Mystery solved

The name of my hostel here in Moscow is Yellow Blue Bus. The name is in English. It turns out that it's pretty close to the English spelling of how to say "I love you" in Russian. I'm so glad I didn't approach a Russian woman and ask her if she knew where my hostel was...

Which country am I in again?

I had to switch hostels due to a typically Russian Orwellian mixup I'll try to relate in a future post. This is my new hostel:



Can you see it? Of course you can't. It's the unmarked red door between Citibank and McDonald's, and is anything more Russian than that?

For some reason Russian hostels are never marked. Finding them can be quite a challenge. These are the official directions to my hostel in Moscow from the hostelworld website:

""- Exit the Sukharevskaya metro station to the right. You will see a park in front of you. Walk along the park, following the Sadovoe Koltso road (Garden Ring in English) about 100 meters to the second intersection.
- Our building is 16/18 and it faces the Sadovoe Koltso road.
- Walk to the farthest end of the building. Our entrance is a doorway to the right of the French bakery with bread in the window. Please note there are no clear markings on the door indicating the hostel.
- on the intercom press 005K and we will let you in. Otherwise, you can press 222 K 222 and let yourself in.
- take the elevator to the 4th floor.
If you have any difficulties, please call us."

It reads like something out of a 1970s Cold War spy novel!

I'm starting to get the hang of reading Russian. One thing that helps is that, unlike English or Spanish, every letter is pronounced. (To my Russian-speaking friends: Yes, I know I'm oversimplifying. Work with me.)

The McDonald's sign is a good start for teaching yourself Russian. If it were spelled MacDonald's the sign would be the letter-by-letter phonetic equivalent.

The owner of my new hostel is a blind musician from New Zealand. As Dave Barry would say, I swear I am not making this up. I mention that he is blind because it perhaps helps explain the condition of the place. A CIA dossier on Che Guevara once famously noted that he was "really outstandingly and spectacularly dirty." I can't think of a better phrase for this place.

Russian hostels generally have a reputation for being a bit grubby. This place begs disbelief. It's downright funny. I don't want to sound too harsh. The owner took me out and got me drunk last night, after all. But when you travel on a budget you take your chances. I'm only here for one more night so no big deal.

In journalism school they teach you to look for the "telling detail," the one thing that best sums up your subject. Most hostels I've been in don't allow smoking indoors. I'm sharing a dorm room with five other guys, one of whom is a 60ish Irishman named Ed who apparently lives here. Ed has an ashtray in his bed.

The miracles of technology

How did people travel before the internet?

I spent last night in a hostel in Costa Rica which is known for, among other things, having the best internet setup in the country. Long story short, coming here was something of a mistake, considering how little time I have left in Central America, so today I'm cutting my losses and catching a bus to Panama City. 16 hours...

I'll be arriving around 4 a.m. so I went online to find a hostel there with 24-hour reception. I was staying in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, and like most Central American capitals, there's not much to do and it can be more than a little scary. So I decided to take advantage of the internet setup to make some additional travel arrangements.

After about an hour I had reservations for hostels in Marrakech, Morocco; Beijing, China; and Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. The hostel in Mongolia is by all accounts the best in the country, and it's $5 US per night. I booked a budget room in the most sparsely populated country in the world in minutes on the internet. I think that's pretty cool.