Monday
The morning after the celebratory dinner was a little rough for most of us. Our four-hour bus ride to the airport was reduced to three hours through a combination of factors: going downhill; the lack of kamikaze cattle on the roads; and the added momentum of the very significant bulk of a random mate of the driver in the passenger seat. We dropped off the mate at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere; presumably he’d done his job as we’d reached the bottom of the hills, and he would not be required to eat any megafauna roadkill.

I was given no free confectionary on the flight back to Moscow, but I was luckily able to swap the mystery meat on my sandwich for an extra slice of lettuce and half a dill pickle, so quite the veggie feast was had.

Most of the team had only one night in Moscow, so it was a pity we lost a little time at the airport when our transport forgot about collecting us. We executed a quick “dump and dash” at the hotel (an unfortunately ambiguous phrase that isn’t as bad as it sounds) and followed our corporal on a successful orienteering session to find Red Square.

Moscow, or at least the touristy areas we saw, is quite beautiful and very well maintained. Lots of floral arrangements, very clean streets and buildings and no litter to be seen. Leaving the restaurant after dinner we were lucky enough to catch the daily ritual of the emptying of the portaloos. The aroma was delightfully reminiscent of our long drop toilets up on the mountain.

We finished the evening with a few drinks in the Arbat pedestrianised area near our hotel. We started off with a hardcore Biker Bar / American dinner (like Sons of Anarchy meets Happy Days) and then crossed over to the only nearby bar still open, an Irish pub.

The pub had all the trappings of a real bar back home (Guinness ads on the walls, signposts for Terminfeckin 4, Maam Cross 8, and Horse And Jockey 11), but with a few excellent improvements: the lager in the Harp tap had been replaced with a local Russian beer that was actually drinkable; and the waitress who spoke no English wore a traditional Irish green-mesh, see-through, camouflage-print top. Just like home.

Tuesday
…and then there were two…

The two of us who had tacked on a few extra days in Moscow waved the others off from the hotel in the morning. It was quite sad to see the group breaking up and to know we’d be missing the banter on their way home.

We set out for the day with only one goal in mind, to take an open top bus tour and get an overview of Moscow, and we failed to achieve it. We visited the Kremlin and saw five different churches, each with amazing icons, murals, onion domes, and scary Jesuses looking down from the ceilings.

We were equally impressed by the four male choral singers in tuxes in St Basil’s Cathedral and the string three piece busking in the underpass beside the Bolshoi Theatre. We tried to get tickets for the Bolshoi but a very grumpy middle aged woman with a perm scowled at us until we went away.

Similar grumpy scowling women also made us feel uncomfortable when changing money, buying tickets for the Kremlin museums and eventually getting tickets to the youth ballet just beside the Bolshoi. I personally suspect that the same woman just followed us around as our assigned scowler.

In the Kremlin, we experienced the wonder of electric toilets: the cubicle flushes and cleans itself as soon as the patron is finished, leaving only a thin layer of dirty water on the floor with which to splash one’s shoes. They have reinvested the money saved by not having to clean the toilets in a permanent toilet attendent, who directs each prospective user to the next free cubicle, while cautioning them silently not to enter before the cleaning process finishes. That might break the spell.

Clad as we were in hiking boots and unwashed t-shirts, we were a little worried about the dress code for the ballet that

evening.

However, as it was only the youth ballet, luckily we saw a number of mullet headed children, and then a 30-year old woman wearing a shorts and t-shirt combination with a batman logo that was so skimpy she’d clearly borrowed it from a 12 year old. We were thus assured that we could not possibly bring down the tone.