Moscow

The mission charter of my 2007 travel plan was to visit really different places. Perhaps it's a communist-state thing, but the first two cities I thought of were Moscow and Havana.

I visited Moscow over the second bank holiday weekend in May, arranging to meet up with my friend Geoffrey, who flew in separately from New York. In brief, Moscow is a huge, flat, ugly, sprawling city, so large that its easy to forget that this is Europe's most populous city, with 13 million people. But the size of the city is best appreciated not long after landing at Domodedovo Airport. Located in the middle of a pine forest, we drove for more than an hour - mostly on fast highways - to reach the city centre.

To Geoffrey's horror, I booked our accommodation at the Novotel. Admittedly, it was far from salubrious, and had all the atmosphere of a well-trodden Ikea showroom, but it was spacious, affordable, and not representative of the larcenous pricing that accompanies most Moscow hotel experiences. Everyone we met on our trip seemed to be staying at the Kempinski. (Madonna stayed there once, and she being the pied-piper-to-the-poofs, everyone wants to follow her it seems.) At the Kempinski, a basic and simply-decorated twin-share room (with single beds) can be had for the reduced weekend price of €300 per night.

My tip for first-time travellers to Moscow is that you must be prepared to haemorrhage money, from the moment you pay £50-£80 for a single-trip short-stay holiday visa. If that seems reasonable, consider that a tapas-sized serve of Goulash at a cafe on Red Square cost £10 (okay, it was Red Square). But that's nothing compared to our bill for supper at the Metropole Hotel: £180 for a piccolo of Moet & Chandon, two glasses of house sparkling wine, two trays of red caviar, and one (rather delicious) tray of black caviar. We briefly contemplated joining the working girls in the lobby to pay off that one.

Red Square was our first stop in Moscow; it lives up to expectation. The square is massive, and rectangular in shape. Along one long edge is the imposing wall of the Kremlin. On the other, the beautifully renovated GUM state department store. Elsewhere in the square are Lenin's tomb, and the Cathedral of Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat. This cathedral is better known as St Basil's Cathedral, and is Moscow's enduring iconic image. So much so, it's often mistaken for the Kremlin - which is not merely one building, but a citadel - right next door. The cathedral is now a museum, and can be toured.

One of the most surprisingly enjoyable things we did was to visit the Monino Aircraft Museum on Moscow's outskirts. This was Geoffrey's suggestion, and worth every minute of the two-hour bumper-to-bumper trip in steaming hot weather sans air-conditioning. Located at the edge of a military site, Monino is an aircraft graveyard, home to dozens of mothballed flying machines. We were most interested in the supersonic passenger jet Tupolev TU-144 (nicknamed the Concordski) which is a near copy of the Anglo-French Concorde. It's a "near copy" because it's based on stolen Concorde plans. One of the design flaws of the Concordski was that it lacked the superior wing design of the Concorde. Seeing it up close, it's a wonder that it ever flew! But that might have to do with the poor condition of the plane, like most in the museum.

We also saw the Mil Mi-12; with two rotors it is the largest helicopter ever built. The Mil Mi-12 is a good example of what makes Monino so interesting Monino, that basically the Russian aircraft engineers have toyed with a variety of ingenious design concepts: swing wings, droop-noses, VTOL, double-propellers, double-wings, double-engines, tri-jets, wing tips, and nose canards to name a few. Some designs are familiar, some look wacky, and many look like they were assembled in someone's garage using scrap. It really helped to be accompanied by our tour guide, Roman, on this trip. Having been in the air force himself, he was able to give us a lot of background on the planes that we otherwise would not have learned from the simple aircraft annotations.

Roman also accompanied us on our tour of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The history of this church is really interesting. Originally constructed in the late 19th century, it was demolished after the Revolution. In its place, Stalin intended to build the Palace of Soviets, a grand skyscraper/monument which would have been the tallest building in the world. Construction floundered early on, and the foundations were soon utilised to become a huge public swimming pool. In fact, this was the world's largest outdoor swimming pool! Roman remembers visiting the pool in his youth, and recalled how it was temperature-controlled from a geothermal source, allowing one to swim in warm water during Moscow's notoriously freezing winters. Following the fall of the USSR, there was a public campaign to rebuild the cathedral, which was achieved in 1997 at a cost of $350 million.

Another of our Moscow memories was when we attended the Bolshoi Theatre to see the Bolshoi Ballet performance of La Fille Mal Gardée (lit: The Badly Kept Girl). This is a comedy ballet, in the style of a pantomime. We had front row seats (a bargain for us at £30, even though it's much much more than what Russians would pay). This was the first ballet for Geoffrey and I, and we were both worried we might get bored, or not be able to follow the story. But as we discovered, our fears could not be further from the reality. The performances were outstanding; truly breathtaking.

Second only to London, Moscow has more resident billionaires than any other city. We didn't see any, but we did see enough Russians spending big bucks in restaurants and shops to make me wonder how people can become so wealthy in just 16 years. Right on Red Square is the beautiful ex-Soviet department store known as GUM. It's now a high-end shopping mall, and it's pretty much empty. Nearby there is another department store, SUM, that resembles Harvey Nichols, except the staff-to-shopper ratio is 10:1.

Moscow's subway is a tourist attraction in its own right. The early stations employ a variety of architectural styles - Stalinist, neo-classical, or art deco - depending on what was in vogue at the time of construction. But the first three lines dating from the thirties, and for which the network is famous, feature barrel-vaulted ceilings, chandeliers, and marble floors.

Geoffrey and I spent a lot of time in Red Square, but we never got the chance to tour the Kremlin. On the day we planned to visit, we found army barricades at every public entrance leading to the Kremlin. We later learned that this barricade was imposed by the government, without warning, to prevent a protest taking place in Red Square. On the weekend we visited - and totally by coincidence - a group of gay and lesbian Europeans had planned to hold a gay pride rights march in Moscow. However the mayor refused to grant a march permit. The protestors gathered outside the mayor's residence, where they were assaulted by the police, and the army and special forces were called out to ring the Kremlin with metal barricades and a human shield. So while we didn't get to see the Kremlin we got to see a nasty and underreported side to Russian politics. Basically, there is no right to peacefully assemble if the government doesn't like the subject matter for the protest. And in a country that has had the same government since the end of the Soviet era, and with a President who is changing laws to hold on to power, one really wonders how much has actually changed, if at all.

On my departure, I actually couldn't wait to leave the city. I'd had enough of the rich/poor disparity, and the sense that nothing is easy, yet everything has its price. Hardly anyone smiles on the public transport, which I found rather depressing. Admittedly, a lot of people don't have a lot to smile about. And I have come to realize my experience of Moscow is not so much a slight against the city, as it is the resonance of the grim, bleak existence that many are fated to live there. Still, I'm grateful for that experience, and while we saw a lot, there is a lot more to see. I will return some time in the future, perhaps when I'm better prepared for the experience.

All of my Moscow photographs are on Flickr, and can be viewed in a slideshow.