I've been in a bit of a jam the past few days. Long story short, I'm in Moscow but my wallet is somewhere in St Petersburg. So I had to lay low while I sorted the situation out and found a bank that would give me a cash advance on my credit card. I knew there would be days like this, but why here?!
I'm getting ready to travel 5,000 miles by train in a country where I can't even read the language, let alone speak it. And then I'm going to yet another country where I don't speak the language and don't expect to find many people who speak mine. Mongolia is arguably the most remote country on earth and is definitely the most sparsely populated. And from there I'm going to China ... not an ideal situation to be in without any cash.
But everything is straightened out. I lost a little money and two days of sightseeing, but I'm sticking to the plan. I'll have two and half days of sightseeing in Moscow and then I'm hopping on a train and heading east to Siberia.
I haven't seen anything in Moscow yet. I literally haven't seen Red Square or the Kremlin. I realized today that I'd been here for two full days and hadn't taken any pictures! So here's a picture from my hostel, called Yellow Blue Bus. (The name of the place is in English. And I don't know how it got the name. And it's impossible to find, like all other Russian hostels.)
From the left are Francois (France), Kiyoshi (US) and Stefan (France). Stefan just this minute left for Mongolia. Kiyoshi recently flew to Moscow from Mongolia -- he didn't take the train! -- after going there to build a house for Habitat for Humanity. Pretty cool, eh?
On the table in front of Kiyoshi is a bottle of kbac (kvass), a non-alcoholic brew, kind of a cross between beer and Coke. Don't worry, there's beer there too.
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