Day 5 - Sept. 25 - Friday

MOSCOW - RUSSIA


It was hard to get out of bed at 5:30, after the Moulin Rouge night! But I managed. Our flight from Paris to Moscow was 3 hours and 10 minutes and again Air France impressed me with its food: shrimp salad, cheese, pecan tart and other delicious French things.
This photo above was taken at the Charles De Gaulle gate, waiting to board.



In the photo bellow is my friend Tadj - who I just met in the plane - from Chad. He speaks Arabic, French, Russian and Greek, so our communication was terrible. But with writing messages and sign language I understood that he is a petro-chemistry student in Moscow. Very sweet boy. Good luck for you Tadj!

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War monument in Moscow's entrance.

Finally we got in Moscow at 4pm local time (8am Toronto time). Tania, a nice and very intelligent lady from our tourism company was there with a sign waiting for us. She kindly gave us a tour and lots of information about Russia on the 30 kms trip from the airport to the hotel. We spoke in Spanish, since she has learned it in Cuba, when she was a student there in the past.

To come to Russia, most of tourists need a visa. To get this visa, we had to pay a tour and a hotel here. The tour company then sent us a letter inviting us to visit Russia. From talking to people, it sounds that if you don't have this invitation, you can't have a visa. So, a paid tour is the safest and simplest way to go.

Security is really tight. We were photographed - passenger by passenger - by a female officer as we were leaving the plane. The passport check was longer than usually takes in other countries. In the hotel they keep your passport for a "check by the government" for few hours. basically they need to confirm that you are staying were you said you were going to stay when you applied for the visa and the hotel is responsible for you. There are security guards standing with metal detectors in the mall entrances checking some people. There is even a metal detector machine downstairs in the hotel lobby. Wow, I guess it makes you feel safe, but still, a bit different from what we are use to.

The first big shook was trying to communicate. Not too many people speak English here, which is not too bad. But add the fact that they have a totally different alphabet. Then I understand absolutely nothing! It can be very frustrating... For example, we were trying to order some food for dinner, but they could not understand a word of English and we obviously don't speak Russian either, and the menu looked at least funny to me. I feel like I can't write of read. I knew it was going to be like that, but being in a place that you cannot ready anything, not even recognize most of the letters, it can drive you nuts. But I believe I will get use to it pretty quickly.

Here are a few things that Tania told us about her and Russia:

- the government pays 10 thousand dollars per child born to encourage couples to have babies. Apparently the population is getting old and not being replaced

- they love Julio Iglesias here, and he is doing a concert in Moscow in few days- she works with tourism in the summer and in the national library in the winter

- the weather is a lot like Canada

- the new president, Dmitry Medvedev, wants to strengthen the economic relations with South American countries

- he is a "good boy", she says

- 1 euro is 44 Russian dollars, called ruble

OTHER FIRST IMPRESSIONS...

- Moscow looks a lot like big cities in Brazil

- some people smoke indoors, in cafes and shopping malls

- people look more serious here than they do in Canada, and definitely in Brazil

- Moscow looks like a very modern city. Coming from Paris, maybe too modern!

- the Russian girls are absolutely gorgeous!!!!

We are staying at the Radisson Hotel right across from the Crystal Bridge and the government palace, which is also know of the White House. Go figure... Well, the hotel is really nice and has received many famous people like George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie, Naomi Campbell, Boris Yetsin, etc... It's definitely not the kind of hotel that I usually stay, but that was part of booking the tour here, and I won't complain. The swimming pool is huge and I will enjoy it tomorrow morning before the Kremlin and the Red Square. Good night!

List of the famous guests on the hotel lobby.