France and the Beach

I ended up in Cannes because I couldn’t find anywhere to stay in Nice. I arrived on he train from Bern at around 7:30pm and, following the instructions, made my way to my host, Franck’s, place.

Franck was cool. Extra friendly and hospitable and after a long chat about everything and nothing, he suggested that we go and get some kebabs and a drink with his friend Marco, a Dutch guy living in Cannes. So we headed out, only to find that the kebab shop which Franck wanted to go to was having it’s one week of closure for the year. We then headed down towards an Irish pub (they have these all over the place!) and had a few drinks which continued into the night back at Francks, despite the fact that both he and Marco had work the following day. At about 3am, we decided to call it a night.

The next morning Franck poured both him and I a coffee and left for work. It was a beautiful day so I got ready and headed out to explore Cannes. After stopping by the tourism information centre and grabbing a map, I headed down towards the beach only to get distracted on the way by one of those shops which sells hippy clothes, incense, and blankets and other items from various Asian countries; Tibet, India, Malaysia, etc.

I got stuck in this store for about an hour and half. The guy who ran it was half Chinese, half Tibetan and born in Borneo, and a motor-mouth extrodanaire. He talked and talked and talked, and gave me coffee and talked some more. It was ridiculous. But finally I got out, phew!

Me and the shop owner

Then I headed down the main shopping street, passing a cinema which had a small film festival playing French films, and another playing old films in English. They were playing the 1979 version of Planet of the Apes, which incidently I had thought about seeing recently, but unfortunately it wasn’t at the right time. So I kept on walking and ended up at the beach!

Cannes beach

While I was there I saw the real thing, French kids flipping all over the show practising Parkour!

Parkour!

I started to walk along the beach in the direction other than what is seen in the photo above. Soon I had to leave the beach because it turned into a marina full of large, expensive, launches and the theatre where all the films are played during the Cannes Film Festival each year in May.

Film festival theatre

Af ter this I made my way over the Cannes’ old town. I wandered around though this for some time, checking out all the old buildings and old people, then made my way up the hill to where a clocktower and church looked over the city of  Cannes. The weather was beautiful and it was a great view from up there.

View over Cannes

As the sun began to set I made my way back down to the beach and began to walk. I walked for a while along the beach. It was good to smell and feel the sea spray. Soon the beach ended but I continued to walk further along the shoreline with no real objective other than feeling like walking. As I walked the sun began to set behind the hills in the distance.

Cannes Sunset

Once the sun had set, I began to head back. As I approached the Old Town again, I noticed a fun fair which I hadn’t seen on my way out. I spent a little while checking it out, not being able to tell if it was being set up or down, being yelled at by random carnies, and trying to avoid spending any money.

Carnival by night

I soon left the carnival and headed back to Francks where we decided to have a quiet night –  both of use were still feeling the gin from the night before.

The following day I planned to go to Monaco but the train workers were on strike. The shortest amount of time it would take for me to get there (usually a one hour or so train ride) was 5 hours so I decided to flag it. Isn’t the French train system supposed to be one of the best in the world? This is ridiculous. I ended up heading back to Francks and we just hung out for the day, listening to music and watching crazy French TV.

In the evening we set out for Marco’s house for dinner. Franck promptly reversed his car into another parked car then drove off, got lost, went around in circles and arrived at Marco’s about half an hour late. Another friend of theirs was also there and that evening we sat around and ate far, far too much food and drank even more wine, which Marco told me I had to do as I was in France.  He also told me that I had to eat several cheeses after dinner, so I indulged and ate some crazy cheeses which I would never have dared eat before – they were not half bad either. By this time I was bloated, drunk, and it was 3am so Franck and I headed back to his place. No late night gin this time!

(This post is rubbish! I’m starting to get lazy I think. Sorry my fair readers.)

5 Terre

My final Italian stop saw me heading north again, this time towards the famous national park of Cinque Terre, five tiny villages set into the valleys and peninsulas of the Italy’s northern west coast.

This was only a two night trip, and as there were no CouchSurfing hosts in the area, I had to stay at a hostel. I had picked one called Mar-Mar in the Cinque Terre’s first town, Riomaggiore. I arrived at around 6 o’clock to find that the office was closed but there was a note on the door with the key to the dorm and some exciting instructions as to how to find it. Soon I had found the place and it was nice. It was more like living in an apartment with a large number of beds in each room.

