Moscow and St. Petes, day by day

Our arrival in Moscow marked the official completion of the full Trans Siberian Railway trip. I'm probably more excited about having done it now than then. I was probably more worried about thieves and maffia swarming me as soon as I stepped out of the rail station! OK, so I wasn't that worried and as it turned out it was easy to bike around (on side streets and side walks) as long as you scrammed at the first sign of a black luxury car. No kidding. Audis, BMWs, and Lexuses(Lexi?) were the favourites. At least some were modded (mechanically altered to go faster) and they would fire along any street with absolute lack of care. At least we could hear them coming...8 cylinders at 6000 rpm is hard to miss. This aspect of Moscow was one of the first I saw and it's one that I'm the most incensed with. I'm sure the consequences for these "elite" people is minimal if they were to hit somebody (cyclist!). It's so extreme that it revolts me. Then you have a whole class of people (in black cars of course) who have these blue lights on their roofs and a distinct horn not unlike a fire engine horn. They just honk and fire up their lights whenever they want people to get out of the way. Don't get me started.

Anyway, after a bit of poking around we found a place to live for a few days and proceeded to enter full-on city tourist mode. We immediately jumped into the metro system and made our way to a market filled with junk. The metro stations are fantastic. Ornate and riddled with socialist artwork. The market itself was OK...mostly filled with "authentic" stuff from the Soviet era. I did manage to find a few little goodies that I'm pretty excited about.

The next day was Kremlin Day! And walking around and Red Square and St. Basils Cathedral...holy cow! So much to see! The Kremlin was awesome, the hightligh of which was the armoury. Filled with gold and silver and expensive stuff...no wonder there was a revolution. I had a similar reaction to when I was in Versailles...wanting to grab the nearest pitchfork and attack the bourgousise! But I'd settle pretty quick if they just gave me that one bowl made from 3 kg of gold...and the Fabergé egg with the mini train inside. Every revolutionary has his price and mine is one little bowl and one egg! Just one little egg....c'mon! Outside, but still in the Kremlin, there was a gigantic cannon (the Tsars cannon) and a giant bronze bell...GIANT! And, of course, a cluster of churches. Red Square...it's not exactly red but if you close your eyes you could still see the nukes being paraded along. And that crazy cathedral-St. Basils. It's wonderful and bizaar...it's real and not a disney land sort of fake church.

The next day we grabbed our bikes and did our own city tour. We managed to find paths and safe routes which we found encouraging. We made our way through Gorky park, along the river, saw the crazy monument to Peter the Great, the 1980 olympic stuff, and got to the university atop a hill with a great view. The university building is a great specimen of the Stalinist neoclassical architecture. In particular the layer cake / ziggurat skyscraper that resembles something from Gotham city. There are 7 such sky scrapers...named the 'seven sisters'. There was an 8th planned but it never got built. Of course, it was to be the biggest EVER! I'm a sucker for these buildings...I love'em. From the university we made our way towards the WWII monument which is an impressive spire. We actually never made it up close due to getting lost a few times. We gave up the search when our particular route was suburbs-projects-park with shady characters-terminating at some spooky railway tracks with a few black SUVs parked. Don't ask how we managed to get that far along without calling it quits. Making our way back to city central we cruised along the famed Arbat Street which didn't seem like it should be that famed..but fun nonetheless. Some more Kremlin and Red Square views capped off the day and we hunkered down for some middle eastern food with belly dancers every half hour. We loved the belly dancers.

A museum day. To start, we saw Lenin's corpse. Yup, an honest to god embalmed Vladimir Lenin laying there peacefully. Admission was free, of course (can you imagine otherwise??), and the tone was serious and dark. On way in we passed by the tombs of a bunch of other socialist big wigs including Uncle Joe. Then off to the Pushkin museums...lots of art, archeologica, and the treasures of Troy. I can't say I'm a big fan of Russian paintings but there were plenty of other works as well. Back on the metro to the space monument, Cosmonaut Alley, and the space museum. Space is pretty cool.

