One Week in Moscow: It’s Not What I Thought It Was.

One Week in Moscow: It’s Not What I Thought It Was.

We arrived in Moscow in a heat wave, the mercury pushing 35 degrees, the deceptively pale sunshine and sparse clouds trapping a ferocious heat, this is what greeted us as we arrived at the Moscow train terminus.  For 30 minutes or so my cell phone would not allow me to connect to Uber for some reason to book a car and with the heat and a thin trickle of sweat running down my back, caused my patience to reach its limit and we headed to the underground with all our bags and stuff. I had switched into mission mode and nothing was now going to stop me making to our recently booked apartment, not the heat, the language barrier, not the metro system, not my dodgy knee, not my......, at this point Fiona distracted me with some menial task and Yates wanted me to look up some FIFA stuff, and now I have lost my flow.... Suffice to say, it was a bit of an effort making it from the station to our apartment, and it was hot...

Our 6th Floor apartment was basic but functional with plenty of space for our small party of 5, soon to be 6, to spread out over its 7 rooms. I get the impression that the host has not rented the place out much and certainly not for up to 8 people, as there is not enough cutlery or plates for everyone, but we are a resourceful bunch and it really is not a problem. The great thing about our the place however is the great location once again, just 5

minutes from the 'Univeristet' Metro station and only 2 stops from the Luhzniki Stadium, a functioning lift, a regulation 24 hour mini-supermarket that seem to be built into the ground floor of every apartment complex, a large booze store next door, probably 10 eateries and even a 20-tap Craft Beer bar with a big screen TV within 10 minutes walking distance,..... SCORE..!! The downside to the apartment was that it did not have a TV, and was half-an-hour away from where Yates’s Moms crew were based, having booked somewhere to be close to where our original apartment was going to be, (I’m still sending out bad Karma vibes to a  certain Russian mongrel..!!).

Fiona & I were knackered after the long day of travel and left Yates, David & Emily to backtrack to their Mom’s place that first night, while we investigated what the local area had to offer. Just behind the Metro station we discovered a very American style Wings place called Buffalo’s stuffed to the gills with a Projector and big-screen TV’s and for me it was love-at-first-bite, so much so that we ate there for the first 4 nights in a row in Moscow, way to sample the local culture eh..? For the last of the Group Stage games it was just too convenient to be able to hit the Craft

Beer bar, called “Kraft Brothers” to watch the early game with a few pints, and then swap over to Buffalo’s for a table and good comfort food to watch the second game, followed by a short walk back to the apartment for some sleep. I can, however, attest to the fact that you can have too much of a good thing or at least my digestive system can but I am looking forward to going there again at least once more to enjoy their excellent food.

We had a day of sightseeing in and around Red Square in 36-degree heat which was as much an endurance test as it was fun, and if Yates’s Mom can do it with a smile on her face and spring in her step whilst in her mid-seventies then there is no reason I shouldn’t.  But bloody hell it was hot through, but even an hour or so in a queue to get into St.Basil’s Cathedral and eating lunch in the hottest cafe this side of Hades, was not enough to spoil what was still a great day out. Red Square looked smaller to

what I imagined and in comparison to what I have seen on TV, it looks nowhere near as imposing without the missile launchers and the platoons of goose-stepping soldiers.  I guess being ringed by high-end fashion stores and up-market restaurants & hotels, having a FIFA fan zone covering half of it with kids playing games and having a great time, and thousands of other tourists milling around made it seem less intimidating. The buildings around the centre of the city looked either very beautiful in a classical European architectural style or super modern and slick, Moscow was certainly not turning living up to its cold war billing.

We took in the first of our 3 World Cup matches in Moscow with a trip to the Luhzniki Stadium to watch our Russian Hosts play Spain in a ‘Round of 16’ match, and what a game that turned out to be. The very un-fancied Russians would surely be handed a footballing masterclass from the 2010 World Cup winners, but someone wasn’t reading the script, and through some stout defense on the part of the Russians and some lackluster play on the part of the Spanish, we found ourselves going into extra time and eventually at penalties. The Russian goalkeeper performed some personal heroics and before we knew it the Spanish were vanquished and the stadium erupted as the home crowd celebrated an unbelievable win. Well done Russia. 

Our second match in Moscow was our opportunity to watch England play Colombia at the Spartak Stadium, on the outskirts of the North Western part of the city. Fiona & I broke away from the rest of our group and headed out on our own for an afternoon walking through the Sevemoy Tushino park alongside the Moscow canal a few stops further out the where the match was being played. We had a lovely walk by the water and even had a tour of a Russian Submarine at a small museum in the park, then heading to a restaurant to have dinner before heading towards the Stadium

for the 9pm kick-off.  The rest of the game will be remembered as the time England finally won a World Cup game on penalties and was a deeply emotional night for me and probably millions of other England fans that have had to endure the humiliation of losing on penalties for the past 20-30 years. Suffice to say that this was one of the greatest World Cup moments for me, and maybe I’ll write a separate post to cover it.

The next day was lost to the seas of time. Not having gotten back to the apartment until 2am, and still been buzzing with the excitement of the game, I probably didn’t get to sleep until 4am, and therefore Fiona & I slept in late, and even when we did get up to search out some food, most of us just went back to napping for the rest of the day. With no football for 2 days, catching up on our sleep and rest seemed like a good idea. Yates was off to the airport for the umpteenth time to make sure his Mom, Shelly & Dick got away safely on their flight back to the USA. We had said our goodbyes to them at the end of the game last night, and it was awesome having them spend some time with us in our mad, loud, crazy, frantic, tiring but ultimately unique, World Cup experience, something that both they and us will never forget.

Yesterday, however, feeling rejuvenated and still on-top-of-the-world, we decided to get a hard day's worth of sight-seeing done in the absence of any games to see. David & Tony had left by now, and it was just myself, Fiona, Yates, and Emily left and we decided as it looked like being a nice enough day to take in a boat cruise along the Moscow river. It was stunning, and I

am becoming a great believer that taking a slow trip down a long river is one of the best ways to see parts of a city, assuming it has a river of course. We managed to catch a few sights we had not seen before from the luxury of the top deck of a cruise boat, no walking, no metro’s, no crowds just us and a few others tourists letting the

sights float by. After lunch we went to the Federation Tower, a very modern skyscraper in the heart of the new Moscow business district, to visit the ‘Panorama 360’ observation deck to see what the city looked like from the 89th floor. I can report that Moscow looks as surprising from above as it does from street level, with wide swathes of green space and long wooded areas spreading out in all directions from the city centre, making it one of the prettiest cities I have seen for a long time. We stayed up in the rarified atmosphere for an hour or so, enjoying both the view and free ice cream before heading back to the apartment for the now ritualised pre-dinner

napping. As it was Emily’s last night with us we let her choose what she wanted to eat and we ended up in a very nice high-end Italian restaurant about 15 minutes away. Whilst the service was erratic, the food was great and we all ultimately left feeling full and happy for our short walk home.

Moscow has been surprising for me, much like the rest of Russia that we have seen. It is as cultured and as beautiful a city as any of the European capitals, and as vibrant and modern as the USA or anywhere else I

could think of, maybe even more so. It appears that the world has become a very small place in the past 20 years and the homogeneous

shopping centres and the global retail and food chains have invaded, winning the consumerist war in every place it touches. That has allowed Moscow to move away from its austere Soviet past to become just another cosmopolitan world city, which is, on one hand, good, and on the other, not so good. Anyway, I’m off to get some chicken wings and watch some more football...