Our itinerary is Moscow & Beijing on our own and then we're meeting the rest of my family in Hong Kong and the Philippines.
The flight to Moscow was pretty uneventful. It was 10hrs non-stop which is surprisingly shorter than you'd think. I was quite surprised that there seemed to be no tourists on our flight. Everyone seemed to be native. This starts to make sense though because so far we've encountered few tourists at all here and they don't seem to be very accommodating to tourists either. First the visa process was a nightmare and no more than two people were ever in line at the tourist office (all 4 times I had to go there!!!) which was weird compared to the gazillion people in line for China. Also, no one speaks English. It is no joke, not even people at the airport! I obviously don't expect people to speak English for me but I was surprised that of all the places we have ever been to, it's definitely the least English friendly. And other than the airport, there aren't any signs in English. Luckily, I'm good at reading body language. It doesn't help that their Cyrillic language looks totally different than English. they use some of the same letters in our alphabet but they don't make the same sounds and they are reversed so it's hard to even search for cognates to help you understand. This was a problem when we first go to the metro station. We had a subway map from my Moscow guidebook but all the stations were written in English which is basically a phonetic spelling. The hotel gave us directions and told us to get off at the Prazhskaya stop but this is the name of the stop in Russian. Confusing huh??
Anyways, we eventually got a Russian subway map from the hotel when we arrived and have since become pros at matching their symbol and letter alphabet!! After checking in and getting our bearings we headed to Izmaylovski market and specifically, the Vernisage. It is an enormous outdoor flea market that a weird Renaissance feel because there are all of these wooden stalls where people sell things. They sell souvenirs and knick-knacks like nesting dolls it they also sell rugs and weird random antique stuff. The random antique stuff includes lots of USSR memorabilia like old military uniforms and used bullet casings to Christian Byzantine art. One stall had all these antique irons and and a really cool old gramophone. A lot of it would be neat to put in your house but how do you take a gramophone home??
We also had linner (lunch/dinner) there. We had delicious lamb kabobs. We love kebabs and so it was a lucky find. Plus it is easy to point to a kebab rather than try to read a Russian menu. After that, we kind of just walked around and explored areas around where we were and at our hotel. Tomorrow is when we do all the big touristy stuff like go to the Red Square, the Kremlin, and St. Basil's Cathedral. We are going to get a good night's rest because we have a busy day tomorrow.
Here are some random things we have learned about Moscow:
1. Beer is everywhere and cheaper than water and soda. There are even random stands on the street that have beer on tap and people walk around with beers on hand.
2. Everyone dresses like they are in the 80s.
3. Public bathrooms are hard to find and you have to pay to use a portopotty or squatter. The person running the bathroom even uses one of the, porter potties as an office...
4. We saw a stall in the subway next to a drink stand that sold guns. Will loved that.
5. I read somewhere that Russians don't really like Asian people and I don't know how true that is but we get a lot of weird looks and people blatantly cut in front of us in line. Also worth noting: this is the homogenous place I have ever been to. Everyone is Russian!! I don't think we have seen any other ethnicities co-existing... Maybe we'll see some tourists tomorrow.
6. We went to McDonald's to get a drink because they have ice and we got an ice cream cone because it's a cone-cup!!! Genius!!
Alrighty.. Off to bed! Long day tomorrow.....
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