Then the night train to St. Petes. The smallest bike shelf yet combined with a cranky lady in our compartment...oh well, we really didn't care that much. We just muscled in and scraped our bikes into place while she huffed and rolled her eyes. "This is the last time we do this, who gives a crap if she's cranky." It must be Russia wearing off on us.

For me, the first two days in St. Petes were the highlights. The sleep deprivation from the jerks in our hostel had not kicked in yet. As soon as we got our hostel setup we beelined to the Hermitage for opening. It's called the Hermitage because Katherine the Great said something like "I can just come to this place and be a hermit." The place is huge and is chockers with fantastic art and rooms from the tsar era. Absolutely mind boggling. I did have to temporarily suppress the pitchfork urge several times, however.

The next day I bought a small guide that had many of the city's building in it and we cycled around and read about what we saw. Of course, much of what we saw wasn't in the guide and was equally fantastic. We happened upon a graveyard at one point that was basically a forest with tombstones. A very organic and different sort of graveyard. The cycling was easy due to the paths...but stray onto the roads and all bets are off!

We started the next day by bitching about our hostel but figured the money we were saving would soften the blow of the opera AND ballets that were on the agenda. The Peter and Paul fortress had a cathedral with the tombs of many tsars including Peter the Great, Katherine the Great, Nick II, and some other Romanovs. On to St. Isaacs for some more ABC touring. (Terry's acronym for 'another bloody cathedral'!) A neat little photo exhibit made for some nice down time while browsing their book collection before heading to the Mirinsky. Yup, the Mirinsky...you heard me...THE Mirinsky for a ballet.

Next day...I reached burn out. Canned some lofty plans and went to a food market and bought an over priced pickle. That was pretty much all I could handle so I hunkered down and caught up on news and drank coffee. B was a little more enthused but also admitted to enjoy doing nothing for the afternoon. We finished our last night in town with an opera. It was a different theater and the audience was much less touristic and thus more respectful. (and unfortunately for us, better dressed)

And, of course, the train price to Helsinki was much more in comparison to similar distances within Russia. Go Scandinavia! Bye bye Russia! And good bye you bastards at the hostel. One last bike disassemble and package-up to placate a huffy train person only to put them between cars...sheesh...it'd be easier just to have left them assembled. Something about "regulations". Like I said, good-bye Russia!

Moving Westward...Siberia in a nutshell

Irkutsk to Krasnoyarsk was a streamlined overnight ride. It was our first time riding "platzkart" which is the 3rd class sleeper. Until now we've elected (or had no option) for koupe. The difference between the two is basically the number of bunks per carriage and the fact that koupe has a door for each compartment and platzkart does not. In koupe there are 9 cabins, each with 4 bunks. The cabins are arranged on one side of the carriage and a hallway occupies the other side. In platzkart everthing is compressed; there are still 9 compartments along the length of the carriage but the bunks are a little shorter which, along with a narrower hallway, leaves room for an extra 2 bunks per cabin along the other side of the carriage. So along with a more open atmosphere(no door for privacy) and 18 more people you're also more cramped, especially on the upper bunks. For cyclists, however, there is an added benefit in the luggage department. The upper bunks in the 'cabins' have less room in part because there are shelves above them. These shelves are absent in koupe. We could basically slip 2 bikes in from the hallway and bridge it between the two shelves. The particular shelves in the Krasnoyarsk leg were very spacious. The height was more than adequate and the shelves were open to the hallway. Note: this was an older model train.