Also here was Jen from Vancouver, David from Tasmania, and Dan and Brad from Colorado. That night we all sat around and ate and talked until late. There really isn’t much to do in Riomaggiore after dark, especially in the low season. This was okay, ‘though, as I knew it was going to be a long day of walking the following day – I wanted to see all the towns in Cinque Terre, hopefully by walking the cliff top paths between them.

In the morning I woke up bright and early to a beautiful sunny day – I had my sights set on heading to the top of the mountain in Riomaggiore to find the sanctury of Monte Nero. After packing my bag with food, clothes and water for the day, I set off up what can’t really be called the “main road” as it’s the only road which cars can go down. At the top of the road I found the visitors centre and went inside to have a chat with the lady. She told me that the only path closed today (previously the entire track had been closed due to bad weather) was that between the second and third villages of Manarola and Coniglia, I would have to take the train.

It was then time to find the hilltop church and I set off along a road that seemed like it might go there. I could see it up the mountainside to my left, and when I found a little overgown staircase a few minutes along the road I decided to take it.

Stairs

This was not exactly an easy climb. The stairs were made of rocks which had been shoved into the hillside in every which direction. The blackberry was overgrown and prone to attack. The mud was slippery, my arm was bruised. Depsite all this, I soon made it to the top of the path, hitting a main road which lead towards Riomaggiore. The church was further up so I began to walk up this road. Unfortunately I never made it. After walking around for what seemed forever, I could not for the life of me find any other way to get up without walking along the main road for what would be far too long. So I headed back down, but not before admiring the view.

Riomaggiore

Cinque Terre coast

It was time to head to town number two, Manarola. The sun was still shining and the path between Riomaggiore and Manarola was open and easy. It was the kind of path which mothers could walk along with prams. It was great to be back by the sea, hearing the waves crash against the cliffs, smelling the salt blowing around.

On the track to Manarola

In around half an hour I arrived in Manarola. I’d been told that this was the most picturesque of all the villages so decided to give it a good dose of exploration. It turned out to be very small but like Riomaggiore, it was filled with little alleys and passages leading to cool views.

Little Manarola view

I kept walking further up the main road and on my left I came to a staircase. Curious, I walked up it and found a path which led along the terraces of olive trees and grape vines growing on the hill. I walked for a bit, and came to a funny looking railing which I realised was used as the track for a small motorised train to haul the produce up and down the hills. Climbing over this put me deeper into the orchardlands, but soon I was in a bit which seemed a bit dangerous so I turned back and headed up the hill further. This gave an amazing view over Manarola.

Big Manarola view

After this it was time to head onto the next town, Corniglia. The path between Manarola and Corniglia was closed to to bad weather the previous week, so I had to take the train. Soon I was there and about five minutes later my camera ran out of batteries. Stupidly, I had not brought along my second battery. I do have pictures from the rest of the adventure, but they were all taken on the Russian Vilia so I will have to develop them when I get home and I don’t know if they will even come out. I hope so!

Anyway, Corniglia starts with a huge zigzagging staircase and up I went being followed by two dogs. Halfway up the analogue camera ran out of film. Luckily I had another roll! Once I got to the top it was pretty apparent that this town was very small and there was not so much to do there, so I quickly looked around, skipped up and down a few alley ways and began the journey to the next town.

This is where the adventure really started. The track here was not pathed like the track between Riomaggiore and Manarola, this was proper bush walking and it was great (aside from the light rain). The path twisted it’s way around the rugged coastline, alternating between grape and olive groves, and Italian forest. About half an hour along the path, I came to a halt. There was a rock which had written on it “free beach,” and an arrow pointing down the cliffs towards the sea. This was interesting. I had to see this free beach. As I stood there deciding what I should do next, a head popped out from the track leading down to said beach. A familiar head of a girl that I had seen walking around earlier.

Upon enquiring about the beach, she said that she hadn’t all the way because it was a little dangerous, she was on her own, and there was an ominous looking tunnel that she’d just have to go in to if she made it down. Next thing we were both on our way down, scaling the perilous cliff, holding on to old rope to stop ourselves from falling to certain maimment (is this a word?).

