From Russia with ...a stern handshake

I'm going write a bit then link to my flickr page so you can see some photos from our stay in St Petesburg and Moscow so far (I've organised them into groups). We travelled by train for a day and a night through Belarus before arriving in St Petersburg, in our own little cabin where I was able to eat sausages and bread and take photos out of the window, bliss! The train stopped in a hot and dusty Belarusian town and we went for a walk through the long main street which was flanked on both sides by bleak looking communist style flats, the occasional shopfront (void of any advertising) and small lanes leading off into the distance and little wooden houses. We exchanged about 4 sterling in the station and got back about 20,000 belarusion. We didn't manage to spend it all although I had a white choc-ice with apricot jam in the middle and steven had a purple cornetto.

Our accommodation in St Petersburg was a number of ex soviet style apartment rooms converted into a hotel. Apparently one whole family would have lived in our room. We visited all the major sites including the Winter Palace, the Peter and Paul fortress, a place called Peterhof which is surrounded by huge gold statues and fountains, and walked the length of Nevsky Prospect with the uber-wealthy designer shoppers, the groups of wannabe gangster boys and the beggars. It was Russia day the day before yesterday and the streets were also lined with russian flags and hundreds of police. St Petersburg is one of those places you could easily get cathedral-fatigue, but they are so... grossly impressive that somehow you don't.

The russian people in the cities we have managed to talk to properly (only the people who work in the hotels/hostels really) are helpful and friendly, but I'm struggling to say anything nice about pretty much everyone else we encounter here - people in shops, restaurants, tourist sites, people we ask for directions. The nicest thing I can say is that they are stoic, and most people are physically very strong. Like the woman who pushed me out of her way in Moscow train station yesterday (both hands), or the old ladies who elbow me to get to the front of russian orthodox shrines. There are lots of girls here who dress up in expensive clothes, don huge stilletos and gold coats to parade around the centre of town, and they look down on me in my jeans and sandals with utter derision. If we ask for help people either wave us away or shrug and look back down at whatever they were doing. Hopefully when we depart Moscow in 4 days for the trans-mongolian railway we can meet some real people without their city pretensions.

In the meantime we are seeing the funny side. We had a little competition going in St Petersburg to try and make someone smile (no prize since the likelihood was so rare). I was completely unsuccessful (despite a number of attempts at holding doors open, catching hats in the wind, excessive tipping), but Steven is steaming ahead! He managed to make 2 old ladies in the Hermatage museum cloakroom smile (by making out that they'd stolen his camera?!), and then yesterday he had a shop assistant in stitches by doing a (very risky in my opinion) impression of her colleague. I think we're learning.

Last night we went to red square at dusk and it was fantastic. The Kremlin, St Basils Cathedral and GUM department store all lit up in the night sky. Seeing the square in the sunny day time seems strange to me - my visions of it are in the bleak mid-winter with all the ruskies wearing furry hats.

One last thing - the Moscow tube stations are incredible! Each one is a monument to soviet communism with statues, mosaics, chandeliers, marble pillars. Photography is forbidden and I'm such a wuss I haven't risked taking a photo yet but I will!

www.flickr.com/photos/sineadphoto