Moscow, Russia

Boy were we ready to get off that Siberian train!  We pull into Moscow on a Friday evening rush hour - great timing on our part again.  At least it's not a national holiday (that we know of). But wow! Moscow is gorgeous at night! What a change from the rustic rural Russian scenery we've been used to this past week.

First thing after a week on the train - take a crazy long hot shower! Then right after that, do a bunch of laundry. We're definitely getting good at doing laundry in the hotel sinks using their cheap shampoo. The clothes get a rinse, a squeeze and a blast with the hair dryer and they're ready for another leg of the trip.  I'm not sure stuff is really getting clean, but at least it smells like shampoo now. Our new saying is that if it smells clean then it is clean (enough).  We get an added luxury this stop - this hotel has a heated towel rack which doubles as a very effective drying rack.  Nice!

I had a hard time finding the perfect Goldilocks hotel in Moscow near the Red Square - especially in our price range.  We mainly picked our hotel because of the supposedly fabulous buffet breakfast. It did not disappoint!  After eating junk food for a week on the Siberian train my stomach was so excited to have some real food to work with. 

We're not quite as giddy over Russian cuisine as we were over Chinese stuff so these posts probably won't be quite so food focused.  But this little breakfast Syrniki (cottage cheese dumpling) was very tasty.  It's like the love child between a pancake and a soft scone and it's served with jam and a type of Russian sour cream.  

The Russians have some great dairy products - quite a change from China where there was very little.  You gotta try new stuff when you travel so when I saw this "fermented milk" on the buffet, I poured myself a glass.  It's a delicious (says me, Brian didn't agree) drink somewhere between buttermilk and yogurt (called kefir?).  Brian rolled his eyes every morning I came back to the table with yet another glass of my tasty probiotics.  Anyone know where I can get it in the US?

Brrrrr.... it's cold here - low 30's with clouds, sleet and a bracing wind. We did expect Moscow to be our coldest stop on the journey but we didn't have room to pack enough cold weather gear to handle *this* much winterness.  We scamper from metro stations to historical sites trying to avoid frostbite on our faces.  There is little to no English anywhere so we struggle a bit deciphering the Russian letters and symbols on the maps and street signs.

We navigate the metro to the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics. Very cool! Too bad the US has all but given up on our space program.  The Russians are justifiably proud of theirs - both the past accomplishments and their plans for the future.  It was very interesting to see the space race from the competitor's  side.

Get ready for blog posts full of cool building pictures. The old architecture in these classic cities sure has American strip mall construction beat on aesthetics. I don't imagine that a hundred years from now tourists will be tromping through Target parking lots taking pictures of our old buildings.

Here's what a shopping mall looks like in Moscow. Not too shabby and a hugh departure from our previous image of what Russia is supposed to look like. It's kind of unusual that with all these high-end stores there's a 50 cent charge to use the public toliets. Gotta find ways to part us tourists from our rubles.

Moscow feels very stately and oozes with money - at least the area we stayed in (cause we're so swanky like that).  The people are polite and friendly.  And hooray... cars yield to the pedestrians again and we've left those crazy scooters back in China.  Moscow has a very European vibe with everything you'd expect in a modern city: trendy restaurants, expensive cars and a very luxurious fashion scene. Check out the ladies rocking the furs and boots.  The cold weather makes it tempting to buy a little furry hat myself but I'm saved from a big credit card bill again by the smallness of my backpack. At least the fashion lessons were free. I'm looking forward to more tips as we continue through the other European capitals.

This puts us about half-way through the trip - 37 days done and 40 days to go.  We've traveled  through what we thought would be the most unsettling parts of the journey - China and Russia - without incident.  The friendliness of the local people has made our initial nervousness entirely unfounded.  It's a travel cliche but even if our politics are different, people around the world are very similar.  They hope for success for their children, work to earn enough money to secure life's necessities, enjoy a laugh with their friends over good food and cold beer, and root, root, root for their home team. Oh, and evidently everyone eats Lays potato chips and Snickers.

The next leg of our journey will be three weeks of working our way through eastern Europe to eventually catch our trans-Atlantic cruise out of Rome.  First city up is Warsaw, Poland.

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries."  - Aldous Huxley

A Few More Food Pics

We stopped by a few traditional Russian restaurants that were on our pre-scouting list but they were all of the fancy, sit-down, order-6-courses type of place. We were feeling casual so we ducked into a pub-like spot. Real tasty (Belgium!) beer again. Hooray! Since we were in Russia, we paired our beers with a huge plate of meat, fried potatoes and cabbage. That cabbage-cream-bacon dish was dang tasty but a little research leads us to believe it's more of an Irish thing and not so typical Russian.

