Moscow and Final Thoughts on Russia> Travels

A good way to come to a final conclusion about your experience of a country is to think what phrase popped in your head the most whilst you were in said country. For instance, in Japan I kept thinking, "Japanese people are weird." Over the past two weeks I have muttered the words "Fucking Russia" so many times I have lost count.

Kyra and I arrived in Moscow on the morning of the fifth. With the help of different friendly locals we were able to purchase our onward train tickets, (Me to Lithuania, her to St. Petersburg) navigate Moscow's incredibly beautiful metro system and find the hotel we had booked online. It took us about 25 minutes to check into our room, but our hotel room was good value for the money, very modern looking and nice. For some reason we had to go down the hall to use another hotel room in order to use a shower with hot water, but hey it's Fucking Russia. Russia is a very expensive country for being as backwards ass as it is. Moscow is a very expensive city on top of that. From what I learned, apartments cost almost as much to rent as in NYC. This could be because the property development here has been done piss-poorly. Don't get me started.

Kyra and I were lucky to get a ride around the city from this nice, wealthy Russian couple. Russian people are great when they aren't being assholes or outright sketchy. The next day we waited online for and hour and a half to see Lenin's preserved body. It wasn't worth the wait. I have seen Ho Chi Mihn in Vietnam, but I skipped seeing Mao while in Beijing so I missed out on a punching my card for the embalmed Communist leader trifecta.

Red Square is nice looking, but they don't let anybody in it so it is oddly empty. St. Basils cathedral looks pretty cool, kind of like it was meant to be in a theme park.
The Kremlin itself wasn't too interesting. Some old churches on the top, but after waiting on several more lines, to buy the ticket, to check my backpack, to actually enter... I was a bit embittered. We also saw Arabat street while in town. This is meant to be a tourist attraction. It was like one big souvenir stand/Casino.

I have many other things to gripe about in regards to Moscow and Russia, but I'll hold my tongue. I may come back one day to see St. Petersburg, but other than that I have no longing to return here. Last night, while I was walking to my hotel, some 7 year old kid said to me, "Kiss my Ass!" He had a big smile on his face and I could tell someone had taught him this phrase and he did not know its context or meaning and didn't understand that he shouldn't say such a thing to a weary looking man who had just had a good day turn into a bad day in the span of two hours (more on that later). I decided I would teach him a couple more curse words. Fucking Russia.