I arrived to Moscow on 7th of dec. at 10.10am. I didn´t have reservation to any hostel and I looked from my travel guide (Lonely planet: Trans-Siberian railway) that there is one private, soviet-era flat with a few extra rooms that one lady rents out. I asked for a taxi from the train station but the prices were always between 30-50e, so I decided to take a metro. It sounded easy to take a metro but I realized that every street names and metro stops were in Cyrillic alphabets. I had to translate letter by letter every word to understand the street names. Eventually I found the right metro stop and street but the flat was really difficult to find. I ringed the door bell and it seemed that nobody was at home. I waited around 15 minutes and finally the lady came and said that there is no room for me. She was very nice and she showed me another place from the map. It was 30 minutes walk away and it was also full. One guy from the reception called another hostel and they got room for me. The next hostel was 20 minutes away by feet and finally I got to place to stay. The receptionist said that I have to register my visa again if I want to stay more than one night. They said that my registration from St. Petersburg is not valid in Moscow, so I had to pay again. Now I have paid over 40e just to register my visa.

The hostel (Napoleon hostel) has very good location and it´s just 15 minutes walk to main attractions such as Kremlin and St Basil´s Cathedral. On first day I walked around the city for a while. There were two Finnish bands staying in the same hostel than I. First band was called DCX and another was Underwater Sleeping Society. I haven´t hear of those bands before and I didn´t have any idea what kind of music they are playing. Both of the bands had gig in local Hard Rock Café on Sunday. I talked to one of the guy from other band and he said that I get ticket for free if I want. I don´t know what was wrong with me, but I was too tired to go there. I just relaxed during the evening and went early to sleep. I woke up in middle of the night when the Finnish guys came back to hostel totally drunken.

On second day I was supposed to do every tourist things what you can do in Moscow. It was raining a lot and I just walked around three hours and got back to hostel totally wet. Tomorrow I will take a Trans-Siberian train to Vladivostok and before that I want to find supermarket and buy all different kind of things to my trip. It´s very difficult to find proper grocery store in Moscow. There are loads of small kiosks who sell just sweets, drinks and tobacco. Yesterday I found one very fancy grocery store and it seemed that they even polished every apple in that store. I just looked for water and some breakfast stuff but the normal 1,5 liter water bottle costs almost 7e. I decided to not buy anything. I had some prejudices about Russia before I came here. I thought that the streets are dirty and there are lots of homeless people everywhere. I was positive surprised that the streets are very clean and I haven´t hardly seen any homeless people in St. Petersburg or in Moscow. Of course it might be different if you go out of the city. Moscow is second year in row the most expensive city in the world and you definitely can understand if you see all the luxury shops in the city centre.