Here's just one of the many dessert cases at the fancy-pants grocery store in the fancy-pants mall.  Kind of reminded us of the cruise... except everything looked delicious... and they weren't free for the taking. 

Here's just one of many the caviar cases at the fancy-pants grocery store. The store was fully stocked with a huge variety of caviar and champagne.  Unfortunately they weren't passing out free samples on the day we visited (or ever). Our stack of Rubles wasn't quite big enough to venture into caviar tastings.

We were trying to spend the remainder of our Rubles before we exited Russia so I picked up this little danish at the train station - filled with a kind of vanilla'ish custard.  Meh.

We're really digging the Russian borscht! (but come on Brian, clean that rim before you shoot the picture) This cold weather definitely calls for soup and borsht fits the bill perfectly for us.  It's a regional speciality, healthy, delicious and available everywhere. I'm even starting to form strong opinions about different preparations (easy on the dill, matchstick those veggies so they fit on a spoon and yogurt on the side please).  If you visit us in Colorado this winter on a ski trip, you should probably expect to be served some borscht. So you've got that to look forward to...

Trans-Siberian Railway

The next leg of our journey takes us from Beijing to Moscow via the week-long Trans-Siberian train. We battle the Beijing metro crowds again to get to the central Beijing train station.  But what a cool place at night!  Our train leaves at midnight so we have some time to enjoy the scene and let the majority of the crowds scamper off to their destinations.

We've got seven full days on the train heading west until we get to Moscow so sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.  We stop at small train stations (sometimes just a platform) every few hours to drop off and pick up a couple of passengers. But it seems like the train is mostly empty for this trip. Definitely a quiet and welcome change from the cruise ship and China cities.

Good-bye shower, hello wet-wipes.  While we splurged for a train cabin of our own, the shared bathrooms are quite small with a tiny little sink barely big enough to brush your teeth.  There's definitely no showers and no room to be doing laundry this week.  Time to put our 'roughing it' tent camping experience to use - at least we're not sleeping on the ground.   

Our cabin is too small for 7-minute exercises this week and we would look too silly doing lunges down the hallway.  We're definitely going to need to get back on the exercise program in Moscow since we are living mostly on train station junk food this week. Here's what our snack stash looks like to start the trip.  In case you can't read the label that's Italian Meat Sauce flavored chips there. Mmmmm... meaty.

We cross the China-Russia border at 4am on our second night on the train. At least 20 different stern Chinese and then Russian officials tromp through our train car to check our passports, scrutinize our visa documents and search our luggage. Note to everyone... do not try to smuggle anything into Russia via the Siberian train - they are very thorough. I have no idea what we would have done if our documents weren't in order and we were thrown off the train.  Whew!  We passed smoothly through what we worried would be one of our more nervous parts of the trip - crossing into Russia.

While the section of China we rode through was developed with manufacturing and farm land, the eastern Russian section has been mostly wilderness. We pass through a small town every few hours and so we are able to get out for some fresh air, a quick walk, some local scenery and a snack restocking.

We spend our days watching the fall countryside go by, drinking an exorbitant amount of hot tea, reading our Kindles and playing cards. Talk about totally getting away from the bustle of a technology-filled life.  We're enjoying another stretch of unplugging but it feels like the complete opposite of the cruise.  We have the entire train car to ourselves instead of sharing a boat with 2500 other travelers.  We completely stay in our little train cabin instead of wandering in and out of cruise ship lounges.  We nibble on junk food instead of trying to control ourselves in front of buffets of food. And we lounge around in our comfy clothes instead of pulling out the fancy pants for dinner.  Here I am taking advantage of the train's all-you-can-drink hot water buffet.  

The train does have a Russian restaurant car so we stash away the junk food for one night and check it out.  The highlight is definitely the borscht - a beet, potato and beef soup.  Very tasty and much lighter than I expected. We might have to try and figure out that recipe when we get home so if you have a killer borscht recipe send it on over.  

And guess who we met on the train?  Another couple on an around-the-world journey! No way!! Meet Joan and Ron from Vancouver. They were on the same Pacific crossing cruise as we were two weeks ago (but we didn't know it), are on the same Trans-Siberian train this week and will be on the same Moscow-Warsaw train next week.  They're touring western Europe after Moscow instead of eastern Europe like we're doing. Then they'll cross the Atlantic on a repositioning cruise in November. Just like we will (but on a different ship)!  A car and a train ride across the US will complete their circuit back to Vancouver. I guess we weren't the only ones to come up with this crazy idea. Now the around-the-world travel agency we start after this journey will have a west coast office.

