing. Moscow is fabulous, modern and go-ahead, St Petersburg is cosmopolitan and exciting, with an historical grandeur that is obvious as soon as you take to the streets. Wander along the main drag, Nevsky Prospekt and you will be drawing breath at every corner. What is most amazing is that the city has been almost totally destroyed several times by fire and war.
As Leningrad, the city was beseiged by the Germans in WWII and almost totally levelled. More than a million people died of starvation during the seige. Today, there is little to recall this difficult past. St Petersburg renamed itself after 1989 and seems to have moved on, re-building and looking forward rather than back to the horrors of the past.
Most of our day was spent in the Hermitage Palace. Once the home of the Tsars of Russia, today, an enormous art gallery rivalling the Louvre in sheer size. We spent more than three hours just hitting the highlights. Despite our heavy dose of culture at the Hermitage, we decided to also check out the Russian Museum of Art. Very few of the artists were known to us, but there were many great pieces reflecting past and present Russian life. Unlike most European art, Russian art is not heavily religious in orientation. At least what is left on display is not. What a relief!
We leave Russia in a couple of days and it has to be said that, for us, travelling here has really been no more difficult than getting about in any other country where we don't speak the language. Which is most countries! The added complexity here is the Cyrillic script, few English speakers and the lack of signage in English. None of these have stopped us - just caused us minor grief and mild panic when catching trains! Talk of corrupt police stalking tourists and bureaucratic hitches with documents has, for us, been just that, but we did a lot of research and came well prepared. We haven't met any Westerners who are travelling independently in Russia, but we are sure there are many. In short, if we came to Russia again, we would probably do it all ourselves, rather than using travel agents to organise parts of our trip. We have a strong suspicion that agents over-dramatise the difficulties of travelling in Russia to scare travellers into using their services, often at outrageous mark-ups.
9 October, Dostoevksy Hotel, St Petersburg.
Walked around 15 km through the city today. Dreary, but no rain. The similarities between St Petersburg and Shanghai were exposed to us today when we visited the Peter and Paul Fortress. Both cities are superbly located trading cities. Both hosted foreign trading enclaves that operated fairly independently. The real clincher is the common appearance of the waterfronts of both cities. The solid 19th century trading houses line the rivers in both cities are remarkably similar.
Probably the most important part of the Fortress is the burial place of the Romanovs in the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral. Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks following the 1917 revolution. Their bodies were secretly buried and not re-interred until 1998.
Much of the history of St Petersburg has revolved around the Fortress, from the early battles with the Swedes in the 17th Century, through to the seige of Leningrad during WWII.
We really enjoyed the city history display that featured the development of St Petersburg from ancient times through to the early 20th Century.
The Fortress' prison was used through until the 1920s and hosted many of the main characters of the Decembrist Revolution of 1825 and the more successful Bolshevik revolution of November 1917. Trotsky, for example, was imprisoned here, as were some of the Decembrist plotters whose homes-in-exile, we had visited in Irkutsk.
Just a side line: we watch a lot of English language TV when we travel. UK TV, Russian English language TV, German DW TV etc and what amazes us is the number of Australian journalists featured on all these channels. It must be a big tick for the media programs offered by Australian Universities.
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