From Russia with love
From the outside, Aeroflot's aging Tupelov 154 looked like it had been worked over with a mallet and some putty filler. Inside, it had all the ambience of an old Intourist Hotel worn-out red carpet, a few buzzing flies and floral seats that were only slightly more faded than the hostesses.
The sink in the toilet had no water. In-flight entertainment was BYO and there was no beer in economy class to calm my nerves. Well, this is the cheapest flight available from Warsaw to Moscow.
And as the big silver dodo shook down the runway, I closed my eyes and quietly accepted the fact that in a couple of minutes I was going to die.
But I didn't. The engines kept humming, the air-conditioning finally kicked in and lunch was served strange meaty morsels, gingerbread biscuits and a large glass of sour Russian wine. The more I drank, the more enjoyable the flight and by the end of my third glass, the descent into Moscow looked beautiful. The forests were verdant, the houses toy-like and the lakes glassy like my eyes. To the distance, peeking through the haze sat Moscow home to almost 10 million people and an embalmed dictator.
"You know," growled the Russian man seated next to me who, minutes earlier, had told me his hobbies were wrestling and powerlifting, "Moscow is a city; not real Russia. If you want see real Russia, you must make visit my home, Siberia. Beautiful."
I wasn't too sure about the personal invitation, but Moscow, just a 2.5-hour flight southeast of Warsaw, is perfect for a weekend getaway the only problem was I had just one day to spend in this sprawling city.
After an inexplicable 20-minute wait in an airport bus on the tarmac, a 40-minute queue at immigration and a two-hour battle with the 3.5 million drivers who cram Moscow's roads daily, I finally arrived at Hotel Katerina at dusk.
At $172 a night for a double room, the "Kat" isn't the cheapest, or the closest hotel, but if all mod cons is your thing, you'll feel at home. There's a Jacuzzi and sauna and river view rooms with satellite TV. I particularly liked the faux English library cum bar full of squeaky leather lounges. The only concern were the $11 gin and tonics I sipped that evening but travel is a learning experience.
The next morning, I discovered life in Moscow can be much cheaper. Take taxis for example: I never managed to see one, let alone catch one. Instead, with time ticking away, I was told the next best thing is to wave at the nearest Lada, haggle (apparently no ride in Moscow should cost more than a couple of dollars) and jump in. Sure, the driver might smell of sausage and stale vodka, but it's cheap, it's dodgy and it's the easiest and fastest way to get about town.
Well, there are two other ways a comfortable guided tour, or do as I did and try tackling the vast Moscow metro. Weeks earlier a terrorist bomb had exploded, but I was undeterred.
Venturing about 40,000 leagues under the earth (the metro was apparently built to double as a nuclear shelter for the masses), beige trains rattle through the network's 150-plus stations. Each stop is a work of art with proletariat-recessed ceilings, gilt relief work, marble columns and bronze statues of Russian military heroes. At just 10 cents a ride, it's a great way to get about if I ever get used to the dyslexia-inducing Cyrillic alphabet. Fortunately, my traveling buddies had a smattering of Russian, otherwise my four-stop ride could have turned in to an all-day epic. But I'm sure sooner or later someone would have helped me or mugged me because my red Gore-Tex jacket stood out like a sore thumb among the gray-clad Muscovite commuters.
Alighting at Ploschchad Revolyutsii station, I found myself outside the gates of Red Square resplendent with new concrete roadblocks to deter copycat crazies from emulating the recent metro bombing. This was the Moscow I had seen beamed to me on the nightly TV news. There was the Kremlin and the lolly-like domes of St. Basil's Cathedral. Within walking distance was the Bolshoi Theater, the stunning State History Museum and the delightfully named GUM the 19th century state department store where babushkas once queued at near-empty shops for bread, and where nowadays Mafia molls buy chinchilla furs and couture fashion.
Without one dehumanizing communist block of apartments in sight, the only one way to describe this vibrant area, with it's picture-book red brick walls, butter-yellow turreted buildings and whimsical church domes, is perfect. Even the guards, with their green and red-trim uniforms and giant peaked caps, looked like extras on a movie set rather than the real McCoy.
There were vodka-swilling Rasputin look-alike monks begging for money not actors posing for tourist photos as I first thought. And nearby, as if directed by Hollywood, a man yelped down a megaphone and his audience, their hammer and sickle flags flying, cheered appreciatively on cue. It could have been an Amway seller's convention for all I knew, but gee, it looked authentic.
The only thing not immediately obvious to me, the harried Moscow daytripper, was Lenin's tomb in Red Square. It's easily mistaken for a rather grand public toilet, not a shrine for the instigator of the Bolshevik revolution and its 70 years of misery and murder. But this black and red marble-lined mausoleum has been Lenin's resting place since his death in 1924.
From 10 a.m.-1 p.m., tourists and locals can pay their respects for free any day except Monday and Friday, when I suspect Lenin has a standing appointment with his mortician. It was interesting to see a group of young Russian soldiers curl up their noses at the sight of Lenin's waxy head and hands poking out from his black suit, just like I did, while an old lady, her chest heavy with war medals, treated her visit with reverence, stopping at Lenin's feet to move her lips in silent prayer.
No one stays there for long, not when there are gun wielding guards to hurry you along. I suspect they're worried someone might discover that Lenin is no more than a plaster cast, his real body cremated to dust during one of Stalin's paranoid fits.
Despite all this talk of death, a quick bite to eat followed at a nearby Italian restaurant. I'm sorry to say but not one morsel of traditional Russian food passed my lips (at least I avoided the six McDonald's in downtown Moscow). Then, with just a couple of hours of daylight left, I jumped back on the metro, alighting at Arbatskaya. This marks the beginning of Ulica Arbat, a 1.25 kilometer pedestrian mall, filled with dozens of stalls selling cute wooden Christmas decorations; Russian babushka scarves; submarine clocks (guaranteed not to be from the Kursk); army paraphernalia and shelves of those ubiquitous wooden matryoshka dolls your essential souvenir items.
With the friendliest sellers this side of the Moscow River, I had no problem handing over my roubles and kopecks, only to see the same one-of-a-kind, hand-painted trinket, 50 meters down the road, going for half the price. But in this frontier city, foreigners are fair game. One of my traveling companions forked out $150 for a Moscow haircut during her visit, albeit a very nice one.
"It was the same stylist who cuts Mrs. Putin's hair, you know," she said proudly. And judging by the big black limousines and the armed bodyguards she saw waiting outside the shop, it probably was.