Her name was Carmen and she was from Torquay in Victoria, Australia. This was good, we both understood the need to get to the beach so there was no turning back now. Decending the cliff, engulfed in bush we came to a presipice which looked a little ugly. Not to worry, ‘though, there wasn’t time for wimping out. So, with out weight towards the land, we scurried across the gravel which fell under our feet. Soon, out of the bush we emerged into an olive grove. Also included in this area were two abanodned houses and one which looked lived in, though I have no idea how anyone could get the things there to live. There was also a man wandering around, apparently according to Carmen. I never saw him. Soon we had made it to the bottom and it looked tricky to get to the actual beach so we decided to check out what seemed like an old train tunnel. It still could have been, but when we go inside it just stopped. Maybe it was a train house, who knows. At the back there was light streaming in, so we headed towards that and luckily for us, it lead us to a path down to the beach – one which haden’t collapsed in some kind of land slide.

Down at the beach the swell was pretty fierce but we were both glad to have made it. The heavy swell pulled the rocks along each other, creating an all too familiar rumbling sound, and the sand looked like the black sand of home. Soon enough we had our shoes off and were running around in what little sand there was. It was good to finally be on a beach!

After a short time there, we decided to head back up the cliff, a journey which seemed to take about half the time of getting down, even though we went a longer way. At the top, we advised a man who looked about 70 that is was probably not a good idea to go down there. And then along we walked, further along the path through the olive and grape groves. Then there was the sound of mewing, and out pops a cat from the forest. Meow meow, one breadstick, and a lot of us following him brought us too a crazy picnic table with a bucket full of cans of cat food, and about 4 other cats all going crazy. There was a sign on the bucket which asked people to use the food to feed the cats, so that’s what we did. Yum, yum, yum, jelly meat and an old haggard spoon. But the cats were happy.

Onward we continued and soon enough we had made it to the fourth town named Vernazza. This was definitely my favourite town and I’m pretty annoyed that my carmera had run out of batteries because the afternoon sunlight was amazing. Here we did not spend so much time because we knew it would get dark soon, but we did have a rest down at the waters edge by a man made sea wall, filled with local fishermen. I stood upon the wall, feeling the waves crash against it as Carmen sat down below. As beautiful as the town was, we soon decided that we better get going soon as it would get dark pretty fast and shortly we were back on the track, this time through proper forest with no orchards or groves of any kind. This track went up and up and up and we were both knackered pretty soon from the constant staircase walking, especially at the pace we were making to try and beat the sunset.

The next thing we knew we were decending the hill again, back down towards the final town, Monterosso. But on the way down we were distracted by a man sitting in a little hut. “Ciao!” we greeted him and saw that we was selling drinks, including his home made mulled wine which we bought and both thoroughly enjoyed. He told us that we were the only people who had walked past that day, and we sat and had a crazy conversation with him about allsorts of topics, mostly travel and his exwife and son in Vienna. He said that he had lived his whole life in the Cinque Terre and spoke English, German, Spanish and Italian without one lesson of any of them. Now that’s enouragement for the rest of us! While we were sitting and talking, darkness fell and he was offering us a ride up the hill on his little motorised train/motorbike thing which ran on a rail to the top of the hill. So in we got and off he went, only getting stuck for power in one place. It was steep and crazy, but heaps fun, holding on for dear life so neither of us would fall out of the trailer.

Once at the top, he was off down the hill on his Vespa, and we were walking down towards Monterosso on the road. When we made it to the village, we passed a wine shop which was still open and were called inside by the same man who had given us the drink and the lift for free pesto and wine tasting. The red pestro was absolutely amazing (sorry Mum, I couldn’t bring any home).

We caught the train back to Riomaggiore, and just when we thought the day’s craziness was over, we met a 67 year old lady who had just retired and “exploded” was artistic produce, mostly performance art. She the showed us many photos of her in action, including many of her in very litle clothes which were a little disturbing, especially seeing I could not understand a word she was saying. Carmen managed to have a full conversation with her in Italian which I though was very impressive – she said it was the first time this had ever happened too!

Soon we were back to Riomaggiore and the adventure was over. Neither of us could stop thinking about how crazy it was, but we needed to relax, so we headed to Carmen’s apartment which she was staying in and cooked some pasta, drank some wine and watched a terrible B-grade vampire film dubbed into Italian. It was terrible. And that was that. Crazy, crazy, crazy, awesome! I hope all of you reading this get to go to Cinque Terre, it’s an absolutely amazing place!

An Italian List

I’m am around three or more places behind now, and I reckon that it’ll take far too long to catch up if I write a 1500 word essay for each one, so I’m swapping back to the list format to deal with all these Italian towns that I’ve visited over the past two weeks.

