Moscow

Hidelyhow,

Goodnight everyone, in eleven houres we will take the train to Irkutsk near the beautifull Baikal lake, but first I sleep some houres before visiting the Kremlin.

First I tell somethings about our experience in Moscow.
We took the night train from St-Petersburg to Moscow, but we had only sittingplaces. So we were little broken after 8 houres sitting. Little irritaded and tired we entered one big trainstation of Moscow. Many people, big hall with a big statue of Lenin. We searched the day before the adress of the tourist information center, so we could get some information. We first left our luggage in the luggage room and tried to find the tourist info center. But we had bad luck, Moscow has not so many pulic street maps as St-Peterburg and certainly not in English, so we start asking the people without succes. Finally we found a girl in a certain travel agency who could speak english, but se asked us 40 R to tell us where the street was we searched! We laughed friendly and went away. Finaly after toiletvisit we were a little more relaxed and found a good streetmap were Saartje found the street. We entered the metrostation and bought a card of twenty rides. We learned the Cyrillic letters so we could read the some words to find our way.
Once arrived in the street there was no sign of tourist inforation center so we asked and nobody knew were it was. But we persisted and finaly found it in the huge buildig. It was worth the energy because they gave us very good and a lot of information. after the visit we had to fill our day because we could only meet our host after his work around six o'clock. So we walked ten minutes before it started to rain and we fled into a coffee bar where we spend the afternoon reading al the information we got. It was for me an eye opener because it suddenly appeared to me that Russia is incredible beautiful and there are so many places to go, it is just a big world on its own. Now I understan few Russians(in our experience) speak English, it is just not nesessery.
That day we saw already the red square and some other crazy buildings. But as usual, we were not to impressed.
At six we met Youry, our Host, at the Metro station, Mira Prospect. We felt immediatly very confortable with him, and he is just a great and kind guy.
He made a beetrood soup for us, a traditional Russian cold soup, which tasted very good. We had a good chat. The naxe morning a couple of France arrived(Jean et Climence) also and together we visited the city. We found that they were so funny because they fell everywhere asleep.

Oke, It is getting to long, ...
We visited many places in the city together with nice Friends of Youry, like Macha and Jaana. They gave us a great time but tiring. It is a pitty taht we couldn't stay over until saturday to have a good party in Moscow to enjoy the nightlive. We had it actually, the second night but in his kichen wit champagne, bear, Letvian herb liqueur, home made vodka, it was fun, but as a result I didn't feel good at al the next morning.

After a week the bulding wich impressed me the most was the university. We realise we start to realy like Russia and like, based on our litle experience, Moscow more then St-petersburg.

Moscow is a city of the most beautifull metrostations, fancy cars, jeeps, cray drivers, alcoholics, little shops, big, huge buildings, rain, Lenin, Kremlin, many power, police, maby 15 miljon inhabitants, big roads, underground crosswalks, beatyfull parcs, gold and glory of the soviet time, and many beggars, .... I liked it, I felt home already the second day!

So we leave at 1.11 P.M. to Irkutsk for a ride of 80 houres. We bought noodles, don't worry, we won't starve. Good news is, we only payed like 10 000 R for oure tickets from St-Petersburg to Moscow plus Moscow-Irkuts( four tickets)

Love you mamie, papie, Lyssa
Love you mamie, papie, Jeroen

dikke kussen, met ons gaat het reuze goed!

Thanks to the nice people of Moscow to give us such a nice stay over