09 Nov 06
But at least I have learned one of the lessons of life in Russia - everything is a paper chase. When buying things you need the right sort of notes. When checking into a hotel you need the right visa and right slip of paper from the immigration department. When visiting a museum, you need the right sort of ticket for each separate part of each museum. When pulled over by the police you need the right sort of documentation and in some toilets you even need to buy a special receipt on entry to entitle you to take a leak. Quite how you're supposed to brandish it on demand in mid-flow is anyone's guess.
As the light starts to fade, we reach the outskirts of Moscow where we form a line for a police escort into the city, once our American colleagues have been persuaded to leave the reassuring surroundings of a nearby McDonald's. The only other people likely to have experienced it were members of the Politburo and Vladimir Putin. The day ends at Mercedes' swish new Moscow dealership, where a rockin' good balalaika group entertain us.
If our entry into Moscow was spectacular, our exit matches it. This time the cars are assembled right outside the onion domes of St Basil's cathedral in Red Square and after a quick march around the Kremlin itself, we're heading off towards Nizhny Novgorod, 260 miles away. Despite being Europe's largest city, Moscow ends surprisingly suddenly and within half an hour we're flanked by the huge forests of pine and birch that accompany us for most of the rest of our trip.
We stop en route at Suzdal, a little town that proves to be the highlight of the entire trip. Even on a bitterly cold day with clouds becoming more grey by the minute, it cannot fail to impress. Ancient churches are everywhere you look, some with star-spangled domes, others carved from wood, others covered with gold leaf. A couple of monasteries, wooden cottages with ornately carved window surrounds and a colonnaded marketplace where locals sell handmade goods create the impression that we're finally in Russia rather than just another Eurotown. And then it starts to snow, bang on cue.