The morning after I arrived in Rome, I got up earlier than ever to go and meet Sarah at the airport. She’d come over from NZ to visit me and travel around Italy, have some fun and see the sights. We checked out Rome, Venice and Florence with a few trips on the side – so here we go!

Rome

• Rome is a very walkable city. We  just began to wander and ended up in many interesting places. On the first day, this is all we did. Just walked around and tried to organise ourselves for the coming fornight, figuring what we wanted to see and where we wanted to go. This popped out of nowhere though
  

  One Colosseum please!

• On that first day, we also saw glimpses of the Roman Forum and Palatino (which unfortunately we never made it into). Along with many, many, many churches, there was the Arch of Constintine.
  

  Arch of Constintine

• One amusing thing which we saw was the Running of the Nigerians. In all of the cities which we visited (and also in Athens) you can find shady Africans trying to procure you fake Gucci and Prada bags, sungasses and various other things you don’t really want. This is obviously not legal, as you can see them on the constant look out. Popular tourist spots are a haven for these guys, and there must have been no less than 50 or 60 of them at the Colosseum. They stand around, harrassing you as you pass: “Hello, hello, hello, cheap bag, hello, hello, half price, hello”, etc. Then one spots the police, and it’s the oddest situation I’ve ever seen. Sixty men carrying white sheetss and big blue plastic bags full of merchandise are sprinting through the crowds of tourists, swarming for a place to hide. Very crazy to see, I recommend it if you are in Rome.
• We ate way, way, way too much pizza. I don’t think I could handle one for at least a few months now. Pasta is a bit easier to stomach, but I’m almost over Italian food. A proper breakfast would be nice too.
• We did go inside the Colosseum:
  

  Inside the Colosseum

• Outside there were guys dressed up as ancient Romans trying to get you to pose with them for photos all the while trying to stay out of photos from the public. Must be a very stressful job.
• Ruins are all over and everywhere with in the city. Amazing!
• We took a tour through varioous crypts and catacombs of Rome. This was very interesting. The first place we went to, the Capucian Crypt, was 5 or 6 rooms decorated with the bones of thousands of human bodies. There were chandalliers made of bones, patterns all over the walls, hourglasses with wings made of pelvis bones, the full skeleton with a scithe representing death, and horrifying of all was the numberous mummified bodies of monks set around in positions, one who still had a beard on his face. Also in the tour was the Catacombs of Domitella; 11 miles of underground burial passageways which delve 100ft below the surface. Most graves had been removed, but some were still intact.
• We walked the poo gauntlett. A beautiful riverside walk under huge trees, chriping with the sound of birds. Beautiful until we realised there was poo dropping all around us!
• From Rome we took a day trip to the ruins of Pompeii. This was amazing! I was amazed at how large and intact they are. There was hardly anyone there and you could just walk around, getting lost inside houses and temples. This place is so big you need a map to figure out just where you are.
  

  Pompeii

• On the Wednesday we went to the Vatican and happened to see my good old friend, The Pope.
  

  Mr Pope

• While we were there, we also spent a huge amount of time walking around and getting lost in the Vatican Museums which hold an exceptional amount of paintings, sculptures, and other amazing works including my favourite, and entire gallery of ancient maps, some even made out of tapastries. Also part of this is everyone’s favourite Sistine Chapel which holds the ceiling fresco God creates Adam by Michelangelo. To be honest, after walking  around all this art and through numerous decorated churches and chapels, I found this famous work to be rather underwhelming and no way near as large as I had pictured.
• In Rome, the food was really not that great at most of the places we visited. The Italian style pizza is very bland in most regards, and I felt that the lasagnes that I had in The Netherlands and Germany were much better than the ones which I had in Italy. I wanted it cooked in a little pot damnit!
• We also saw such sites as the Spanish Steps which were covered in people, and Trivi Foutain which was pretty impressive. People throw money over their shoulders once to ensure a return to Rome and twice for a wish. Sarah got hit by flying money from above!

Trivi Fountain by night

Venice

• Venice is made up of 400 little islands separated by canals and connected by bridges. It’s located in the north of the Italy. What a maze this place is! At pretty much all times you can’t look straight down a street for more than 100m without it turning a corner. Most of the streets are about 2 meters wide and you just keep going around in circles or off on wild tangents of incorrect direction. If there was a place to get lost, that is what we did in Venice. Just look at a map to see what I mean.
• The canals were everywhere and awesome. It was impressive to see a city which has it’s main transport by water and absolutely no cars. Even the police , fire and ambulance come by water!
  

