Mosc-woot

It is Saturday night here in Moscow, although my body isnt really sure where it is or what time it is there. I suppose I am suffering from train lag, but hopefully once I stay in the same one for longer than 3 days my body can adjust.

Getting to Moscow from Omsk worked out well, as our kupe mate, a 26 year old girl named Ana, proved to not only not be a smelly big Russian man, but also drank vodka with us, used her basic English readily, helped us book tickets to St.Petersburg from Moscow and put us on the right subway to get to our hostel. She was incredibly kind and we felt lucky to have met her. We got to the hostel, showered and wandered the streets, realizing that our hostel is in a nice and wealthy neighbourhood, making Moscow seem much safer than we thought it would be. The next day we went to a park full of old soviet statues (hello many Lennins, a Stalin (!) and a Marx to an art museum that had and exhibit of Soviet art, and then through Gorky Park and wandered around the riverside, till we went up to Moscow University (which is an incredibly impressive and imposing building, google it!) for a great view of the city. Spent the night wandering the streets trying to not get too lost and enjoying the nice drinking in public laws of Russia.

Today was our 2nd full day in Moscow, and we hoped to gaze upon Lenin's corpse. Once we got ourselves organized we realized it was getting late (viewing hours are only between 10am and 1pm) so we rushed down to the main street, only to find out that it is student day, and the streets were PACKED with university students, soldiers, and with various gates and metal detectors. No good side street in sight, we steadily worked our way to the mausoleum via metro only to find out that Red Square and it's accouterments are all closed to the public, for about a week. And that it's Moscow's birthday so the whole main street would be blocked off all day, and in fact, all weekend. Meaning to get around it or just wander around meant being gated off from other streets, and needing to walk through a metal detector everytime we wanted to go back to a main street. Safety and soldiers first.

A bit frustrated by this information, we learned that we could get into Red Square, if we bought tickets to an international military marching band concert/competition. So we did. Yes, I know you're jealous-- 2 hours of marching bands! but in fairness China didn't send their band, just their special dance/tai-chi/faux fighting team they had perform at the Olympics. And there was a Russian dance troupe that did all the cool Russian dances with the spinning and the whatnot. I'd say just wait for the photos, but alas, I read "no cameras" on the English sign for the concert and didn't bring mine, only to realize that this is Russia and that means nothing. So use your imagination? youtube? Sorry. It was amazing and a bit surreal. (In case you are wondering, the competing bands were: Russia, the UK, France, India, Finland, China, Kazikstan, Israel and Italy. Israel played "if I were a rich man" and Kazikstan was a close 2nd to Russia with the size and marching, the rest were clearly in a lower league).

Tomorrow we will go the Arabat and wander around the armory, maybe stopping at a small town outside the city with a nice old feel to it and a monestary, and then get on a night train to St. Petersburg. Good times await I'm sure.

It's now much later than I hoped to go to bed, so I shall stop typing and get some sleep, hopefully not waking up in a few hours due to a confused body clock.