Hey there folks (it's my turn to type this time ...gmt)
Well, we've been here in Moscow for 4 days now and we're still alive and kicking.
Here's an interesting adventure that happened to us yesterday though. We were sitting around in the Metro station waiting for a surprise rain-storm to subside when a Police Officer approached us and asked to see our Passports. This was the second time that a policeman had made such a request during the course of the afternoon (We thought some murder had been committed by a foreigner or something). Of course, we generally don't walk around with our Passports and valuables on our person so when we showed him our photocopies he didn't seem too impressed and he brought us over to talk to his other police-type buddies. Of course, nobody spoke English and suffice it to say that our Russian isn't up to snuff for this type of conversation (or any type of conversation) ... and nowhere in the Lonely Planet does it say how to pronounce "I'm innocent". Some more heated discussions amongst officers and we were shuffled off to the Police Station in a Police Jeep (a first for us) and we met several more non-english-speaking officers who seemed to have made several jokes at our expense. One in-charge-type officer looked at us and asked one oficer why they'd brought us in and laughed at the response by telling us to "good-bye" (we didn't bother to correct his grammatical use of good-bye as a verb) ... so, we quickly left in the rain and managed to get suitably drenched before we made it back to the hostel ... hmmm ... we still don't know why they brought us in there in the first place but we now have photocopies of our passports and recently registered visa documents so hopefully the next police-type people might be more inclined to just let us go home.
Moscow itself is quite beautiful really (although not nearly as nice as St. Petersburg). We've been to the Kremlin, Red Square, the original McDonalds, the Russian White House, several cathedrals and we've seen one dead body of Lenin (he winked at me though).
So, we ate a McDonalds (it had to be done) and while there we were amazed at the sheer velocity of the place. We've never seen every cash-register being operated in any McDonalds and here there were about 30 all being used by two employees (one taking orders and the other getting food). The place was a model of efficiency in a country where efficiency generally isn't in the top 3 of priorities. We took pictures (and I got one with Ronald).
Next on the list for us is a train eastward to the Ural Mountains. We'll be stopping in Yekaterinburg (sp?), 18 kilometers inside Asia (wahoo) and only a mere 29 hours from Moscow. We don't really know anything about the place so we'll probably be surprised at what we find. From Yekaterinburg another 22 hour train ride will bring us to Novosibirsk and then another 12 to Krasnoyarsk before hitting Irkutsk (yes, the Irkutsk from RISK ... We hope this RISK related fame has created a technology hub and introduced internet cafe's or something ... send us messages and we'll get them eventually). Then, on to Mongolia (which we now have a 30 day visa for) to get some inner peace. (Eric is waiting until we get to Nepal to get his inner peace but I think I'll like the Mongolian product better). We hear they sell it in the streets. Our route following China may now go through Tibet, Nepal, India, Bangledesh, Myanmar (ya know, Burma), Thailand, etc. We keep getting these great ideas from other travellers we meet.
That's it for now. We'd say more but it's cutting into our Friday night drinking time (not like we need a weekend to drink though). We're very impressed by the quantity and quality of all your messages ... it's great to hear good ole Canadian sarcasm at its finest.
Love Gerry & Eric (or Eric & Gerry)
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