  Just one canal

• We saw some of the Nigerian bag dealers get chased by under cover police and caught.
• Our very own gondola adventure though the canal was schedualed and on afternoon we were paddled around the city by a man who seemed very disinterested in being a gondola driver. It was cool to see the city from the perspective of the canals, though. It gives a good insight into how the residents actually live.
  

  Gondola ride

• We went on a “ghost walk”-type tour which took us around the back alleys and what are supposed to be the scarier parts of the city where horrible crimes have been committed and ghosts like headless lovers are often seen. It was also a good way to find sights that we hadn’t found earlier, like this cool snail staircase:
  

  Snail House

• On our final day we checked out the 11th International Architecture exhibition which was amazing. Heaps of very interesting ideas were shown by at least 30 countries. One of the coolest displays was the Belgian one, which just consisted of a house with white walls, a few chairs, and confetti EVERYWHERE! It was very cool!
  

  Confetti

• On the day we were leaving, it began to snow and the water began to rise and smell. I hear that they have just had the highest floods in something like 22 years.

Florence

• We visited the Duomo church and it’s baptistry.
  

  Duomo

• We climed the 467 stairs inside the dome of the Duomo church, and came out to an amazing view over the city.
  

  View over Florence

• We spent time each day browsing the endless markets of Italian made clothing and accessories, only to buy nearly nothing.
• We took a day trip to Pisa to check out the leaning tower. It was a beautiful day and the tower was leaning just as much as it should, 4° I’m told.
  

  Leaning tower!

• We visited the Uffizi Gallery which houses Botticelli’s Birth of Venus  and numerous other amazing paintings, all overshadowed by about 5000 images of Christ. We also managed to see Michaelangelo’s statue of David which I thought was the most amazing piece of “important” art which I had seen. Very big and very well made. Truely epic!

And that was a brief summary of Sarah and I’s two weeks in Italy. I’m sorry it began to the more and more brief during the last part, but I am so far behind that I need the time to write the next three posts, let alone getting all the pictures up.

After this, I dropped Sarah off at the airport and headed back to Rome for two nights. Back to CouchSurfing. And then I was off, off to check out Cinque Terre on the recommedation of my good friends Prasna and Frankie.

At last, warmth.

Off the plane I stepped onto Athenian soil, a balmy 18 degrees. The plan was simple enough. I was to make my way to the CouchSurfing meeting at the Barrio Cafe in the centre of Athens and act out the character of the traveller with the lost documents, appealing to the CS Ambassadors.

When I stepped off the metro in Athens Central, I got lost. All the tiny streets going in every which direction, disorientated me rather badly and I ended up wandering around in the night looking for streets which I was supposed to turn up. I sat Wedown on a wall to try and reorganise myself when I was approached by Mike, a Canadian and fellow CouchSurfer. He told me that he had been in Athens for about a week and also the year prior, offering to help me find where I needed to go. Unfortunately, he was just about as useless as the map I was using and it ended up being me who found the Cafe in the end. It was good to have someone to talk to, though – you never know how dangerous these places are at night.

Arriving at the cafe, I staged my act to the first ambassador I saw, Lena. She was much less stressed than I had hoped and the joke kind of faded into nothing. Basically she said that I could sort it all out in the morning. When she found out it was a joke, she kicked me repeatedly in the leg yelling “LIAR!!”. Soon afterwards, I found my host for the first two nights in Athens, Vanessa, and later we headed back to her place, a huge apartment about seven metro stops out of central Athens.

The following day I had agreed to meet up with Mike to check out some of the sights. The first stop was the western world’s most prominent historical place, the Acropolis. We began to walk up the hill and came to a place which had a pretty good view over the city.

View over Athens

Further up we walked, I had an arguement with the ticket office lady over my student ID which has no expiry date on it, and after paying more than I wanted to, we were inside the complex. The main structure which everyone comes to see in the Acropolis is the Panthenon, a huge columned building which was covered in scafholding, my new pet hate. I thought that maybe I had come in a bad time, being winter, but later found out that the scafholding had been on there for 25 years and they were nowhere near ready to take it down. This was confirmed through seeing a number of photos of the Acropolis which all seemed to have been taken in the late 70s.

