Our first night aboard our Trans-Mongolian train had been a success, due to departing at around midnight and arriving first thing in the morning, we did little else except sleep on the train. The gentle swaying motion of the train as it pulled us from St Petersburg to Moscow was rather sleep-inducing. The occasional juddery stops and loud explosion like noises from large freight trains whizzing past us during the night were less peaceful, however, they added to the sense of adventure of being transported between two of Russias most famous cities as we rested.

Whilst a lot of tourists head straight to Red Square as their first stop in Moscow, we decided to head over to Kolomenskoye Park instead as we were due to see Red Square on a walking tour the following day. We had been anticipating cold weather in Russia, and if truth be told, were actually looking forward to not just wearing t-shirt, shorts and flipflops every day and being hot and sweaty. Steve went as far as to say at least we won’t be bothered by mosquitos anymore, yet since we arrived in Russia, we were surprised with the unseasonably hot weather, so we were back in our t-shirt, shorts and flipflops. Of course, Steve’s words about mosquitos came back to bite him, both figuratively and physically.

We happened to visit on Spring and Labour Day in Russia, which is a national holiday, so the park was full of people enjoying the weather. We could have stayed there longer, however, we wanted to get to Bunker 42, Moscow’s Cold War Museum which is located in a bunker that was actively used by the former USSR during the Cold War. We had signed up for a guided tour of the facility, of the former secret object as they called it. Starting in the tunnel entrance, our guide told us about how the facility was built in secret, the construction team believed they were building a metro station, which was very believable as the facility has secret tunnels which lead to the metro so was in very close proximity. The construction workers were on strict work rotation patterns which meant that anyone team only saw one small part of the project and never suspected the real purpose of the underground facility.

After progressing through the tunnels, we went into what used to be used as a meeting room, which had now been converted into a theatre to show us a 10-minute overview of the actions that lead up to the Cold War, which in brief boil down to Russia being worried about the fact the US had nuclear weapons (which it used on Japan) and didn’t want the US to take over the world with its capitalist ways. To combat this Russia built it’s own nuclear weapons, so the US built bigger bombs, pushing Russia to build even bigger bombs, and this to-and-fro continued, alarming everyone across the world about the prospect of the world having a full-on nuclear war (which didn’t seem far-fetched after The Great War and World War II). Russia didn’t have the capabilities to launch it’s most devastating nuclear warheads from Russia onto US soil and convinced Cuba to allow them to use Cuba as a launching site, so, if it wanted to, it could attack the US. As could be predicted, this caused huge friction between the US and Cuba which only dissipated in 2015 after 54 years.

During the tour, inside the bunker, they staged an nuclear attack on Russian soil by the US, using excerpts from films and other media we heard about the incident and were given orders to retaliate, two people from our tour group volunteered to sit behind control panels and went through the sequence required to deploy a retaliatory nuclear strike. We saw footage as the bombs were launched, and then saw parts of America being wiped out as a result (again using staged footage or footage from films). As with everything else in this tour, it was a very well executed demonstration, it didn’t feel like a cheesy video, we obviously knew we weren’t actually in the midst of nuclear warfare, but we did get a very real feel for what it felt like during this tense time in history (we are both too young to have witnessed it first hand). Photos weren’t allowed during the actual scenario, but we were allowed to take a couple before it commenced.

Afterwards, we explored further parts of the tunnel network and saw the entrance which leads to secret doors within the Metro network. Towards the end of the tour, our guide suggested we walk to the end of one of the tunnels and let him know what we think of what we find at the end, so we walked down eager to find what would await us.

When we were about halfway down the tunnel we suddenly heard a huge explosion, the lights went off and sirens started, accompanied by flashing red lights. The tannoy system crackled, a voice came on saying a bomb had gone off in Moscow above us, tens of thousands were expected to have perished. Everyone on the tour jumped, some people were generally confused what was happening, most appreciated it was part of the experience we had paid for, but it was still very interactive and again gave you a very real insight into what happened both in public and also in secret during the Cold War.

The next day we met our guide for the walking tour at the monument to Saints Cyril and Methodius, who devised the  Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia. Our guide was very knowledgeable with a good sense of humour, she both promoted what modern Russia has to offer, whilst not being afraid to reference what has happened in the past (even stating a lot of what she says now would have landed her in jail or worse some years ago). When welcoming us to the tour, she said she is glad we made the effort to come, it is better to visit Russia, before Russia visits you (she followed this by a sinister laugh for comic effect). Before getting to Red Square, one of the star attractions of Moscow, she took us through a few streets to see churches such as Kazan Cathedral with its distinctive red exterior and golden dome (and as Kazan is the next city we’ll visit, we were even more interested). Our guide explained to us that Russia had a saying along the lines of win the battle, say thanks to god, build a church. This would explain why there are so many churches around. There is also a sense of people building churches to ask for forgiveness after sinning.

From here we moved onto one of the most famous (if not the most famous) attractions of Russia, Saint Basil’s Cathedral, globally recognized by its colourful decorated domes (and reminiscent of The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood which we saw in St Petersburg). After seeing this iconic building on television, in print and on computer screens, it was surreal to finally be able to stand in front of it and see not just the overview but the small details that make up the church. Gemma commented that if they built churches for forgiveness after making a mistake, this must have been a very big mistake, perhaps someone forgot their wedding anniversary?

Saint Bail’s is on one side of Red Square and when you stand in the middle of Red Square and look around you are met with an impressive view, with the Kremlin and Lenin’s Mausoleum on one side, the State History Museum in red on another and the GUM Department Store (also know as the State Department Store).

We were actually rather lucky, a day or two after we visited Red Square, it was completely cordoned off, as they were preparing for Victory Day celebration (for Russia’s victory for their efforts during World War II). We enjoyed the tour in its entirety receiving a good balance of information about Moscow and Russia, humour and the opportunity to see some of the most famous buildings in Moscow.

When you walk around both St Petersburg and Moscow you can’t help but feel impressed by how grand the buildings are, how much money the country appears to have, from the space race with the US to the cold war bombs race, from the impressive buildings to the metro network. You may be asking what is so special about the metro network, most capitals have something similar, be it The London Underground or the Subway of New York, however, the metro stations in Russia are grandeur and impressive to visit in their own right. We learned from our guide that Russia was keen to prove to the world that communism works and that they, and other countries, shouldn’t fall under capitalism from the US. So despite the fact that the general population were poor, struggling for the basics required for life, from food and water to shelter, they concentrated funds on providing a positive outward image to the rest of the world, which included the imposing buildings and grandeur metro network. So we were keen to have a look at a few of the metro stations ourselves, you can sign up for full-day tours to do this, but we decided we’d do it on the cheap, and for the price of a single fare (around 85p/$1.15) we were able to check out a few recommended stations.

As we were travelling between these Metro stations, we found ourselves close to the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics which Steve had an interest in seeing. The statue outside of a space rocket soaring up into the air was rather impressive, but the museum itself was a little underwhelming, not least of all because the vast majority of exhibits only had Russian text accompanying them. It was however interesting to see the primitive (by modern standards) equipment used during the space race.

So far Russia had been somewhat different to what we expected, the pictures in our heads before arriving were of lots of grey buildings with a lot of stern faces going about their daily slog with their only outlet to blow off steam being a bottle of cheap vodka each night. But what we have seen so far in the two most popular cities is art and music, history and fun, grandeur and modern architecture. Perhaps as we continue our journey through to the less visited cities of Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk we’ll start to see a different side of Russia. In order to get to our next stop, we had to get back aboard the Trans-Mongolian train, for our overnight journey to Kazan.

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