We spend an evening in the dining car with Joan and Ron talking about logistics and drinking beers. Then a couple of Russian passengers who spoke a little bit of English joined in and things moved from beers to vodka to cognac. Ouch. Good thing we can just lay around in our little cabin and recover the next day. 

With the help of our new Russian drinking friends, we picked up a few phrases like 'good day' and 'thank you' and of course 'cheers'.  Other than that, we've found very little English speakers or signs here in Russia so far. While no one has been as accommodating as the Japanese, traveling through China and Russia has been very manageable. Hooray for the Google translate app!

We're over a month into the trip now, crossing five more time zones and two more countries. This traveling is beginning to feel like our 'normal' life and we don't miss our home nearly as much as we thought we would. We're getting use to ordering weird food in different languages, unpacking our stuff in our new hotel home for the week and reading the maps to trek us to our next destination. Maybe we humans are just very adaptable creatures that can handle as much change as is thrown at us. Maybe anything can become normal with enough time and repetition. Maybe... but I still don't think Brian can talk me into this nomadic lifestyle full-time. 

By the way, after 37 stops, 5,600 miles and 7 non-stop days of traveling, the Trans-Siberian train arrives in Moscow exactly 1 minute ahead of schedule.  Try and do that traveling by plane.

"Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory."  - Dr Seuss

More Food Pics

Every morning the food car lady would tempt us with some warm, fresh(ish) breakfast pastries.  She called them Pirozhki (definitely had to look that one up for the spelling).  We had one filled with ground beef and onions and one filled with mashed potatoes. 

More starch food filled with starches.  These are little steamed dumplings (dumplings!) filled with mashed potatoes that we picked up at one of the train platform shops.  Not much flavor going on there (maybe we missed ordering a garnish or sauce). But if you love very plain food this would be right up your alley.

It would be uncivilized to have tea without some type of snacks. Here is sunflower seed peanut brittle we picked up at one station.  Very tasty... salty and lightly sweet. Nuts are healthy, right?

Our grocery shopping this week looks like this.  Look at all those potato chip options!  At least we're starting to recognize the chip flavors now (bakon!)... looks like we've left the shrimp chips and seaweed chip varieties back in China.

Bun stuffed with pork and onions from a train station cafe. Might have been great for lunch but didn't quite hit the spot for breakfast with coffee.

More train station baked goods - they love their carbs here!  This was very nice, if a bit plain, brown bread.  Try as we might, we couldn't find any good looking jam to smear on it.

Here's a 'salad' from the Russian dining car on the train.  It's apple slices and meat slices with a splat of plain mayo on top. So much for trying to eat fresh and healthy.

Brian is kind of excited to have a US-style snack - a king size snickers for about 75 cents. Hey, if you're going to eat junk for a week, go big.

Beijing, China

We ride the high-speed bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing. It was a little dizzying watching the smaller Chinese cities and country side whiz by at 300 km/hr.  The bullet train turns out to be a great way to travel: lots of leg room, space to get up and wander around, no 3 oz liquid restriction and outlets for your iPad. It's much more relaxing than airline travel or even driving.  I'm looking forward to riding the US version when we get home... oh wait...

Off the bullet train and onto the metro.  Holy cow!  The Beijing metro is so crazy busy I lose an earring!  We arrive in the city the evening of their national holiday (yes, we hit yet another holiday crowd).  

We arrive in our little section of town and find it packed with locals on holiday. Kind of like landing in Washington DC on the 4th of July weekend.  It's obvious they are all very use to these kind of crowds - but we definitely are not. Yes, this is the street to our hotel - and we get to push through that mass of humanity wearing backpacks.

We're staying in a neighborhood that doesn't see too many international tourists. Down a side alley from the maddening crowd we check into a great traditional Chinese style hotel with a peaceful courtyard.  

The front desk staff speaks very good English and welcomed us with the delivery of our Siberian train tickets. Yes!  Of all the logistics we had to organize for this adventure, Brian was most nervous about the Siberian train tickets. There weren't many other options if our reservations didn't pan out. Whew! What a relief to now have those tickets in our pile of travel docs.

Our neighborhood has a state fair weekend atmosphere so we get in the spirit and eat some festival food.  All the cool kids were eating fried squid on a stick.  We are evidently not able to hang with the cool kids and pass on that delicacy. I'm sure you'll find it at the Iowa State Fair next year. 

The other hot item are these hair sprouts that guys and girls of all ages pin to the top of their heads.  Unfortunately Brian doesn't have enough hair left up there for the clips to work for him. Maybe next year they will introduce a suction cup version that he'll be able to wear.

