Moscow

We arrived in Moscow at 1 am on Monday morning.  By the time we got through customs and were settled in our hotel room it was just past 2 am in the morning.  We were asked to be ready to go at 6 in the morning.  We set our alarm for 5 am.  The sun rose at about 4 in the morning, so we ended up with just over 2 hours of interrupted sleep.  Our guide arrived a bit early and we were on the road by 6 am.  Our guide informed us that our train did not leave until after 11 pm that evening.

Our first stop was at Lomonosov University overlooking the Olympic park.  The western world boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics games in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  It's interesting to see how Geo-politics has changed over the years, and it is now the US in Afghanistan.  Following that we drove to the most recognized location in Moscow.  We arrived at the Kremlin and Red Square just after 7 am.

View of St. Basil through a gate to Red Square.

As a child of the Cold War, I remember watching documentaries of the Soviet Military parades through the Red Square displaying the Soviet might.  It was a bit eerie, standing at was the center of hard line communism.  After taking pictures from all angles we were able to ride the Moscow subway.  All the stations are unique and extremely ornate.

Station in the Moscow Subway.

It is fast and very extensive.  Now I see how Prague ended up with such a nice subway system.  Everywhere you look there are still signs of Soviet Russia.  We saw statues of Karl Marx, Lenin and memorials to former presidents, cosmonauts, war heroes, and famous Soviet artists.  It is still common place to see the hammer and sickle in addition to a red star, both symbols of communism.  The equality of poverty is the natural result of a communistic system.  With the fall of communism Moscow now has one worlds most dense populations of the uber wealthy.  We went to the Gum mall located in Red Square.  This is the equivalent of shopping in Beverly Hill, on 5th Avenue in New York, in London or in Paris.  But this wealth is reserved for a handful of people.  Governmental corruption and individual depravity keep the vast number of Russians in poverty.  Then we went to St. Basil's Cathedral.  This is the single most iconic symbol people recognize when they think of Russia.  It was more compact than I expected but still very ornate both outside and in.  I was just as impressed with The Cathedral of Christ the Savior.  What is more amazing is that it was built in less than 5 years in the mid 1990's after the Soviet Union dissolved.  The plot of land it occupies has an interesting history.  Stalin wanted to build a monument to himself there, which would have been the tallest building in the world at the time.  It would have been topped with a statue of himself upon which helicoper could land in the palm of his hand.  Stalin wanted to unite his country as one people.  In order to do this he wanted to eliminate any sense of national group identity.  His means to accomplish this was to eliminate religion and integrate the people through forced relocation.  This plan was preempted by the start of World War II.  I find ironic that rather than it being a monument to atheism and communism it is a monument religious in nature.  Afterward we went to a local cemetery where a lot of national celebrities are interred.  Then we went to Arbat Street, a pedestrian shopping district. i  There we ate dinner, I had borscht and Russian ice cream.

To finish out the day, we made our way to Yaroslavski train station.  Nearby we made our final food purchases because we did not know what to expect on the train.  Our guide prepared us for both extremes.  Either next to nothing will be available, or our conditions could be quite normal.  What you end up with is pure luck of the draw.  Since I do not subscribe to luck, I prefer to say that it is ordained by His providence.  In the late evening waiting for our train to arrive we we're all exceedingly tired.  We are running on about 2 hours sleep in the last 40 hours.  Prior to boarding the train I made a final bathroom visit.  There I was greeted by squatty potties.  I felt like I was back in Uganda or in the jungles of Peru.  Finally our train arrived and we boarded our home for the next 77 hours.  We departed just before midnight Monday evening.