Arriving in Moskva

We’d had a crazy few days. We’d done a week’s worth of exploring in the last 24 hours and exhaustion was setting in. The bed on the train was 6 inches shorter than me, only 4 inches wider, as hard as hell and it sounded like we were trying to catch some kip in a washing machine. We both slept like babies.

Once again the signs on the station were useless. I recognised only one word ‘Moskva’ – Russia’s capital. “Any idea what Exit is in Russian?” Asked Sarah.
“Just follow the flow of the crowd.” I answered.
“There is no flow!” – people were walking in every direction. Grey coats, grey-green jumpers and grey-blue trench coats were merging into each other like colours on an artist’s pallet as people raced past us.

We eventually found our way out of the massive building; the pure white sky cast a neutral light over everything, which made the streets appear even more monochrome.

We walked through the streets following our rough directions to the hostel. It was hard to concentrate while my eyes darted from person to person, trying to take in as much information as possible. We arrived at the hostel at 6am, “dump the bags and chill out in the lounge for the rest of the day” huffed Sarah as she struggled with her huge rucksack.
“Defo” I wheezed.
“Ve has no lounge,” explained the receptionist of the hostel. The lounge was being refurbished, well actually the whole hostel was being refurbished, and it was like a building site. “yer voom will be r’eady at 2pm”
“What do ya want to do for the next eight hours?” I asked Sarah.
“Stand here and sleep!” came the reply.

The small corridor started to get smaller as more and more people fought their way through the scaffolding, ladders and piles of bricks. It was a few minutes before we realised they were the guys were would be travelling with over the next 23 days on our Trans-Mongolian journey