20 east

As we’re trying to get away to Mazury for the next few days I need to rush a little so I hope you don’t mind if I don’t insert hot-links for the pictures. You can find them all in the Moscow gallery where you can get a larger size.

As the May Day holiday period is here, there were a lot of decorations being erected:

At Pushkin square

and at Red Square

Here’s Pushkin square again with the cinema in the background

Off to Red Square, here’s a the view with Red Square behind me looking towards Tverskaya and the National Hotel:

coming up to Red Square

Have your photo taken with Lenin and some General

Red Square is a big place!

and a popular place for wedding photos, you see this happening almost every time you’re there

Had to be a shot of St Basil’s, from the back this time

Then time to sit outside GUM at a cafe for pancakes and berries with a view of Lenin and St Basil;

Inside GUM, first time for me, is a massive shopping arcade

and here is what the Russians will be wearing when you meet them on holiday this year!

Finally, it’s off back to the stunningly beautiful (inside and out) Sheremtyevo 2 airport for the flight home

Hi there, travel fans!

I’m back from another Moscow trip. To be in Moscow when the weather is great is very unusual for me, but this week the sun was shining and temperature was around 20C. It just didn’t feel right!

The high temperature, little wind and tall buildings don’t help to dissipate the fumes from the millions of cars, most of them gas guzzling exhaust fume monsters. The air quality in Moscow must be amongst the world’s worst. It really was a breath of fresh air to return to Warsaw. I know that to all Poles, Warsaw is “the big city” but compared to Moscow, Warsaw is a small country village with fresh air, few cars and everything on a very easily managed scale. It’s nice to be back.

Conversations I had on this trip included;

“Is Putin gay?” – the answer was howls of laughter. “He’s married, he’s got two kids”, they said. I said I’d never seen them, all I’ve seen is him doing his bare-chested gay horse riding routine and prancing around on stage with his new best mate wearing leather trousers. “Russia is a man’s country, women are not important.”, I was told. “If anyone even thought for a second he was gay, he’d disappear”. I asked if ticking the “be nice to gays” box wasn’t important to be considered a civilised country these days. “Not in Russia”, was the answer. So, there you have it, on good authority, Putin is not gay and neither is anyone else in Russia!

We visited the building site and I saw, like I always see in Russia, a female plasterer up a ladder plastering the ceilings. “You see, women ARE important after all! Without women, this country would be unplastered!”. They had to concede my point, although nobody had ever noticed this before. I explained that in the UK, you don’t see many women labouring on building sites. They found this strange.

I was asked the question, “Do Polish people hate Russians?”. Not wishing to be an Ambassador for Poland I tried to waffle around but it didn’t work. “I think the younger generation are cool about Russians but you can’t expect the older people to forget the hardships of living under Soviet rule.”. “But that was the Soviets, not Russians. We all had the same problems here!”. I found that hard to argue about so I just said “Well, for most people in the world, the Soviets and Russians are hard to separate.”. They then explained, tongue in cheek, that everything was the German’s fault because Marx and Engels and so on were Germans and they invented the whole stupid idea. We did agree that for most of the country-dwelling folk in both Poland and Russia the old days were better.

“If you’ve been to Russia a few times, why didn’t you ever stay here?”, was another awkward question. “Because, to be honest, I don’t really like it here.”, I said. “What don’t you like?”, they pressed. “This place only really has one attraction and that is money. As money does not turn me on, it is therefore not an attractive place for me to live because I’d have to put up with the traffic, the lack of oxygen, the difficulty getting anything done, the ostentatious rich people with their big cars and flashy training shoes, the not terribly great food, the high prices, the stuck-up ex-pat communities, the 3 hour drive to work……..and so on.”. “I agree, but what about the people?”, they kept going. “The only people I have met here and didn’t like, were most of the ex-pats. The people who are only here to try and get rich quick. Those people, generally, are not people I want to meet again. The majority of Russian people I have met here, have been very nice.”. “Yes, I know what you mean.”, she said. “The trouble is that Russians like foreign people but sometimes the wrong ones! As for the Russians, it is said that each individual Russian is a nice person but when you put them all together it becomes something not so nice. I think there is something in that.”.

All this while being driven, at zero speed, across town by a Turk in a shiny new Range Rover!