Russia means many things to many people, and most of them are, or at least were at some time, true. The largest country in the world, it crosses eleven time zones, and draws it’s 150 million inhabitants from hundreds of ethnic groups, yet the Russian character is a formidable thing. It prompted Churchill to remark “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”The history of Russia is as turbulent and bloody as it is facinating. It may have spent fourty years as America’s favourite foe, but it has been no stranger to conflict throughout it’s long history. Even now, with war in Chechnya still raging and economic changes coming at a furious pace, Russia has no time to relax.
It was time for me to try and understand the enigma. As a child of the ninties, I have virtually no memory of the Soviet Union, or it’s historic collapse, but as a committed James Bond fan, my preconceived idea of Russia was very much the old Soviet model, though I knew that at heart the country is now as capitalist, if not more so, than the UK. If Soviet Russia is a Lada, then I guess I expected to still see the Lada, but with a BMW engine.
The flight was leaving at five to nine in the morning. Which sounds fine, except it means that in these days of constant fear and terror, you need to be at the airport at 6:30. I set the alarm for 5:45, ignored it completely, and in the end managed to get from bed to car in the seven minutes from 6:31 to 6:38. To make matters worse I was covered in insect bites from the previous weekend spent climbing in Wales.
I’m not entirely sure how I manage to accumulate such extraordinary combinations of good and bad luck. Nothing ever manages to scupper my plans completely, but I’ve suffered enough careless near misses to make me appreciate that this sort of thing is entirely normal. Which is why I wasn’t at all surprised when I couldn’t locate my passport, on the very threshold of the plane itself. A voice from behind me piped up “Are you Andrew Betts?”. I turned, confused, and saw a jolly nice chap holding my passport. “You left it on the bus”. Naturally.
The flight, which I was finally allowed to board by a bemused cabin crew, was uneventful. It was also remarkably empty. We arrived early to find that immigration was efficient, and the bags were already off the carousel and waiting for us, as was our driver. Quite astonishing. And completely unacceptable. Russia’s not allowed to be this efficient, surely? Where were the forkliftsful of paperwork that I must complete in triplicate in order to pass through the door? The airport was interesting though, a sort of eccentric mixture of old and new, mostly old. The ceiling, as promised by our guide book, looked as though it was made out of cake tins.
The driver didn’t speak any english, and he didn’t seem to fancy Russian either. He wordlessly led us out of the terminal and appeared to be heading for a really decrepid Lada that would have been an exciting introduction to Russian motoring, but in the end it was a fairly ordinary Hyundai that spirited us into the city. The driver pulled into the Moscow-bound traffic, and began to systematically carve up every other driver on the road. But that was ok, because they were all too busy doing exactly the same to notice.
Encoutering a bit of stationary traffic, we ducked into a petrol station, whizzed straight past the pumps and out the other side, jumping 30 cars in the process. Of course no-one would let us back in, but no problem, our enterprising driver simply created a new lane just to the right of the actual road.
Suffice to say we arrived in one piece, the most hair-raising maneuver being a U-turn across six lanes of traffic, and checked in to the hotel. The building had been refurbished since it’s construction in the sixties, and was called (in translation) ‘Hotel of the Stars’. Not Hollywood, but of the outer space variety – the district of the city where the hotel lay was dedicated to the Russian space programme. Also nearby was the TV tower, tallest building in the world when it was constructed. I’m always amazed at the ability of the Soviets and their buddies to contruct absolutely monstrous TV towers: this one was only marginally better than the one in East Berlin, which I have previously described as being like a golf ball impaled on a traffic cone.
Our guide arrived while we were checking in. Known as our ‘Beetroot Buddy’ (after the tour, which is called the ‘Beetroot Bus’), his name was Sasha. His job was basically to translate, arrange stuff and make sure we didn’t kill ourselves. He seemed to be quite typically Russian, and looked about 25.
There were photos of the rooms in reception, and they looked great. Not hugely opulent, but with some fairly luxurious features like in-room jaccussi. The actual rooms we ended up with though were predictably basic, clean and functional. Sasha was next door, and the two rooms shared a bathroom, via a sort of mini-lobby. After we’d showered, we went for a walk round the local area, takig in the half constructed monorail, rows and rows of identical apartment tower blocks, a monument to Russian spaceflight, and the wide boulevard leading to the centre of the city.
We stopped for dinner at a local restaurant. I had dumpling soup and kebabs of lamb and chicken. Rob had sorrel soup and chicken fillets. Nice food – I concluded that I would survive.
After dinner the metro took us into town. Our local stop was lit by flouresent tubes, as is customary in metro systems, but arranged into chandeliers, an interesting compromise between grandeur and economy. The train seemed to arrive literally as soon as we stepped onto the platform, doors clattered open just before the train stopped, and a quick glance up and down the train shows no graffiti to be seen. We changed train, emerged in Red Square, and I worked out that I’d just paid about twelve pence for the trip. Puts London’s tube to shame, seeing as a single on the tube doesn’t cost less than about £1.50, and if you want to go outside the centre of the city you have to take out a second mortgage. Anyway, I digress.
Red Square is fantastic. After the bland colouring of the suburban tower blocks and office buildings, this central area is awash with dazzling colours. The Kremlin, St Basil’s Cathedral and the State History Museum all radiated the low sun from almost impossibly red exteriors. In fact the whole place had the feel of being newly constructed, just simply because it was so clean and the colours were so strong.
Returning to the metro via some old wooden roofed buildings and the Federal Duma, Russia’s parliament building, we headed back to the hotel.