13/02/09 woke up and headed out to the south of moscow - to see the university, which was thouroughly exciting-ish. we were also hoping on getting a view of the city, but failed miserably - the fact that it was a shockingly grey day didn't help. about 6pm we headed back to buy food and all that jazz for the train to kazakhstan (which would be 3 nights). at 22:45 our train left, with us merrily sitting onboard.

12/02/09 very hungover today. got up late, and went to gewt seth's card from post office. not as diff as we had feared, bought some coke and water, then went to teremok - a russian fast food blini place. seth had one with red caviar and i had ham and cheese. v tasty! came back to hostel and just relaxing and packing.

11/02/09 Got up early to go see Lenin. had to dump phone and camera in a cloackroom and then walk for a while past lots of guards. went inside and was one of strangest experiences ever.. it was really dark and you had to go down some steps, i was terrified of falling. once you get in the room, its still pretty dark and you're not allowed to stop and look you just have to walk around. his face is proper white and waxy and he's wearing a suit, and his body's covered by a blanket mostly. it was utterly bizarre but looked really unreal. got out within about a min (!) cos thas all you're allowed. picked stuff up, and decided to go back to chuirch that was closed the other day. went in there and i thought was really impressive - huge with massive paintings and cold everywhere but seth didn't really like. then we walked to a huge monument statue of a woman with lots of ships, and had to cross over road to get good picture. were actually on really busy road and had to walk for 20 mins until we could cross back over!! ended up near hostel so went back to put clothes on wash. came out again to go for a walk to arbat street a nice toursity street with lots of cafes and stuff. went into a cafe and had hot choc and white choc mocha. spoke to sofie, one of the girls we met last thursday and we decided to go for a meal with her and some of the others. got back to get ready and seth's card had come!! just had to be collected from post office. we went out around 7 as were going for a meal, went to a nice place called cult which was a bar with food. i had steak, seth had some crazy thing with potato and bacon, had lots of beer. then got in a gippo cab - basically where you just flag down any care and then haggle with them about how much it is to where you wanna go. such a funny experience esp as when we got out the guy got pissed off and tried driving off when minesh was half out the car. tried to go to krujka which is like russian wetherspoons but was closing! so went to a place called dantes where me and sofie had a mega mojito which was just a huuuge mojito in a massive glass, was awesome. spent a while there and it turned out to be happy hour from midnight til 5am so spirits were 2 for 1. had some vodka, some rum, some beer.. was rather drunk. about 3am decided to go to a club but weren't sure where would be open so got a taxi and got the guy to take us somewhere that he knew was open! ended up quite far away in this huuuuuuge club were all the people were doing this hilarious dancing called "tecktonic". honestly one of the funniest things i've ever seen. did lots of dancing, left around 5.30am. started walking to metro, i walked ahead and got a bit lost and panicked. found the others, me seth and sofie got a taxi back to the hostel and waited til 7am when mcdonalds opened and ate not one but 2 mcmuffins each and a vat of coke. got to bed around 7.45am!

10/02/09 Went to novodevichy convent today, had to get metro as sort of far away. Just walked around and saw the pretty monastries and then next door was a cemetary where lots of famous russians are buried but we didn't have much time there and i was desperate to pee. ran around trying to find cafe, finally succeeded and found a nice french style cafe where i had hot choc and seth had coffee with cointreau. booked our train tickets to kazakhstan and then we had to pay for hostel so i went out to get money out of cashpoint... went to first place which had 2 machines, tried both.. didn't work. tried another place inside a shop.. didn't work. tried one outside a bank.. didn't work but it held my card inside saying please wait for about 3 mins. by this point i was quite terrified.. then tried 2 more places!! but didn't work. so called my mum and turned out they had cancelled it on a random fraud check. so she sorted it out thankfully. came back, watched some family guy, went to bed.

09/02/09 Got up at 6.30am (!) to go on a daytrip to Rostov Veliky with our irish chums. rostov is a small town by the huuuge frozen lake nero which was recommended to us by minesh, one of the guys studying in moscow. arrived train station around 7,45 unprepared for the stress about to happen haha. went up to buy ticket, mark had researched train times and we thought there was one at 8.30. lady told us not until 9.35.. seemed to be going smoothly until she started saying something in russian that none of us understood and doing some crazy gestures. all i could understand was "chateerie chasa" which meant 4 hours. this lady was actually quite sweet as she then went around the whooole train station asking customers and staff if any of them spoke english. finally she found a guy who translated for us that she wanted to know if we wanted to go to the rosdtov that was 4 hrs away or the one that was 2 days away! so thankfully we told her which one we wanted and finally got the tickets. seth and ed then bought a kebab for breakfast after the stress of actually finding the platform, and then we went to sbarro and i had pizza for brekka. got on the train and slept. got off, and had to go straight away through the same stress of buying our tickets home so we would know what time to get back to the train station. the woman here was not quite so nice and her general manner was reeeally aggressive i almost smacked here. she was trying to say that they only had 1st class which was like 12 pound a ticket but i was saying we had to get on the train so we would just pay it. but she tried to make us go and talk to someone else, so we tried that but they sent us back to her.. and eventually we managed to convey that could she just get us the f***ing tickets please. after all that, we finally left to walk into the centre of rostov veliky, found the kremlin which was nice but a bit dilapidated and some of it was completely covered in scaffolding. then kept walking to the river, which was huuuuge and completely frozen.. cars were even using it as a bridge. it was mental. walked on the lake for a bit and then found this convent that was full of pretty churches and i had to wear a crazy red apron. then walked back across lake and made a snowwoman called henrietta who had breasts, pubes, an afro, a bottle in her hand and a cigarette. went to supermarket on way home and then got back to train station for more stress of finding where the platform was. managed to find it by following people and speaking some s***ty russian and gesturing. got on it successfully and even tho we paid lots more money the toilets were the nastiest ive seen in a long time. had some borsch from a packet and noodles for dinner, had relaxed evening.

