Not designed for hordes of tourists. Friendly. Relaxed. Lots of people doing jobs that ticket electronic machines would do in many european countries, e.g. tickets.
Really beautiful cities with colour ( unique since european cities seam yo be the colour of stone).
Free entrance for students into thr Hermitage, which is a giant palace which the royalty (tsars) once lived in. Amazing building, now home to sooooo much art. :0. Russian art museum is really nice too! So nice to have local and a friend show me around!
Given that it took a long time for my visa to be sorted and processed I thought that the law enforcers might be imposing. What I found instead was a very friendly country that was helpful and efficient. :).
Borsche. Need I say more.
Russian Orthodox Churches are magificent! A wind up clock in the Hermitage.
One of the hidden treasures of Moscow. An inconspicuous and amazing supermarket...and a reconstructed Church (note the original was destroyed during Stalin times)
Both St. Petersburgs and Moscows subway systems are deep, extensive, fast and convenient. You will never ever wait more than 3 minutes for a train. Moscow was a bit harder to get around as it didn't have big signs telling you which station you were at, so the best bet was to count the number of stations until you needed to get off. Most stations are unique, clean and beautifully decorated. Some of the deeper stations are also equipped with thick metal doors at the bottom of the escalators in case of nuclear attack. Wowee.
One of Moscow's best subway stations. A huge proportion of commuters touch the dogs nose as a ritual.
A ship for radio telescopes? and the cooling layer of a space suit. The Space exhibiton center, Moscow.
A machine that churns and picks up snow at the famous All-Russian exhibition center, Moscow.
Red Square with my friend Boris.
The exhibition center also happened to be where I tried my first ever Russian kebab! Chicken, cabbage and carrot as the salad and the right amount of garlic sauce. Magnificant!
A big thanks to my Russian friend Boris, who showed me soooooo much stuff in Moscow, really made my visit very special!
After Moscow I joined a group of 6 other adventurous people on a train for 4 whole nights! 4Aussies, 2Norwegians and a Pom. We all managed to entertain ourselves fairly well with books, conversations and various 'discussions' with the locals. One of these was with one of the enormous train drivers who offered us some vodka then proceeded to skull 500mL of it himself. Unsurprisingly he played a bit rough with one of the guys in our group and we managed to escape before he got into a fight...(a close shave of only 5mins or so).
Lake Baikal. One of the locations where we witnessed some crazy Russians cleanse themselves for the religious day 'Epiphany' (Photo by Taya)
Lake Baikal was great. Highlights included home cooked meals, consistently falling on my arse and local freshwater caviar. We had a Russian Sauna called a 'Bunya'. It is very steamy and you get beaten with leaves. Very relaxing! We went dogsledding and in my true style my feet came of twice when going over deep ditches, so I was dragged along for many many meters at full speed and had to drag myself up onto the sled. Funniliy enough I don't even think the instructor noticed.... Another highlight was watching russian TV consisting of dating shows with old weird guys and a judge judy where defendants were held in cages... lol.
Mongolian train. The attendants were probably the nicest of the whole journey. They kept the boiling water boiling by making a fire. :D.
