As we had breakfast on our last day in Russia, I looked forward to a nice bowl of cereal. Sad I know, but I like a bit of certainty about my breakfast experience.
Lacking any real Soviet history from our trip, we headed for the museum of modern history. Sasha knew very little about this, and it was barely a footnote in our lonely planet guide – just a note indicating that it had a good gift shop – so we weren’t expecting much, but we were seriously impressed.
Unfortunately no photos were allowed, but the museum started with a large portrait of Putin and a gallery of flags which we assumed to be Russian State flags since we didn’t recognise any of them. The next room jumped back to the 19th century, with a wooden house recreation. Three or four rooms covered the tsar period leading up to the 1905 revolution. We had seen loads of this stuff already.
The next room was 1905 to 1917, the many revolutions.
Finally we came to 1917 to world war two, three rooms about the development of communism and the USSR. Two rooms were on world war two and the postwar years including a fantastic video of a victory parade made after the war and thick with Soviet propaganda messages.
The gift shop was as good as promised. It was in a back room and poorly organized, attended by a woman who clearly resented customers, but was an absolute goldmine of genuine Soviet memorabilia including original propaganda posters. We were turfed out at closing time, and just had time to get back to the hotel, check out, and head for the airport.
The emigration process was significantly harder than it’s immigration counterpart. It seems they’re happy to let you in but much more reluctant to let you leave. There were four stages to it, starting with a woman who made sure you had all the right documents and then gave you a stamp to show that you did. Then one behind a desk with a proper glass screen (which clearly made him more important) who studied the photo, and stamped the passport. Then a final customs clearance step before security – but they were all refreshingly manned by staff who seemed quite friendly. So friendly, in fact, that when the x-ray operator found a 3” penknife in my hand luggage, he sympathised about the difficulty of remembering what not to pack where, and dropped it back in the bag, saying “Don’t take it out on the plane, or it will be difficult”.
Which kind of sums up Russia really. They might drink too much and have corrupt police and a terrible taste in music, but they cut the crap and get stuff done.