Welcome to Babushkastan

Wednesday May 9: Victory Day celebrations and I found myself out the front of Universitet Metro Station waiting for eKaterina. She was going to show me the best place to watch the fireworks up on Sparrow Hill, a high point in front of the university with views over the entire city.

We were both feeling a little peckish so we decided to get something to eat. After wandering about for a while eKaterina asked a couple of babushkas selling flowers if they could recommend anywhere. They pointed to the place pictured above. A so-called Disco Bar.

The busty girl in the poster above the door didn’t inspire confidence about the food on offer, if indeed meals were served at all. Nor did the dark, ‘intimate’ interior. It was so dark that the bouncer took us by the elbow to lead us to our table.

It was when the waitress brought us the menu that the alarm bells really started ringing. She was wearing a g-string and two tiny triangles of material - one over each nipple. eKaterina’s reaction - i.e. none - suggested that this was all part of a normal Moscow eating experience.

When my eyes adjusted to the light I noticed a stage in front of us. It was hidden by a thin mesh curtain but I could make out the silouhettes of girls practising their moves on a brass pole. One would try a few moves and then the other would give them a few pointers on how they could improve.

Again, eKaterina reacted as if this was perfectly normal.

‘Perhaps they are warming,’ she said. ‘To prevent injuries.’

When the near-naked waitress came back to take our order I insisted eKaterina ask if there were any extra charges, hidden or otherwise, for the ‘atmosphere.’ The girl looked shocked.

‘Oh no!,’ she said. ‘This is just my uniform. The non-stop strip show doesn’t start until 9 p.m.’

The girls kept practising. Our meals came. (As good as you’d expect from a meal from such an establishment.) And the bill came to a reasonable 350 roubles.

And Jason, before you ask, my beer cost 90 roubles. More, I’m sure, after nine!

Not all Muscovites love the Metro as much as I do. It can get a little crowded. Nine million people use it every day. More than the London and New York systems combined. And it’s not always the most direct route between Point A and Point B.

That’s where Gipsy Cabs come in. I’m not sure if that’s their official name. It’s just what the people I met in Moscow call them.

Any car on the road can be a Gipsy Cab. You just stick out your hand and wait for a car to stop. Negotiate a rate - usually a couple of hundred rouble - and you’re on your way.

Chances are it’ll be a little boxy Lada. They’re the ‘official’ Gipsy cabs. They are driven by guys who have come in from the provinces to make a living this way. And more likely than not they live in the car. If you’re lucky it’ll be something flash - driven by the driver/bodyguard of a businessmen looking to make a bit of extra cash while his boss is in a meeting.

Or if you’re like me, it’ll be some guy in a beat-up piece of shit with Tourettes syndrome. He picked up me, Jen and Nathan when we wanted to go from the VDNKh Cultural Pavillion to the river boat dock near Kutuzovsky. Each tick affected his driving - making him either accelerate, brake or veer wildly with each attack.

Then he got lost. And on discovering the way he had planned to go was one way, started slapping the side of his head.

It was an adventure, if nothing else.

Not everyone in Moscow is an oligarch. Some don’t even eat sushi. When they want a cheap quick meal they head to My My.

My My is pronounced Moo Moo, hence the bovine-themed livery. You’ll find them all around Moscow. The one above is on Arbat. The photo below was taken in the one near Lubyanka.

The thing I liked most about My My is that it’s self service. You decide what you like the look of and point at it. (Until my Russian improves it’s keeping me from going hungry!) It’s always busy so it’s always fresh. And it’s cheap. I had a salad, snitzel and vegetables and a beer and it came to 250 roubles. If I’d gone one of the special set menus I could have got out of it for 69 roubles.

I was put onto My My by eKaterina. The one on Arbat was only a couple of hundred metres from her flat. Whenever she works late Ivan wanders down there for his dinner. (She didn’t say if he wore his dressing gown or not.) Judging by the number of complimentary My My fudge around their flat - you get one with every meal - he goes there a lot.

He even had a My My balloon.

I’m posting this especially for Jason Smart. He is heading to Moscow in a couple of weeks and keeps asking me how much a pint costs.

The Russians seem to sell beer by the half litre. Being a metric boy myself I’m not sure how many litres are in a pint or how many pints are in a litre. Judging purely by sight I’d say half a litre isn’t quite as big as a pint.

Anyway, more importantly, Jen and Nathan put me on to a chain of pubs that sell cheap beer and cheap food. Half a litre of draught beer starts at 45 roubles. (That’s less than a pound, Jason!)

Just look out for the word KPYЖKA and an orange sign featuring a beer, a knife and a fork.

They’re everywhere.

