My sister Melinda keeps telling me I’ve got to see this Aussie movie called Kenny. It’s about a guy who looks after portaloos, apparently, and has been a huge success in Oz.
If work dries up back home I reckon Kenny should get himself over to
Moscow. Moscow is the Portaloo capital of the world. Everywhere you go there’s a line of toilets and a babooshka waiting to take your ten roubles. They look a bit unsightly – the row right outside the entrance to Red Square kind of detract from its triumphant tone – but if your busting to have a leak in Moscow you’re never more than a minute away from one
I’m still trying to figure out who empties them. A couple I’ve used were precariously close to full capacity. And one person I’ve met in Moscow (who has requested to remain anonymous) has admited being responsible for taking one ‘over the edge.’ But from all accounts it’s better than the old days when you couldn’t even find a public toilet let alone bribe your way into one.
Even now, with thousands of the things, the only queues I have seen in Moscow have been for the loos.
Just before I took this photo a tourist took a photo without tossing some roubles into the bucket. Big mistake! The one on the left chased him down and dragged him back by the ear and forced him to cough up.
The highlight of Sunday was VDNKh - and old Soviet exhibition centre where Muscovites hang out when it’s sunny. Used to exhibition halls for produce, animal husbandry, electronics etc but now their full of shops.
Except the Honey Hall. It still sells honey and as you can see has a sweet spot for the President.
These guys were playing in the tunnel leading to the Okhotny Ryad metro staion. Their instruments were a little worse for wear but they were brilliant.
OK, just a general outline for now but I’ll fill it out when I get the chance.
1st stop Red Square and St Basils cathedral. Both smaller than I expected but still brillaint. That’s a self portrait outside Basils. I was going for a kind of grumpy Orthodox priest vibe. Like the one I saw on the Metro who was a real arse.
Next, caught up with two Aussie expats living in Moscow - Jen and Nathan. Took me to Glavpivtorg - a Soviet beer restaurant modelled on the old ones favoured by the Soviet heavies. That’s me hamming it up in the State Room.
Then a meal in a restaurant Nathan was reviewing for the Moscow Times. Nathan and Jen taught me how to drink Vodka properly - an essential skill out in the provinces, they said.
More on that later - but it worked. I had 11 shots over the evening and felt fine.
The first thing I did after checking into my brillaint hotel room - a little piece of the 1960’s with it’s own babuska - was get a Russian SIM card for my phone. Works out much cheaper to call and be called.
Anyways, like everything in Russia there’s a lot of red tape involved. You have to show your passport. And you have to be registered. Which was a problem because the hotel weren’t registering me until Tuesday.
All the little phone kiosks around the Metro station refused to do it point blank. But Il’dar and Dimitry from the phone shop next to the local Maccas bent the rules and got me online.
My first glimpse of Moscow came from the 6.18 am local train from Domodedevo airport to Paveletskaya. It was old rolling stock, painted blue, with doors that wouldn’t shut. The bench seats were grey and so were the ceilings.
The train was pretty empty. The only other person in my carraige was a soldier who had just flown in for R&R from the provinces. But as we made our way through a beech forest, then cleared fields, then wooden huts then factories and apartment blocks it gradually began to fill.
Guys with side-parts just off the night shift. Old ladies in head scarfs carrying punnets of flowers to sell at a market. And closer to town, a man wearing shiny black shoes listening to a Russian iPod. It was exactly how I imagined Russia would be.
A couple of stations before Paveletskaya a lady wandered through the cabin selling battery-operated plastic animals. They were magnetic, apparently and she’d spread them out on a metal tray. The birds cheeped. The dogs barked. And the turtles - well, their shell lit up and their flippers flapped.
I was certain no-one would buy one. Most Russians are struggling to make ends meet and I didn’t see any oligarchs on board with cash burning a hole in their pocket.
It looked like I was going to be right. Except just as we pulled into Moscow a lady with peroxide blonde hair called the hawker over. And bought the turtle.
Damn. I was planning to make a silly offer for it as I got off the train.
To me, nothing evokes the break-up of the former USSR than the suffix ’stan.’ One minute it’s the Soviet Union. The next it’s all these weird countries ending in ‘Stan.
The Babushka bit comes from the old Kate Bush song, Babooshka. Well, the accompanying video if I were to be honest. As an impressonable lad growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney it had quite an impact on me. Especially the chorus.
I’m going to keep mucking around with the ’stan thing. When I was in the States last year promoting Vroom with a View I spotted a novel by a guy called Gary Shteyngart called Absurdistan. It was one of those ‘You Bastard!’ moments - a great title that I wished I’d thought of.
The Reverend Simon Rumble has since informed me that there is another book out in Australia by the same name - a kind of memior by Eric Campbell, an ABC journalist who spent some time working in the region.
Anyway, better go. My flight leaves at ten and I haven’t started packing yet.
The Eastern Bloc moustache has been abandoned after Sally threatened to change the locks while I’m away. I’ve let it fill out to a traditional cossack goatee instead.
It wasn’t just Sally’s threats. I had to get a haircut yesterday. It was at a hairdresser’s I’d never been to before. I always tell hairdressers to cut my hair in style they think would suit me. I decided the moustache would have sent out the wrong signals.
Of course, there’s nothing to stop me resurrecting the Mo in Moscow. It’ll just have to be gone before I touch back down at Heathrow.
. It was one of those ‘You Bastard!’ moments - a great title that I wished I’d thought of.