After arriving in Moscow at the railway station, instead of feeling refreshed and rejuvenated by a week on the train, I felt exhausted by the prospect of more travelling and moving on every couple of days. Finding a place to stay, finding food, not speaking the language, not being able to read the language, and travelling itself has become hard work. However we had a lovely hostel in Moscow and we spent two days sightseeing.
The churches especially were amazing! I felt as though I could see links between the interior decoration of the churches in Moscow and the churches of Venice. The style of figures and gold background was reminiscent to me not only of St Marks, but also medieval European religious paintings; the narrative sequence of scenes reminded me of work by Giotto: I found it very exciting! (Sorry no pictures, we weren't allowed).
Seeing Lenin was also good, although I was told off by a guard for looking, I ought to have walked by respectfully apparently! Being in Moscow was just super exciting, mostly because I have studied the history and so being in the places described in books is always fun. I also went on a tour of underground train stations, some of which were superb. One is filled with life size sculptures of people everywhere! Another has mosaics all over, and all of them have beautiful lighting and decoration, and all of them are set up a little like a church. The escalators lead down into the 'nave' and the platforms are off the 'aisles', apologies for the comparison, but the stations had a similar sense of space and uplifting architecture, and the columns between the central space and the platforms, I felt were reminiscent of churches.
After two days in Moscow we flew to Odessa, on the Black Sea, in the Ukraine. Odessa has been for me one of the more interesting towns because it seemed to have such great contrasts within a small space. South of our hostel (which was wonderful, a huge apartment, all the rooms in excess of 6m² and 3m high, and very friendly and clean) were elegant streets, beautiful architecture and shops, bars and restaurants. It was just another European town, with an abundance of lovely buildings, shady boulevards, and at the end the sea.
North of the hostel the buildings were shabbier, and suddenly within two blocks there was the most enormous market. I have been to several markets around the world now, and this was the hugest, most varied, and comprehensive market yet. Not only could you buy anything from fruit vegetables, spices, dried food, pet food, household items, fresh made cheese and bread, and tools, bicycles, and the odd bit of machinery; but it was super cheap. We bought a kilo of pasta maybe two kilos of ripe cherries, fresh made sheep's cheese (a block with maybe a volume of just under a litre) tomatoes, garlic (the lady didn't want to sell me one head of garlic they were so cheap) freshly baked bread, two loaves fresh from the oven, all for about five pounds!
From Odessa, our exhaustion caught up with us so we curtailed our plans and now we are in Stockerau, near Vienna Austria, Christof's home.
