Suzi 03/05/06

With apologies for the delay, but internet cafes are few and far between in Russia as far as we can tell, hello from Russia!!

We're having a great time and it is really an experience just being here and seeing first-hand what life is like now the USSR is no more. It's quite hard to sum up our experiences so far but if you sort of imagine London in the 1980's, the whole Harry Enfield loads-a-money attitude, then that's the impression you get of what Russians aspire to. But its also a country of contrasts, parked next to the most expensive four wheel drives we've ever seen are clapped out ladas and, whilst there are queues outside Gucci and Prada, there are also people doing their washing in the sinks in the public toilets.

We flew from Helsinki to St Petersburg and, despite all the horrible things we'd heard and read, immigration was no problem. The immigration card we already had from the Embassy direct was wrong but, luckily, they had some spares on the flight and we sailed through. No bribes necessary!! St P was fantastic, it is an amazingly grand city and, as it was only founded in 1703, has a really modern history. We had a 3 hour walking tour of the city included in our trip and we visited the Peter and Paul fortress. Was really interesting as it was a jail for enemies of the state and Lenin's older brother was executed there; he allegedly moved the capital back to Moscow as an act of revenge against St P! We then spent the whole day at the Hermitage. It has over 3 million exhibits including priceless paintings by Picasso, Monet and Gaugin and was absolutely amazing! We spent 6 hours wandering around with an audio guide and probably only saw about half of the whole museum. The buildings themselves are worth the entrance fee, particularly the Winter Palace, one of the four buildings, which was the former residence of Russian Tsars when St Petersburg was the capital. It has one state room which is over 1000m2!!

We caught the sleeper to Moscow and was possibly the hottest train compartment ever and the windows were sealed shut!! Have learnt for our journey later today to make sure we wear less clothes. Our room mates were two really nice guys from Bury St Edmunds, also with the Russia Experience but a different trip from us so they have now headed off straight to Mongolia. Was nice to have some english-speaking company for the night though!! Moscow is amazing, its absolutely huge and the metro is incredible. Again, we had a 3 hour walking tour of the city included and then we visited the Kremlin on our first day. Its amazing, all the state buildings are there (but closed!!) and there are 5 cathedrals within the walls. Its in amazing condition which we found incredible given the traffic here (think 8 lane motorway running right through the city!!) and it turns out the walls are painted with special venetian liquid glass which absorbs the pollution!! Red Square is amazing and St Basil's cathedral looks like an ice-cream, there are just so many sights and we can't see them all but the atmosphere is incredible!!

Russian letters have been an experience in themselves. We are sort of learning them but we have given in once and had a kfc as we probably would otherwise have starved as there are not many english translated or even transcribed menus!! We were lulled in to a false sense of security with the metro as the map has the stops in russian and roman forms. However, upon descending to the platform, all the signs are only in the russian format so its an adventure working out which direction to go in! The metro is incredible, it was built during Stalin's era and the stations are really grand, stained glass windows, balconies, pillars, even chandeliers!! We went round yesterday to visit the "best" ones and felt like being in a museum, not a tube stop!!

We are off to Ekaterinburg later today where we stop for 3 days at the Urals before heading further to Siberia. We're not sure whether there will be internet cafes but will try to provide an update again soon!!

Tanja, hope you had a very Happy Birthday on Saturday!! Nicky and Chris, hope your new jobs are going well and Emma and Adam, really hope parenthood is going well, send us some more pictures of Chloe soon!!