jeudi 4 novembre 2010
First day in Moscow
14:10 | 
Publié par
Benoit |
After a quite boring flight from Nice to Moscow (I love as much Germans as I find their beers tasteless) we landed in Domodedovo airport on time. A little bit of stress at the visa control where a nice lady was staring at her screen with a smile, pressing for I do not know which reason what I guessed was her arrow down on her keyboard for the hundredth time. Maybe she was actually playing Tetris as Yann said…
We withdrew our first thousands Rubles and were then ready to get the shuttle bus to the closest metro station where we were supposed to meet our Couchsurfing host for the next 5 nights. As planned we waited in the closest McDonalds. Good news: a Big Mac is called a Big Mac in Russia. Bad news: even ordering a Big Mac is complicated as no one seems to speak a word of English…
Alexey finally showed up after 2 hours as he had to work later than forecasted (which is actually cool as we had time to credit our Skype account as we do not have a Russian sim card so far) an there we went a yet another not-public-but-not-private-bus in which the person who is sitting behind the driver becomes his personal assistant. The bus is doing his usual tour, except there is no actual stop. Just waive and the bus driver will drop you off immediately. To finish with the transports in Moscow, we took the metro on the next day. It is a pretty normal metro that you can expect in any capital, except for one thing: fraud is a national sport. There is a guard at every entrance, and an alarm rings every time someone jumps over the fence. The guard would then whistle and… that is it. No running, no calling for someone… only whistling. Strange (after a small discussion with Alexey while I am writing this, the guard HAS to whistle otherwise she will get fined because she did not call the police…)
Our first priority was to find a transsiberian train ticket to Irkutsk. After we realized we could not make international purchase with our credit card without a phone, we went to the train station were Alexei kindly helped us to purchase them for a decent price in 3rd class (75 EUR each for a 4 days trip). Departure is planned on Monday 8 around midnight.
We then took a metro to the Kremlin where we discovered that both the Red Square and the Saint Basil’s church were closed (the whole Kremlin area actually). We therefore decided to walk to the first ring of Moscow (there are 4 rings in Moscow) and make a small tour. I have no idea if actually make it to the first ring or to the second ring, but one thing is for sure we did walk a lot this afternoon (around 7 hours). We ended up visiting the amazing cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Lots of gold in this very recently fully rebuilt cathedral (2000), and a different way of praying to discover (I need to find out where the Hell they hide the chairs, as they were none in the whole room).
The night felt down as we ended up our visit, and as the rain had almost stopped (I forgot to mention that it was raining all day long) we headed back to the Kremlin which was finally opened. Even though the church was still closed, we were able to go through the Red square which happens to be one of the most beautiful square I have seen so far (if anyone from Nancy is reading: yes, it is better than the place Stanislas).
To conclude: a huge thank you to our host and guide Alexey for helping us !
That’s all for the day… Talk to you later, we need to sleep
Benoit
PS: By the way, the time difference with Paris is 2 hours.
We withdrew our first thousands Rubles and were then ready to get the shuttle bus to the closest metro station where we were supposed to meet our Couchsurfing host for the next 5 nights. As planned we waited in the closest McDonalds. Good news: a Big Mac is called a Big Mac in Russia. Bad news: even ordering a Big Mac is complicated as no one seems to speak a word of English…
Alexey finally showed up after 2 hours as he had to work later than forecasted (which is actually cool as we had time to credit our Skype account as we do not have a Russian sim card so far) an there we went a yet another not-public-but-not-private-bus in which the person who is sitting behind the driver becomes his personal assistant. The bus is doing his usual tour, except there is no actual stop. Just waive and the bus driver will drop you off immediately. To finish with the transports in Moscow, we took the metro on the next day. It is a pretty normal metro that you can expect in any capital, except for one thing: fraud is a national sport. There is a guard at every entrance, and an alarm rings every time someone jumps over the fence. The guard would then whistle and… that is it. No running, no calling for someone… only whistling. Strange (after a small discussion with Alexey while I am writing this, the guard HAS to whistle otherwise she will get fined because she did not call the police…)
Our first priority was to find a transsiberian train ticket to Irkutsk. After we realized we could not make international purchase with our credit card without a phone, we went to the train station were Alexei kindly helped us to purchase them for a decent price in 3rd class (75 EUR each for a 4 days trip). Departure is planned on Monday 8 around midnight.
We then took a metro to the Kremlin where we discovered that both the Red Square and the Saint Basil’s church were closed (the whole Kremlin area actually). We therefore decided to walk to the first ring of Moscow (there are 4 rings in Moscow) and make a small tour. I have no idea if actually make it to the first ring or to the second ring, but one thing is for sure we did walk a lot this afternoon (around 7 hours). We ended up visiting the amazing cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Lots of gold in this very recently fully rebuilt cathedral (2000), and a different way of praying to discover (I need to find out where the Hell they hide the chairs, as they were none in the whole room).
The night felt down as we ended up our visit, and as the rain had almost stopped (I forgot to mention that it was raining all day long) we headed back to the Kremlin which was finally opened. Even though the church was still closed, we were able to go through the Red square which happens to be one of the most beautiful square I have seen so far (if anyone from Nancy is reading: yes, it is better than the place Stanislas).
To conclude: a huge thank you to our host and guide Alexey for helping us !
That’s all for the day… Talk to you later, we need to sleep
Benoit
PS: By the way, the time difference with Paris is 2 hours.
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9 commentaires:
J'ai le primer commentaire! Okay, I have not had enough to drink today, so that is all the French I can do at the moment. I am glad you guys are there safely. Looking forward to hearing more.
Ah, you might not know who Luxembourgermeister is, my dear Benoit. It's Lesley.
Love the pictures !!! Have fun :)
About those chairs: you know, in orthodox churches there are no chairs, the principle is that you're there to participate (and therefore stand) and not to watch a show :)
Enjoy the rest!
@ Luxmeister (too long): of course we know it is Lesley :), I knew it from the first line :))
@ Paula: I thought in orthodox churches you were supposed to mostly kneel :)
@ Benoit: finally i see you are alive and well :), big hugs from Geneva!...funny post: "where the Hell they hide the chairs" :)) LOL
en francais,j'aimerais bien!!!!!!!!!
Moi aussi !!
Florence
nono, pas d'accord, en anglais :)
@ Maman & Flo : J'essaierai de faire un peu de francais, mais ca me prend deja pas mal d'heures avant de dormir de faire ca...
@ Luxembourgmesister : Thanks, we keep you at the first place of our fan club
@ Paula : I assumed so... and I drank Kvass by the way !
@ Diane & Maria : Thanks ! Take care !
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