Panthenon

Down below the Panthenon is the Theatre of Dionysus.

Theatre of Dionysus

After seeing these two amazing sights, we walked back down the hill and checked out some more crazy ruins which I can’t remember the name of.

Lunch was had, then Mike decided that he should probably get back to his hostel and start packing as he was going to head back to Israel (where he was working or attending school or something) that evening. So we parted ways and I decided that I was going to walk up to the top of the Filopappou Hill.

On the way up I passed the Jail of Socrates.

Socrates Jail

Soon I made it to the top. The temple was less impressive than it had looked from a distance (though still cool) but the view of the Acropolis was pretty amazing.

Filopappou Monument

View of the Acropolis

On the way back I walked down through Pynx and past the Ancient Agora, but unfortunately it was closed. That was first on the agenda for the following day. I headed back to Vanessa’s place and that night we hung out, chatting about classic cars (she drove in a Citroen 2CV rally across europe) and good music and such.

Vanessa had friends coming to stay for the next few days, so this meant I had to leave the following morning. But it was ok, I had arranged to stay with Lena, the woman who was kicking me, and her seven year old son, Angelos, so I headed out to her place which was on the opposite side of Athens. Once set up there, I headed back into the centre as the Ancient Agora was calling me. There I met a Chinese American guy who was also travelling alone. Once again I was asked for directions in a city I know very little about, but this time I knew where I was going as he was going to the same place.

We hung out, walking around the ancient ruins, with the most impressive part definitely being the Temple of Hephaistos and Athena.

Temple of Hephaistos and Athena

From here I wandered down towards my last ancient site, the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

The following day I visited the Museum of Archeology which was pretty amazing, although you can really see only so many marble statues, no matter how impressive they are. They also had a pretty good Egyptian collection and a gallery of Greek vases, none of which I recognised from my 7th form Classics class. After this was my time to check out all the crazy markets and shops which Athens has to offer. A jersey and backgammon set were bought, then I headed home.

The night Lena, her son, and I attended a CouchSurfing meeting in a local park which included crazy games, moonlight backgammon, and a small party at Lena’s upon return. Wine was served from 1.5 litre plastic bottles which looked like they should have contained meths. I thought the Grecians would have more pride in their wine considering ethey had a god devoted entirely to it.

The next day it was time to leave, I was heading for Rome but the mission was long. At first I was ripped off by a taxi driver, not by much, to get to the correct bus station to leave for Patras. On top of my fair he charged me for luggage and for the fact that I called him to come!! At the bus station I ran around like crazy with not much time to spare, only finding my bus at the last minute.

After a three hour bus ride, I arrived in Patras, with enough time to get myself on the Superfast ferry to Bari in Italy. Now this was an ordeal. Firstly, I went to the cabin which my ticket stated. There were two guys in there who started yelling at me about “reception! Reception!”. I so went to the reception to find that my ticket was wrong (like everybody’s) and got given a new cabin. I was alone in a 4 bed cabin which was nice, until aout 1:30 am which a bunch of children busted in and woke me up. The guard then made me get up, pack my stuff and go back to the reception again, to which they sent me back to the room. Now around 2am, I was back in the cabin with no children, but had gained the loudest snoarer in history. I managed to get back to sleep, only to be woken two hours early by the other guy in my cabin going on about us almost being at Bari.

Two hours later we were at Bari. I got off the ferry, became comfused for a while, then took a taxi to the train station, but not after being accosted by a random guy who wanted to take me there for five Euro – not in your random car!

In Bari I had a few hours to kill, so I headed to the tourist information centre, got a map and decided to check out the Old Town. There were town walls which you could walk upon.

Bari City Walls

And a large church.They also had a castle which was pretty cool and had been rebuilt and extended many times over the years.

Bari Castle

Soon it was time for the train to Rome, so off I headed and by that evening, I was ready to sleep!

A Citidel and a Dead Guy: Moscow

I arrived in Moscow at Leningradskiy Station at around 10am. Once there I was supposed to amuse myself for the day, then find my host, Krishna’s, place. I had pretty good directions: get on the Metro, take the circle line until the correct station, turn right and walk till I hit an Italian restaurant.

I found the metro, but for some reason I could not for the life of me figure out how to get inside it. I walked around the building numerous times but all I encountered was markets, beggars, and about 300 dubious looking people hanging around the station, smoking, the ground a sea of their spit. Soon I found a map and decided that I would take the red line to where I needed to go and walked to the next metro station. I had decided that to fill in my time I would go and check out the Kremlin as I had a few hours to spare.