The most unusual food item we ate in Beijing has to be Thousand Year egg.  It's a regular egg that's been preserved in a limestone slurry for several months (not a thousand years).  Very weird - kind of like a jello hard boiled egg.  We washed it down with some normalish spicy soup with noodles and (yes, more) dumplings.

We spend our first full day in Beijing heading up to the Great Wall of China - one of the big bucket list items on the trip. Once we got out of the sprawling city, the countryside was beautiful - mountains, lots of trees and clear blue skies.  We had a perfect day for a hike in the mountains - it felt great to see the sky and get out of the city.  In an effort to avoid the crush of tourists, we went to an area of the wall that's a little further out from Beijing.  The length and steepness of the wall is incredibly impressive as it winds it's way along the mountain ridges.  I'm sure this is the model for the Mexico wall that Trump will start building next year.  

We play the tourist and ride the alpine toboggan down to the bottom of the mountain. Wheeee!  Our guide said we were the fastest he's ever seen anyone go down it.  I'm ready to start training for the luge competition at the next Beijing winter Olympics.

The food here in China has been very good.  If you peek in the back of the restaurants and food stands you see real ingredients cooked up fresh right when you order.  There's no Sysco truck unloading a delivery of frozen and vacuum packed factory food that is just rewarmed and served.  Maybe that's because so many of their stir-fry dishes can be prepared so quickly and not in a microwave. Maybe it's because they have such a strong food tradition here.

To take a deeper dip into that food culture we enroll in a Sichuan foods cooking class.  First, we tour a local market to pick up ingredients for our dishes.  While the chef barters with all the produce stands we gawk at the diversity and unusual varieties.  

Wanna be Chef Brian finally gets his chance to cook on a real wok with a real wok jet engine burner.  No, Brian, we can't install a wok burner in our kitchen.  All the dishes we cook come together very fast with power like that.  Plus we learned the couple of ingredients needed to make our typical stir-fries much more authentic.  Ancient Chinese secrets! 

While there are definitely modern sections, Beijing has a very old, more traditional Chinese vibe.  A turn down every alley leads to tiny family-owned eateries, tasty bakeries and trinket shops.  We didn't hit all the main tourist spots like Tienamen square because they were jammed packed with Chinese tourists on holiday (oh, and Putin was in town too).  But we did stumble onto a wonderful garden to get a few classic pagoda shots. 

The weather here has been fabulous.  The locals tell us the smog clears out in the fall, so while we ran into the holiday crowds, we did get lucky with the weather.  To enjoy the weather while avoiding the nuttiness of the packed streets, we hit an alley rooftop patio to enjoy a couple cold ones (well, more like luke-cold ones).  Hey look!  Beijing has mass-produced yellow fizzy beer too!  

One of our favorite memories from Beijing will be the several kids that ran up to us to practice the English they're learning in grade school. "Hello! How are you? I am fine!" When we'd respond they'd get big smiles on their faces to know their English really worked. Their parents were equally proud. Their English was way better than our Chinese. 

After a week of great Chinese food and big city bustling we're starting to look forward to a little bit of quiet time with the Kindles.  A seven-day train ride across Russia should provide lots of it.  And time to break out the extra layers... the extended forecast shows snow in Moscow when we arrive.

"I love places that make you realize how tiny you and your problems are." - unknown

More food shots - if you're in to that sort of thing (which we obviously are)

Real deal Sichuan beef with real deal sichuan peppercorns.  A keeper! We will definitely try and make this again when we get home - even without the real deal wok burners. 

Sugar glass covered crab apples on a stick - kind of like carmel apples

Noodles and soup, spicy smashed cucumbers, dumpling soup and thousand year egg.  Yes, we finished all the egg.

State fair-type food at it's best: churros, chocolate and ice cream. Not entirely traditional Chinese food.

More state fair-type food - cotton candy flowers. It's art and calories on a stick!

Brian called this Boomerang Chicken. A Chinese version of the Chinese-American version of Kung Pao Chicken.  Photographs well, but that sauce was very sweet and goopy.

Peking duck!  Served in Peking (Beijing)!

My new favorite breakfast treat - sesame buns with a very tasty somewhat-sweet nutty filling.  Kind of like a Dutch pastry from Pella.

Sesame bun glamour shot at our hotel.  You know it's a keeper snack when you buy one, devour it, and then go back to the stand to buy four more for afternoon and train ride snacks.

Bean sprout and noodle salad wraps.

Cold spicy noodles - very tasty. We are definitely starting to really crave and seek out more fresh salad-like dishes.  Good thing Russia is known for their light and healthy cooking (NOT).