08/02/09 Today i felt possibly the most hungover I have ever felt. refused to get out of bed until about 5pm and then just lazed around while seth went for a walk. just watched some family guy streamed off the internet - tried to watch spacejam (haha) but wasn't really working.

07/02/09 today we got up early intending to go see Lenin (only open 10am-1pm) but when we got there the queue was huuuge and we hadn't seen a queue any other day so we decided to return on a week day. instead just went straight to the kremlin, where seth had to pay a ludicrous 20 quid to get in and to go to the armoury. started off at the armoury which was interesting but prob not worth the money that seth paid. saw some cool carriages, and a horse that seth did a brilliant imitation of. after that went into a few of the cathedrals which were nice, one of them had a choir that started singing which was amazing. in the evening us, mark and ed, and 3 english girls who are doing trans siberian on their gap year, played cards and got prettyy drunk. then all of us and 2 french girls from our hostel decided to go out. by this point i was extremely drunk and don't remember much, but we intended to go to bilingua but they were asking for everyones passport and ID and some of the girls didn't have it. then tried somewhere else, but apparently some of the guys were too drunk (me and this girl tash who were almost definitely the most drnk were the only 2 to actually get in..), eventually we ended up in the basement of some cafe which we later discovered is called jonnys. was rather funny, quite busy and playing lots of r n b. i was having to be slightly looked after, but was doing some dancing.. and after sobering up decided another vodka shot was in order. haha. was a good night once again! got back around 6 or 7.

06/02/09 Again pretty hungover, so went for a walk a bit later to a huge new church called church of christ the saviour. walked down the river having some very amusing hungover conversations but the church was closed when we got there! so just walked around the outside. got back, ate pasta for dinner and then we decided to stream a film off the internet. watched zac and miri make a porno (hilarious, then cheesy) with mark and ed.

05/02/09 Feeling pretty hungover today, but in drunken state had made plan to go on tour of the fancy metro stations with mark and ed. worked out well as we didn't go til the evening (!), in the day we just went to the supermarket. went around all the ornate metro stations for like an hour and a half which was really interesting and only 22 roubles (40p). after that mark and ed were going out with a girl they met in Riga who studies in moscow on her year abroad from glasgow uni. we decided to go meet her and her friends with them, and turned out to be an excellent evening. started off at a 24 hour bar which was quite small but really nice, had a few beers and few vodka shots and then we went to propaganda (!!!) which was right next door. v different to english propaganda, strict door policy which is basically they just say no when they feel like it. obv the guys we were with spoke good russian tho so they asked and we all got in. was sort of bare with pipes etc exposed ionside but really cool with just dance music. pretty cheap aswell. danced away until 5 or 6am, then got back to the hostel, seth went to bed and i stayed up drinking more vodka. which was a mistake..

04/02/09 Bonjour tout le monde! tis emma again.it's been a while, so here we go. on our second day in moskva we decided to go have a look around inside St Basil's cathedral (the crazy famous one which is really colourful) and inside was a bit weird, not very fancy as we had maybe expected. quite confusing, like a maze. then we went to a tiny church in the corner of red sqaure which had lots of people praying and a really nice smell cos there was loads of candles. then we tried to find the entrance to the state history museum which took ages haha but when we finally went in there was v interesting. first of all they lead you to a room full of all this amazing silver jewellery and armour and medals and stuff and we didn't realise there was 2 more floors to the museum so spent ages in there and then had all the babushka curators shouting at us that we only had half an hour left to look at everything else! ha. got back, met 2 new irish guys (mark and ed) who had arrived in the hostel. we cooked some pasta, and then we had a few beers and me seth and james had a bottle of bison grass vodka with some apple juice. decided to go out about midnight and proceeded to spend an hour wandering around moscow aimlessly trying to find somewhere open and busy. i also fell over approximately 5 times on this walk. finally found a huge place called cafe bilingua that was not busy, but was open and really cheap so we stayed there getting royally drunk until about 6am with james, mark and ed. very funny evening.

03/02/09 Arrived Moscow 5.50am feeling tired. found James and got metro to stop nearest to our hostel. Looked for hostel for about 30 mins with no luck so decided to go for breakfast and then look again. James and Seth both went to look while I waited and came back in 10 mins having found it (so difficult to find as only really really small sign). Got in there and went straight to bed, woke up about 3pm. Showered and got ready to go red square to have a look around. Walked as quite close to hostel and got there - quite impressive except for huge tacky ice ring in the middle! mixed impressions of st. basil's. walked around the kremlin and through some nice gardens, saw a few tops of cathedrals etc. on way back walked through GUM (huge lush shopping centre where I plan to spend a day alone at some point haha) and tried to find a supermarket but couldn't so got bit cold and frustrated. came back, were gonna go to a famous cafe called cafe puskin for dinner but found out is veeeery expensive so instead went to a place called moo moos. was sort of self service but quite cheap for a 3 course meal of russian food and pretty tasty! got back here around 10pm, and haven't done much really. this hostel is ok, but not really as nice as the one in St P and not in such a good place!