When I was growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney  it was popular for young guys to buy panel vans and spray paint the kind of pictures you see on heavy metal albums on the side.

In Moscow, they prefer doing it to Jags.

Monday May 7: Went couchsurfing, staying with eKaterina and her partner Ivan in their one room flat in Arbat.

It was the first time I have ever couchsurfed. My friend Brian Thacker, another Aussie travel writer, does it all the time. In fact he’s got a book coming out next year where in couchsurfs in two countries on every continent.

What can I say? It was brilliant. A real-eye-opener. And an instant insight on how many Russians live. eKaterin and Ivan live in a room, sharing a bathroom and kitchen with the people in three other rooms. eKaterina’s daughter usually lives there too but she was staying at her boyfriend’s place so I got her couch.

Apparently these kinds of living arrangements are getting rarer in Moscow. They’re called Kommunalkas and most Moscovites are ditching them for self contained flats with their own bathrooms and kitchens.  The rooms aren’t worth much on their own. But if all the owners agreed to sell Kommunalkas can go for big bikkies. Nathan reckons that the one eKaterina lives in - 50 metres off Arbat - would sell for $US 3 million. Sell the room individually and you’d only get a minute fraction of that.

I was amazed how much stuff eKaterina and Ivan fitted into the place. A huge cabinet lined one wall. There was a computer desk under the window and a piano in the right hand corner. A TV, a fridge, a double couchbed, a single couch bed, and a toilet seat to take with you when nature called. The dog lived under the couch bed I slept on.

eKaterina is a mad traveller and spends every chance she gets backpacking. She’s off to Irian Jaya in July. Ivan, from what I can gather, wears a blue dressing gown and plays online duelling games until 3 a.m. in the morning.

Food, apparently.

According to my vodka sensei, Jen and Nathan, it is bad form to drink the stuff without eating. If you get caught up in a vodka drinking session it is perfectly reasonable to insist on snacks or meals to accompany it. No right thinking Russian will refuse.

There’s also a trick to drinking it. Breathe in as you take the shot. And take a bite out of a pickle immediately afterwards.

Sounds weird, but it worked for me.

Here’s a pic of my room at the Hotel Asia. For €30 a night I get a bed, a sofa, a writing desk, a bar fridge and a (colour) TV. I also get breakfast at the cafeteria on the fifth floor and a babushka down the hall who makes the bed and generally keeps an eye on things.

I love it. Most of the hotels in Moscow have been turned into expensive business hotels but the Hotel Asia is holding on to the old ways a little longer than most. It’s out of the centre at Ryazansky Prospekt but it’s right next to a Metro station where Red Square is only a 15 minute ride away.

When I booked I was given the choice of a ‘renovated’ or ‘unrenovated’ room. I chose the ‘unrenovated’ option because it was €20 a night cheaper.

At the time I wasn’t exactly sure what ‘unrenovated’ meant. Now I’ve checked in I think it means that the decor in the room hasn’t been changed since the sixties.

Now I know you’re not supposed to buy anything made from an endangered species. But what’s the correct moral stance on something that is already extinct?

The reason I ask is that I bought myself a little carving made from the tusk of a woolly mammoth found frozen in ice in the depths of Siberia. That’s a picture of it above, along with the business-card-sized certificate of authentication. (It didn’t come in the crystal enclosure - that’s just the glass in my room.)

My real concern is that it’s not made from mammoth at all. Not because I’ve been gipped. It’s just that Russians have a rather more ‘relaxed’ approach to this issue than we do in the west. If they couldn’t find a real mammoth tusk they’d probably use an elephant one instead!

The first thing I did when I arrived at Paveletskaya station on Saturday morning was buy a Metro card with twenty rides on it. It was only my second purchase in Russia and it went rather smoothly. I said dvatsat beelyet (twenty ticket) and the woman wrote on the paper that it would cost me 250 roubles. I’ve been told since that it was the beelyet bit that gave me away as a tourist. A local would have just said ‘Twenty.’

It’s probably been the best thing I’ve bought in Moscow. Not only is it cheap – a ride any where on the system cost me 12.5 roubles (that’s 20p) – it’s convenient and a constant source of entertainment. So far I’ve been stared down by a Babushka who was convinced I was a terrorist, watched a demonstration for a stain removal product go horribly wrong and given my seat up to a war veteran wearing so many medals he was in danger of toppling over.

The Metro stations themselves are also amazing. Most are decked out in marble, fitted with chandeliers and covered in art work celebrating the glories of the revolution. I’ve posted a few of my favourite photos below.

They certainly make the crappy mosaics in the floor tiles at Town Hall in Sydney look pretty lame in comparison.