Fast Forward to MOSCOW
Lobby coffee/bar at Hotel Budapest in Moscow. 9:30am. So what do I want, conference hotel with super service or funky gray-toned with surly service? I can do this I can I can…. Had a compartment mate again last night. Pretty young blonde woman with very curly hair who talked long into the night to her boyfriend but Russian is a nice background sound, soft and even melodic, odd isn’t? Bigger train car, nice crepes for breakfast even. I’ve stopped hoping for a solo trip through Siberia. My entreaty to the gods of rail travel is for that small, odor-free, noiseless mate…but then guess I’ll have to be sure I am that also.
Could not check in early so a bit of a wash-up and change in the hotel restroom, and soon a guide will meet me to take me to the Kremlin. And then to a bookstore. I am now determined to read Massie’s The Life and Times of Peter the Great while traveling through Siberia but guess what…Google is blocked here. Isn’t that like blocking GOD? Payback for sanctions or what? Therefore cannot reach Barnes and Noble, therefore cannot download it to my Nook, therefore…
Let me find one photo from yesterday and post this. Probably one or two more posts before I enter the limbo that is Siberia…Think how those tens of thousands of political prisoners have felt over the years…Siberia…no internet…
you are such a good traveler. I could never sleep with someone talking on a phone….and certainly not a stranger in “my room”…well, I guess that depends on how strange. But, worldly travelers like you just take this all in stride.