#50: Moscow: Three Nights on a Bus Looking for Lenin’s Corpse
6 August 2002
Moscow. Capital of Russia, the largest country on Earth. This is a country that has always fascinated me: Its enormous diversity in landscapes and peoples. Its often turbulent history and charismatic leaders. Its numerous drastic swings in beliefs and ideologies. For me, visiting Russia is also a sort of the fulfillment of a desire that arose a long time ago, but that I have put off for one reason or another over the years. Finally, the adventure begins now!
I left London on the evening of 29 July with a heavy heart. This is a wonderful place I have lived in for over 4 years, and finally I have decided to leave for good. A rash of nostalgic feelings overwhelmed me as the Eurolines bus rolled across the suburbs of Greater London. I could have left the city the following morning instead, but German Rail has messed up my train booking (could you believe it? Deutsche Bahn! Where’s the Teutonic efficiency?) and now the only way I could get to Moscow by land (Remember my objective of London to Singapore by land?) is by a three-night bus journey.
This is a journey that brought me across the past, present and future of Europe. Across the Channel (or should I say below, since the bus used the Chunnel), I woke up the next morning to find the bus in Brussels, HQ of the European Union and perhaps, future capital of a Federal Europe. The shiny glass towers near the bus station reflect a new confidence, especially when the euro, now seven months old in physical form, has risen to new levels against the dollar.
We moved on to Maastricht, where major agreements were signed to turn the continent into a real political entity, and then passing Aachen, capital of the second common European state in history (the first being the Roman Empire), Charlemagne’s empire.
In the shadows of Cologne’s distinguished cathedral, I lunched in a Chinese restaurant, run by new immigrants to this continent – this is not a new phenomena – peoples have always moved across boundaries in history. Have one forgotten that the Germans, Vikings, Magyars, Slavs, etc were at one time all foreigners to this ancient continent?
Here I changed to another coach that heads straight towards Moscow. Apart from me, and an obnoxious Bulgarian oilman and his mistress, all the other passengers were Russians heading for home either after a German holiday or after emigration to Germany. Hannover was next – once the capital of a kingdom which gave rise to a dynasty which saw England’s rise as a great power. Queen Victoria, who presided over this period of glory, was once the grandmother of quite a few European monarchs, including the last Kaiser of Germany and Tsar of Russia.
Then through Magdeburg and Berlin, and we crossed the German-Polish border past midnight after 2 hours on the border feeding mosquitoes, near a city called Frankfurt upon Oder, not related to the financial capital of Euroland, but near the heartland of a smallish and relatively unknown Slavic minority in Germany called the Sorbians.
The second time I entered Polish territory, the bus passed through Warsaw and then into Belarus (not before a tiresome 4-hour wait at the border). I guess nothing has changed in this pathetic former Soviet state since my last visit in 1999. The dictator Lukashenko remains in power and the country remains a live museum to the old Soviet Union. In the first stop within Belarus, the cafe was closed for the staff to have lunch, and you buy stuff from the gas station shop the old-fashion Soviet way, i.e., first you queue up to point to the stuff across the shelf that you want. Then she writes an invoice with which you must queue up in another line to present to a cashier for payment. Provided you have not already given up by then and have actually paid up, you are given a receipt which you should now queue up a third time – in the first line, so that you can exchange the receipt for the item you want.
A third night on the bus and we crossed the Belarus-Russian border without any passport checks. Both countries are in customs union, which Lukashenko had hoped to be a prelude to him running for presidency in Russia and then recreating the USSR – a meaningless dream since most Russians think that he’s mad and have no interests in subsidizing a bankrupt Belarus, and that the popularity of President Putin is at an all-time high. And so Lukashenko must contend to running Belarus like a chicken farm, which was what he was doing for years before becoming Belarus’ president.
And so I have finally reached Russia and, in a few hours’ time, we reached Moscow, massive city with wide boulevards and enormous monuments. At Leningradsky Station, Vladimir, my old business school pal, picked me up. After a quick visit to his country dacha and back to Moscow, I moved into his city apartment. I sorted myself out quickly and then proceeded to explore the largest city in Europe.