After finally getting a metro ticket (I walked away from the counter, forgetting it at first), I jumped on the train, decyphered the Cyrillic name for the closest station on the line to the Kremlin, counted the number of stops and headed on into the central city.

The Kremlin is closed on Thursdays.

I had no idea what to do. I had not seen one tourist office and my Lonely Planet map was pretty bad, but it did have the NZ embassy, so I thought I’d drop in there to see if they could give me some information. After a fourty minute walk (I’m carrying my pack here too) down the wrong street, I didn’t find the embassy, so I walked back. Right, it was only a few hours ’till Krishna said he was going to be home, so I decided to find his place and hang out and read a book.

This was the easiest thing so far, although the guy I asked for help at first tried to tell me that I needed to be back at the original station I had started at! I found Krishna’s apartment, rang the door bell, no one was home. So I sat down to wait. Pretty soon it started to get cold, and by cold I mean it was probably below 0 degrees. People kept coming and going but no sign of Krishna. I kept ringing the door bell just in case there was another entrance to the building. When he was 20 minutes late, I rang again and was answered by his flatmate, Katija. Finally! She let me in, it was an amazing feeling to be out of the cold. We sat down, had some tea and talked. Krishna didn’t make it home ’till 11pm! I’m very glad that Katija was there! That night Ben, the Australian guy I met in Estonia, came around for a chat. It was good to see him again and we made plans to meet up the following day.

Katija also had a very cute kitten!

Katijas Cat

In the morning Ben called to say that he wasn’t feeling so good; an allergic reaction to the chili in the meal which Krishna had cooked. He needed the day to rest but I decided to visit the Kremlin anyway and would meet him later on. I began to walk from Krishna’s into town, it’s about a 40 minute walk to the Kremlin, and passes by the majestic Cathedral of Our Saviour.

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour

Soon enough I made it to the walls of the Kremlin which borders Alexander Gardens and the entrance inside the citidel.

The Kremlin's Wall

After waiting in what Russians appear to call a queue, which is basically a mass of people pushing to be the first to the counter, I managed to get a studen ticket to get inside. Students pay one sixth the price of regular people. So in I went.

Entrance to the Kremlin

Cathedral Square

My ticket enabled me to wander around the grounds and check out the Cathedral Square in which four white and gold cathedrals stood proudly in the winter sun.

Inside, though, was where the amazement began to set in. Every cathedral was adorned from floor to ceiling with icons painted both directly on the plaster, and on wood facades. Colourful faces and gold halos were beaming from every direction. Lining the bottom of the walls were tombs of important Russian figures throughout history. Unfortunately you were not alowed to take pictures inside any of these places, otherwise I would have taken hundreds, it was astonishing.

The rest of the buildings inside the Kremlin were very St. Petersburgian. They were really the only buildings which I saw in Moscow that seemed to have been built in the same style as the Hermitage or Catherine the Great’s palace.

I still had a bit of time left before I had to meet Ben, so I went for a wander around, over the bridge which crosses the Moscow River to get a better look at the Kremlin.

The Kremlin

The above was the view from to the north. To the south was the sunsetting on the clearest night behind the Cathedral of Our Saviour.

Sunset behind cathderal

Soon it was time to meet Ben. We got some food then headed out to an “expat friendly bar” that I “had to see.” It was true it was crazy inside this place, it was like every kind of bar you can think of in one; club, sports bar, live music venue, cafe, sisha bar, and then later in the night was what Ben had wanted me to see. At aproximately 11pm, about 25 prostitutes just strolled on in. Apparantly they pay and exuberant entrance fee to get in and just act like regular patrons. They dance with you and then pop the question about having fun for payment. Crazy.

We visited a few more clubs and soon the night came to an end. When I got back to Krishna’s I was expecting to meet his other CouchSurfer who was supposed to be turning up that night. He wasn’t there. Ah well, bed time!

