15th July 1992 Day 361

The Diary

St Basil's

Breakfast was the usual Russian farce. No one seemed to know where it was, it opened half-an-hour late, it was the usual bread and cheese & they tried to charge me. I caught the metro to Red Square, (smaller than I'd imagined), visited Lenin, bumped into Dave & Amy, had a look around the GUM department store (I don't think Boyes need worry!), wandered around the river side of the Kremlin up to the huge swimming pool, which was empty & then up to the Dom Knigi, Moscow's best bookstore. Russians can't be big readers. Pathetic. I suppose it was on a par with other Russian shops. Just about empty. Everyone seems to buy (& sell) at little impromptu stalls in the streets. Not a place to come Xmas shopping. 

GUM

Len's Tomb

The Hokey Cokey

  

Red Square

Kremlin

Kremlin

Red Square

St Basil's

Kremlin

 I visited McDonalds again & then headed to the Kremlin where I bumped into Dave & Amy again. The Kremlin was very nice but apparently I missed out by not going to the armory. That's what happens when you haven't got a guide book. I then went & had a look inside St Basils & then went back to the hotel for a kip.

The World's biggest bell

Len in the Kremlin

At 6.30 I met the others at Pizza Hut for a Trans-Mongolian reunion - 16 of us! The Russians couldn't afford to eat here. I spent $22 - about the average monthly wage. Dave, Amy, Ken, Debbie & I then went & sat outside the Intourist hotel with a can of Coke each watching the prostitutes trying to do business. It all seemed very complicated to us.

Sign-of-the-times. The 6-foot high Coke can in Red Square!

14th July 1992 Day 360

The Diary



My body must still be on Irkutsk time as I woke at 4.40 & watched the sunrise. We killed time like the previous 3 days and the train arrived at Moscow at 15.55, 18 mins late & 80 hours after we left. We said goodbye to the carriage staff & went our separate ways. The Leningrad Skaya Hotel was a Stalinesque skyscraper & could have featured in Ghostbusters. 

Sunrise over Europe

There was a small problem with my onward train ticket but that was sorted. The main problem - no hot water in the hotel. So after 3 days on the train I had to have an icy cold shower. The bureau de change was closed but I had a few roubles left and bought some Metro tokens & headed for town. The Metro is probably the most difficult I've used - no English signs, no colour coding & cyrillic script.

Foreign Affairs Ministry Building Moscow

I went to the Intourist hotel, changed $10 telling the gum-chewing female adolescent that it wouldn't hurt to smile as she did her best to make out that doing her job was really putting her out. I declined a Moscow map for $8 & picked one up on a street for 50 roubles. I headed to McDonalds where I met Ken, Debbie & the Dutch family from the Chinese train. No filet-o-fish, burgers only, the heating turned up to get the customers out but it was cheap.


Ken, Debbie & I walked to Arbat Street, haggled & bargained but didn't buy anything, caught a boat cruise to Red Square & waited for dark to fall & the guards to change on Lenin's Tomb.


2012
It's worth noting what state Russia was in back in 1992. Today it may be full of billionaires and Chelsea owners but back then the Berlin Wall had only just fallen and things were far from normal. As far as I could see most shops seemed to be devoid of stock whether it was food or anything else. There was only one McDonalds and one Pizza Hut in Moscow and very few other signs of Western influence. 


From Wikipedia :"1990: On January 31, the first Soviet McDonald's opens, in Moscow. At the time it is the largest McDonald's in the world . For political reasons, McDonald's Canada is responsible for this opening, with little input from the U.S. parent company; a wall display within the restaurant shows the Canadian and Soviet flags. To overcome Soviet supply problems, the company creates its own supply chain, including farms, within the USSR. Unlike other foreign investments, the restaurant accepts rubles, not dollars, and is extremely popular, with waiting lines of several hours common in its early days.'