Moscow Tour
3 July 2008- Thursday
It was a 7:00 a.m. wake up for bags out at 8:00 a.m. and a buffet breakfast at the hotel. The bags were picked up and taken to the railroad station where, after breakfast we were loaded on separate busses and for the remainder of the trip, I was designated as bus 4 with Katya as our group leader. There were 30 of us on a large bus so there was plenty of room and proceeded to tour Moscow. The weather was superb and it looked like the city had just been washed by the thunderstorm and everything looked pretty elegant. Of course the big thing was to ride around the Kremlin and Red Square since we were not able to go through Red Square with a bus and we did get some good views of St. Basil’s church. By the way, a Kremlin tour was included in this trip except for the fact that the Kremlin was closed on the day we were there and as a result we substituted a cemetery at a local convent. In the meanwhile, we did get to see Moscow University, which is one of Stalin’s tall skyscrapers and we did get to see the reconstruction of the main cathedral in Moscow which had been dismantled by the Bolsheviks and Stalin’s plans were to build a huge skyscraper in its place, however, they ran out of cement because of the outbreak of the Nazi invasion and therefore converted this to a swimming pool which in the 1990s was taken apart and the old cathedral was rebuilt, however, gold had become too expensive to guild the domes and it is obvious this is a newly built cathedral because of the difference in the color of the dome. We also saw Peter the Great’s memorial on the 400th anniversary of his birth but it seems that the artist was the same one who competed for the anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America and so essentially what it is is the head of Peter the Great on the 15th century Spanish sailor’s costume sitting in the middle of a river. After touring the convent, we went to the adjacent cemetery where a number of Russian overlords were buried including some of their famous writers such as Chekhov and the wife of Stalin who committed suicide, Gorbechev’s wife and finally Christov’s memorial which is extremely interesting in that it is Christov’s head in between a black stone and white stone to show that the area of turbulence in which he served as the premier. The Alson’s memorial was also there, which was a huge slab made of three different colors of stone which are the white, red and blue of their Russian flag and it appears to be waving. This is a place where you can probably spend many more hours than when we did in our short, quick walk, but we had to get to the train station on time for our departure. We got there in plenty of time and were standing on the train station’s platform as the train pulled in. It was much longer than I expected it to be and, finally located my car, car 10, and my cabin which was number 6. so without too much difficulty the luggage was located and transferred to the train and my suitcase and I were reunited which I quickly unpacked into a very small closet. The cabin wasn’t very big but certainly plenty big enough for me. It had an upper and lower bunk and, of course, the upper bunk never being used. There was a flat screen TV and the lower bunk converted into a six and a half foot couch. There was a small table next to the window which was supplied with bottled water and vodka. The bathroom was ingenious in that it had a chemical toilet consisting of a vacuum purge for which the control button was located across the bathroom to the right of the mirror and obviously put there so that people didn’t flush this vacuum toilet while they were sitting on it as I’m sure it would produce a catastrophe if that were to happen. The shower was in the middle and looked like it would soak everything however, a well planned shower curtain was placed around this area to protect both the sink and the toilet, so it was easy to take a shower without wetting down the entire room. Local investigation being accomplished, I decided to explore the train and found that I was two cars away from a dining car followed by a kitchen car, followed by another dining car and then, eventually, the bar car which was overstuffed of furniture which had very few books, but there were a couple of CDs and DVDs one of which was a Chinese movie called Genghis Kahn which I scarfed up immediately. I asked the bartender if I could look at his selection of postcards and I checked those out. They were a pretty sparse lot and did secure a few stamps from him as well. The train left the station about half an hour after we boarded and we were on our way. Dinner was a fine example of what we were to expect which included all the wine you could drink, bottled water, and a three course meal usually consisting of a salad, soup or both, a meat or vegetarian meal and a dessert. The first night the food was delicious and it looked like we were in for a good time as the train departed the Moscow station for Kazan.
