Moscow – Not At All What We Were Expecting.

Well, Moscow– someone’s doing a really bad job. Having spent four days here, wrapped in your refreshingly chilly autumn embrace every single one of my presumptions and expectations of you have been totally shattered.

You’re not full of brown, dismal block-like structures fed to me by American television but rather beautiful grand, pastel-coloured pre-revolutionary buildings and large scale, pompous Stalin era builds like the eerie Seven Sisters. So much more colour and decorative facades than I was expecting. So much more grandeur.

And your footpaths! The decision to reclaim road frontage for pedestrian usage back in the seventies is to be applauded especially by walking-stick wheedling men. Never have I found it so easy to just stroll a city. Shame about your minefields of hawked up gobs of phlegm but that’s a reality of every place we have visited so far.

We were told to check-out your Metro system and so we did. For only $1.50 Australian we could have travelled each of the 13 lines or visited every one of the 206 stations. We only had time for a handful and wow. Elegant, spacious and clean, with amazing lighting and interesting works of art.

I’m not sure why each night the city is lit up like a Christmas tree with laser lights flashing on every tall building around, but I like it. And it really eliminates the need to look for a light switch when using the toilet in the early hours of the morning.

Your Red Square and Kremlin blew me away. Again, built on a huge scale, they perfectly complement the gorgeous St Basils Cathedral and solemn Lenin’s mausoleum ensconced in their midst. Lenin’s body is looking a bit shabby now, but I wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world.

And inside the Kremlin! The Armoury and the Diamond Fund! My eyes are still adjusting to the sight of so many diamonds and other precious stones situated in one place whilst my mind is still trying to calculate the cost of what I have seen.

We had two important duties to perform whilst in your midst. Obtain Belarus transit visas and locate some pre-purchased train tickets that were meant to have been sent to our hotel. Surprisingly the visas were relatively simple to obtain. It’s not your fault Moscow that they cost $215 each and we are not even going to set foot on Belarus soil! As for the train tickets, we did manage to track them down in a long-forgotten post office buried deep in suburbia. It was quite an adventure.

I am so glad Moscow, that we took the time to get to know you. That we didn’t rush off to St Petersburg as advised by so many. You are amazing and stately and the cleanest city I have ever visited. Your people are considerate and apparently, your crime rate is extremely low. Little old ladies are safe to come out at night and walk the streets – now that is a revelation.

It does feel as if everything has been thrown at you – wealth and infrastructure wise, whilst the rest of the Russia we have seen has been neglected but hopefully, with time, things will change. In the meantime – thanks for having us, I’m so glad we came.

Fun facts – At one time you couldn’t build any higher than the Kremlin walls, so a lot of the city is still quite low rise. Most of Moscow was destroyed in the 1812 fire. A metro train arrives every 90 seconds.