In the morning I got up bright and early as I really wanted to see this dead guy. You know, my father, your father, the father of communism: Mr. Lenin. I also realised that I hadn’t visited Red Square which would have been ridiculous. So in to the Kremlin I walked again and got in line for Lenin’s Mausoleum. I passed through the airport-like security checks, and started the slow walk to the building, pased the graves of many important Russian political figures. Soon I was at the mausoleum. This place is surrounded by numerous guards which ridiculous weapons, who loudly pronounce “sssssssh!!” every 3-4 seconds. In I walked, down into the tomb site, a temperature controlled pit of black marble. Next thing I knew I was staring at a very dead man, so dead in fact that he looked like he was never alive, but only a wax figurine. I began to speculate that maybe he still is alive and that this body is indeed wax. I hear they are thinking of closing the venue to the public, though, so maybe no matter the temperature control, he’s beginning to suffer the fate of human breath.

Lenins Mausoleum

Back into the sunlight I emerged and at the other end of red square, facing back towards the State History Museum. No tanks parading through today.

Red Square

My next stop was St. Basil’s Cathedral which is located on the west end of Red square, opposite the State History Museum.

St. Basils Cathderal

This cathedral was like a candy house. If Hansel and Grettle’s witch had been more wealthy, this is what she would have had. I ventured inside. You were also not alowed to take photos in here either, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone, and everyone was doing it, so I followed the crowd. Here you can also get an idea as to what it looked like inside the Kremlin cathedrals.

Inside St. Basils Cathedral

After St. Basil’s I had one last stop in Red Square and that was GUM, the high profile shopping mall with high profile prices, situated in a high profile building. Beautiful architecture, and full of crap that stupid people buy.

I headed back to Krishna’s once more and not long after I returned, the CouchSurfer who was supposed to come last night showed up. It turned out that the previous night he had gotten lost, had no phone number to call and ended up sleeping on the steets of Moscow! Now that is crazy! Apart from the fact that it was below 0 degrees at night, who knows what might have happened. But with a name like Phoenix Mourning-Star, I guess nothing is crazy for you. He was from Colorado and told me that he did his entire college life of five years living out of a car.

Anyway, shortly I was supposed to meet Ben again to go and check out what he had called an “airplane graveyard”, so I asked Phoenix if he wanted to come along too. And also another dude called Ben who had helped Phoenix find Krishna’s apartment. We met Ben (the Australian) and a whole bunch of Moscow based CouchSurfers and headed off on the Metro to an disused aerodrome from the Cold War turned insustrial area. The planes and helicopters were in sight but were surrounded by a large fence. Not to worry, at the price of 50 rubles each, we paid off the guard and he let us in to pretty much do anything we wanted.

There were huge helicopters, missiles, jet planes with afterburners, everything adorned with the sicle and hammer and beautiful handpainted red stars. If the cockpits were smashed, you could even get inside.

But my favourite part was the fact that they planes were parked wing to wing. So at one stage near the end (and I have a video of this), I started from one end, and began to run. Along the left wing (becareful of the flaps!!), over the fuselage, along the right wing, then jump! Onto the next plane’s left wing and so on over the top of around 15 planes in a row. I can only say it was a very interesting experience, running around on the top of warplanes.

Warplane Graveyard

That evening Ben, Phoenix and I met up with some of Ben’s friends including a Cuban guy from Miami who looked like Zorro except with an uneven moustache. This guy had one of the biggest egos I’ve ever met, but he also knew where to go out, so out we went. We only actaully managed to make three stops, the first being a pie shop. There I met Eric, a Nigerian guy who ran a promotion company in Moscow and brought in hiphop acts like Chingy and Jaz-Z and Timberland, he was currently bringing over Chingy at the time. These people didn’t understand how hilarious Chingy is, but anyway.

Our next stop was a student party, held in a student club where we all pretended to be students. The music was terrible, and they kept playing this annoying “king of my castle” song over and over again, which was only topped by a remix of the Pirates of the Carribean theme music which no one else seemed to find absolutely ridiculous. I was told that to get a beer you pay 15 rubles, to get a girl you speak English.

Our next stop was, according to Zorro, the best club in Moscow and a “real club”. It was called London, and had this weird theme of umbrellas and Ducati motorcycles going on. The drinks were horrendously expensive and they were playing the same terrible music as the student party. I think Russia has it’s own dance music where they basically remix anything that they can get their hands on. We stayed there until about 4:30am, and then Ben and I decided it was about time to leave, I was staying at his place and had to get up at 8am to leave for the airport, which I managed to do okay! At 10am when I left Ben’s apartment, it was -2 degrees, when I landed in Athens at 5:30, it was 18 degrees. Aaaaaaahhhh.