I dropped by the Red Square, the heart of Russia. An amazing place, where great events had taken place. Ranging from the mass execution of opponents by the Tsars, the liberation speech by great princes after the defeat of the Poles, to the victory parade after the defeat of Nazi Germany after WWII. I have seen the pictures of the Kremlin many times, but even then, the exuberance of it all surprised me: The golden domes of the cathedrals in the Kremlin, the bright red city walls, plus the magical mushroom towers of St Basil’s… this must be the highlight of any visit to Moscow.
Just below the walls of the Kremlin stood the tomb of Lenin, founder of the USSR. Once a shrine of the communist world, it is today a curious tourist attraction of sorts. Most Russians, apart from some elderly communist die-hards, are not interested in the embalmed corpse of Lenin which lies in state within. Only tourists. And even then, the authorities seemed anxious to see an end to an era by perhaps burying the body somewhere for good. The opening hours of the mausoleum are amazingly short, 3 hours a day for 4 days a week, or at least that’s what I have been told. I was hardly around the Red Square around those hours, and the visit has therefore eluded me so far. I will try again another day.
Over the next few days, I was to visit some of the many monuments and museums of the Kremlin and Moscow city, plus the New Jerusalem fortress monastery outside the city. Moscow is indeed an amazing city. In the city centre, by appearance at least, it has shaken off the image of a dull communist town. Everywhere you see ATMs, neon lights, bright new shops and fancy restaurants – the prices they charge have made the city the world’s second-most expensive city in the world.
But some things remain the same. Service attitudes in shops are appalling, and few people could speak any English – or maybe they do but are too shy to respond to the tourist. These are fine with me, as it is not only in Russia that these things happen, or perhaps I must learn some Russian too.
What really upset me, is the way bureaucrats and police treat non-Europeans in town. Whilst individual Russians have treated me with great hospitality and friendliness, police I have come across tend to look at me suspiciously. In merely 4 days in Moscow, I have been stopped for passport checks twice. It can be very chilling if you are not used to that – I had experienced so much of these in the CIS countries and hence could react to such nonsense confidently and calmly. I have also noticed that the police tend to stop anyone who is non-European. Mostly anyone East or Central Asian-looking, or who might be from the Caucasus or the Middle East. My Russian friends say it’s because there are many illegal immigrants in town, but I can hardly say the same about the behaviour of police officers in Western Europe or USA, where I have never been stopped, despite the large number of illegals in these countries too. It can be really irritating if you are rushing somewhere, or when the police officers don’t know what they are checking.
On one occasion, the officer claimed that my visa registration (a bizarre requirement from the old Soviet days which specifies that tourists have to register with special interior ministry police – easy but a hassle nevertheless and it allows police to harass you at will) was done wrongly, which is bullshit. I did my homework, and knew the rules better than he did. Only my self-confidence and his lack of ability in speaking English allowed me to dismiss his allegations, take back my passport and ignore him completely. I can’t see how Russia, despite its enormous potential for tourism, can attract more tourists if stories like that (as well as the nightmare in getting visas) continue to frighten prospective tourists.
OK, enough complaints. Moscow will be my base to see many parts of Russia and the CIS over the next month, before I finally set off for Siberia by train. On Monday, I begin the tour of the provinces by flying 1100km westwards, to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, the long-forgotten German city of Konigsberg, East Prussia. You will hear more of this visit in my next dispatch.
Newsflash: Back in Singapore; Journey Disrupted by Family Bereavement
14 August 2002
I am now in Singapore. Last Thursday night in Yaroslavl, north Russia, on hearing that my uncle passed away, I took an overnight train to Moscow and from there flew to Singapore via Istanbul. Reached home on Saturday afternoon and attended the funeral on Monday. I am now spending time with the family while preparing to continue my journey next week.
My original plan has been to fly to Turkmenistan (the country where the President last week decided to rename all the months in the year – yes, January will be named after himself and April after his mother), and then on to Azerbaijan. Then back to Russia to visit St Petersburg and eastwards to Siberia. However, my schedule has been disrupted, and I am now likely to fly to Istanbul in order to make my way to Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, although there are now complications with my visas and flight arrangements. Let’s see how things work out.
Over the next few days, I’d hoped I would be free to write an article about my interesting visit to the Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad, and about a nasty encounter with a corrupt policeman on the Red Square. Till then, wish me luck!