26th April 1984 - Arrival in Moscow

Thursday 26^th April.  I have been away from home for exactly four weeks, though it seems like ages. It seems like ages since Monday, or Tuesday or Wednesday.

   Quarter past five in the morning is a ridiculous time to get up, so I got up at twenty past. It was light though the sun wasn’t up yet. But it came, and I saw it peeking over the horizon redly. In the foreground through which we were passing, an industrial town on the banks of a river – huge billowing chimneys at the back; closer in, the wooden cottages. A heavy frost on the ground.

   At 7.48 we stopped at Buy [450km from Moscow, population in 2010 was 25,763.] and had breakfast a little bit later. Apple juice, a hard-boiled egg and samalena [semolina] or whatever it’s called. I’ve never had it before but it’s nice and filling. After breakfast with Wayne and Debbie and Bill White, I read a little, maybe had a nap, talked, etc etc.

The Trans-Siberian Railway train - I can"t remember if I posted this already. Photo by someone.

   Stopped at Danilov at 9.15, 357 kilometres from Moscow, and we also stopped at Yaroslavl, 282 km from Moscow. This is the last station stop on the way to Yaroslavski Station, where we got out at about half past three. The train was twenty minutes late, but we were able to get on board our two Intourist buses all right. However, the suitcases had no room underneath the bus to be put in, so in ours they were put while the other bus went off. Waiting, waiting.

Yaroslavski Railway Station - note the CCCP Hammer and Sickle

    By and by we were off but the driver was pulled up by a traffic cop for some minor traffic infringement like hitting an electric tram. But we got to the hotel all right.

  The hotel is the Cosmos, on Peace Prospekt. In full view of it is the TV Tower built in 1967, 533 metres high; the Space Obelisk of 96 metres, built in 1964, with a statue in front of it of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a top whizz in the theory of modern rocketry and astronautics; the USR Economic Exhibition with its 100,000 exhibits on Soviet agriculture, industry, building, transport, science and culture; the USSR Pavilion of the 1967 Montreal World Fair with its sweeping roof; and seen just above the rooftop of an apartment block, the statue of the Worker and Collective Farm Woman.

 

The Space Obelisk - a postcard sent to me recently by someone who lives in Moscow. (postcrossing.com)

  The Cosmos Hotel was built for the Olympic Games of 1980 and was designed by a French company. It is the biggest hotel we’ve stayed in and there are lots of people staying here. It is semicircular in shape and my first night was in Room 1139.

   After arriving at the hotel I had a shower just to see how dirty the water would become. It was dirty, all right. [Body dirt from the train, that is, not the water coming out of the shower.]

  It is very difficult to remember what we had for dinner already, but it was probably much the same as dinners of yesterafewdaysago. We ate in one of the hotel’s six restaurants, or pectopahc. After dinner, I washed some clothes and wrote some but then crashed. Good night, Moscow.