One note about Moscow - it's huge. We have been walking in the neighborhood of our hostel near the Red Square / Kremlin. Behind every corner there is always a beautiful house or an Orthodox church. One thing that catch one's attention are the majestic buildings built by Stalin. There are a few of them and nowadays they are offices or universities or hotels. They are also known as Stalin's teeth. In addition to these buildings there are a lot of big majestic houses or Soviet constructions. Still, Moscow is also very modern as the new business center with skyscrapers shows.
We are really lucky to have some friends in Moscow that drove us around the city! Driving us in the streets of Moscow and taking to places that didn't seem real.
Moscow is also pretty expensive. There is such a big selection of places that one must look a while for a more economic option. Cheapest meals are around four-five euros and there is no upper limit. Also groceries are quite expensive because they are situated in Moscow.
Staying in a hostel is quite cheap, one night per person is about 10 euros. Moscow's high price level is also seen in our hostel where the majority of guests are Russian. They probably work here the weeks and go home out of town for the weekends. Of course there are also tourists and guests from other countries but we were surprised of the amount of Russians.
Moscow is an easy city to get oriented with. We have been using the metro much. Especially young people know English very well and otherwise we have survived well with sign language :D Knowing the Cyrillic alphabet helps a lot since all the signs are mainly written in Cyrillic. We got our train tickets to Ulan Bator, Mongolia yesterday. Our friend Victor helped us at the ticket office so it went easily. Probably the ticket seller didn't speak any English. But it was simple to buy the tickets, just show the passport and pay. The price difference in Trans-Siberian train tickets is huge compared to the ones sold in Finland. Now we paid around 250 euros per person in 2nd class. In Finland the same tickets were almost 700 euros.
Today we drove around the most beautiful metro stations. It took us about three hours and every metro station impressed us. It is indeed one of the most beautiful metro in the world and metro stops usually are decorated with marble, mosaic and impressive chandeliers. The subject in stations is usually Russian art and mighty Soviet Union.
Tomorrow we continue our trip to Mongolia which will last until Sunday by train :)
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