It was a 7:00 a.m. wake up for bags out at 8:00 a.m. and a buffet breakfast at the hotel. The bags were picked up and taken to the railroad station where, after breakfast we were loaded on separate busses and for the remainder of the trip, I was designated as bus 4 with Katya as our group leader. There were 30 of us on a large bus so there was plenty of room and proceeded to tour Moscow. The weather was superb and it looked like the city had just been washed by the thunderstorm and everything looked pretty elegant. Of course the big thing was to ride around the Kremlin and Red Square since we were not able to go through Red Square with a bus and we did get some good views of St. Basil’s church. By the way, a Kremlin tour was included in this trip except for the fact that the Kremlin was closed on the day we were there and as a result we substituted a cemetery at a local convent. In the meanwhile, we did get to see Moscow University, which is one of Stalin’s tall skyscrapers and we did get to see the reconstruction of the main cathedral in Moscow which had been dismantled by the Bolsheviks and Stalin’s plans were to build a huge skyscraper in its place, however, they ran out of cement because of the outbreak of the Nazi invasion and therefore converted this to a swimming pool which in the 1990s was taken apart and the old cathedral was rebuilt, however, gold had become too expensive to guild the domes and it is obvious this is a newly built cathedral because of the difference in the color of the dome. We also saw Peter the Great’s memorial on the 400th anniversary of his birth but it seems that the artist was the same one who competed for the anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America and so essentially what it is is the head of Peter the Great on the 15th century Spanish sailor’s costume sitting in the middle of a river. After touring the convent, we went to the adjacent cemetery where a number of Russian overlords were buried including some of their famous writers such as Chekhov and the wife of Stalin who committed suicide, Gorbechev’s wife and finally Christov’s memorial which is extremely interesting in that it is Christov’s head in between a black stone and white stone to show that the area of turbulence in which he served as the premier. The Alson’s memorial was also there, which was a huge slab made of three different colors of stone which are the white, red and blue of their Russian flag and it appears to be waving. This is a place where you can probably spend many more hours than when we did in our short, quick walk, but we had to get to the train station on time for our departure. We got there in plenty of time and were standing on the train station’s platform as the train pulled in. It was much longer than I expected it to be and, finally located my car, car 10, and my cabin which was number 6. so without too much difficulty the luggage was located and transferred to the train and my suitcase and I were reunited which I quickly unpacked into a very small closet. The cabin wasn’t very big but certainly plenty big enough for me. It had an upper and lower bunk and, of course, the upper bunk never being used. There was a flat screen TV and the lower bunk converted into a six and a half foot couch. There was a small table next to the window which was supplied with bottled water and vodka. The bathroom was ingenious in that it had a chemical toilet consisting of a vacuum purge for which the control button was located across the bathroom to the right of the mirror and obviously put there so that people didn’t flush this vacuum toilet while they were sitting on it as I’m sure it would produce a catastrophe if that were to happen. The shower was in the middle and looked like it would soak everything however, a well planned shower curtain was placed around this area to protect both the sink and the toilet, so it was easy to take a shower without wetting down the entire room. Local investigation being accomplished, I decided to explore the train and found that I was two cars away from a dining car followed by a kitchen car, followed by another dining car and then, eventually, the bar car which was overstuffed of furniture which had very few books, but there were a couple of CDs and DVDs one of which was a Chinese movie called Genghis Kahn which I scarfed up immediately. I asked the bartender if I could look at his selection of postcards and I checked those out. They were a pretty sparse lot and did secure a few stamps from him as well. The train left the station about half an hour after we boarded and we were on our way. Dinner was a fine example of what we were to expect which included all the wine you could drink, bottled water, and a three course meal usually consisting of a salad, soup or both, a meat or vegetarian meal and a dessert. The first night the food was delicious and it looked like we were in for a good time as the train departed the Moscow station for Kazan.
Labels: Trans Siberian RR
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