The highlight of Krasnoyarsk for us was a visit to nearby Stolby park. I had seen a climbing video about this place and it made such an impression that I specifically made this middle Siberian town a must-stop on our trip. Bus loads of people make their way to Stolby every weekend to make a 7km hike to the clumps of rocks aptly named 'Stolby 1', 'Stolby 2', etc.. It was very refreshing to see a city population making such great use of an outdoor area. On these clumps of rocks were the hoards crawling all over like ants. Some taking it slow and with great care and some bounding along like mountain goats. And from the forest one could hear groups of teenagers breaking out in song. A few folks, including Andre who also has a beard and befriended me, climb up and down the steep chimneys without ropes. I've seen (and participated in) solo rock climbing before but this was a little different...it was more wierd! Climbing down a chimney upside down (head first) was something I had not seen. It was half nutty soloing and half showmanship. Another neat thing about Krasnoyarsk was that the main street had Russian music playing all of the time.

After Krasnoyarsk came another train ride to Tomsk. The overhead compartments got a little smaller on this platzkart journey but we had the benefit of being bunked up with a couple guys from California so we could explain in english what the hell we were doing. Tomsk was a nice little city with a relaxed atmosphere. We mainly walked around and looked at stuff, the highlight being the amazing Siberian wooden mansions. The culinary highlight was pancakes with bilberry sauce. We also got lucky with accommodation. Two of the bigger hotels were completely booked up but B charmed one of the receptionists into calling around and we ended up in a really nice small place that was reasonably priced. Tomsk was also the location of our fashion awakening. Having only our grungy cycling pants we continually felt self conscious about our attire. Russian people generally dress as well as they can and we'd routinely get the up and down scan. We reached our breaking point and each bought a pair of jeans at a market. I also bought a cap. We then strolled the walkway along the river and took pictures of each other just like the Russians do!

After Tomsk came a town called Vladimir. The ride was a longer one, two nights in the bunks. Our bunk-mates were a nice older Russian couple. They didn't mind about our bikes hovering above them the whole time and the (large) man was even keen to help load and unload our stuff. When I was initially manoevering the bikes into position with a degree of gentleness he waved me off and proceeded to use his still somewhat formidable power to squish them in. I didn't have the Russian vocab to say that bicycles are not compressible and by the time I made some gestures to be careful the second bike had been excessive-forced into place. Voila, our new best friends! I hope the carriage attendants don't see the scrapes where the metal on metal force relieved the compartment of its newish paint job! Even with limited language skills and not much in common we managed some nice time with these folks. She particularly enjoyed feeding me pancakes that she had made. "Bleen?" she would say. "Da!" I would say nodding and out came the pancakes and home made apple sauce. She did all the food duties for the two of them and the appreciation for it probably faded years ago so that's where I shined. The more she fed me the more I appreciated it (honestly...they were really good!). I'll never forget that look she had on her face as I gobbled one particular pancake while making all sorts of yummy noises and nodding my head...I looked up and it was as if she was in a tanning salon with a smile on her face...basking in the positive feedback like a deer in the headlights! We had a few short stops along the way, 20-30 minutes at various towns. Novosibirsk was long enough to get out and explore the large station and get some yummy cabbage filled grease buns out front. We also zipped over to the railway museum to get a quick look. The guard was rather unimpressed with our approach but when the fact we were Canadian was discovered he rushed off to see if he could get us in ASAP. I think it may be the whole large land mass + northern thing + old hockey rivalry. Anyhow we only managed a 10 second glance and then had to get back to the train. The disembarking at Vladimir was a reversal of the embarking. The duffels were ferried with big-man's assistance and the bikes were ripped from their housing like a bandaid on a hairy leg. After hugs and good-byes we assembled the bikes, dusted off the white paint, and headed into a new town. The next two days were spent exploring Vladimir and Suzdal. Churches. That's what they have to offer! Lots of churches of all shapes and sizes. We also got an unintended bus tour of Vladimir. The hotel guy said "trolley bus number 5" as we left. This would get us to the hub where we could transfer to a bus that would go to Suzdal which was some 30km or so out of town. Along comes a bus with #5 on it so we hop in while making a comment that it wasn't a trolley bus. Well, as it turns out there is a difference and we went on a great loop around the city and eventually arrived where we started. From Vladimir, we took an early morning train to Moscow which only took a few hours. It was a 'hard seat' commuter type train and we put the bikes between cars with no haggling required.