The Third Rome; Whitestone; The First Throne; The Forty Forties = Moscow

Four city slicker wankers were stood, cawing and joking around a strikingly beautiful woman in a business dress. The loud one was speaking English - I think he was Dutch - and had slicked back hair and glasses. The others were Russians, but weren't endowed with the same looks. Some receding hairlines and badly toothed smiles. They either cackled like idiots at every word that glamorous woman said or threw cocky eyebrows around as they no doubt droned on about how much money they were able to fill their vacuous little lives with. Maybe the woman loved it. Maybe she was just entertaining these suits and black coats until she could get rid of them.

I sat, reading my book, waiting for my class. It was 8:30 in the morning. Dirty shoes, jeans, grey t-shirt, black cardigan, no sign of monetary value. But I felt better than them. I didn't need to prove myself with designer labels and hours of grooming.

'Hello, do you speak Russian?' said a blonde woman who had invisibly sidled up next to me

'Yes'

It was my student's co-worker

'Ruslan can't come today. He's busy and didn't have your number'

'No worries'

Shit. It took me 40mins to get there. Back home I go. Leaving my seat, I handed out a haughty face, trying to look important as I headed back to the metro. The yuppies had won this one.

* * * *

My weeks have slid into an intolerable routine - here you go Laura - with classes spread out at horrid times. Business English teachers are the working world's bitches. We work before everyone else, often do nothing in the days - apart from sporadic private classes, and then work again after everyone has finished. Four of my mornings see me up and around before Moscow has fully bothered. At least the metro is marginally quieter then.

I suffer a weird sort of cabin fever. A self-imposed madness. I could go out, but to do what? with whom? and in this weather? March has been a bit underwhelming - still flirting with minus numbers and with weather more erratic than anywhere I've known. Today - the yuppie depreciation day - I had snow, wind, sun, heat and freezing cold below zero temperatures in the space of a few minutes. It's getting tiresome. I have been in a big coat since mid-October. The snow that still lingers on grass and buildings is dirty. A browning, gritty mess which, as it melts, is slowly revealing the five months of buried dog turds and yellowed urine strata. Moscow's not looking pretty at the moment.

My friends, with normal jobs, work in the week, so I am left to my own devices. It's quite a lonely existence without a 'staff room'. Lots of hours and days are spent in my room. Entombed. Sure, I could go out, but I've seen so much already that it's hard to find new things to do. Tourism is reliant on the weather and I refuse to see 'sights' when it's grey and squally. Museums are more fun with a friend. So, I go crazy. I watch films, I read, I write, I snooze, I dream about Spain and I skype people. Yesterday I spent the whole day drooling at the memory of, and the hopeful return to, Segovia. That's how bad it's got.

It's not all doom and gloom though. I still love the city, in many respects. And it still yields surprises. The other day Dmitry took me, along with his girlfriend, to an apartment building in the west of the city, just off the centre.

'We'll go to the roof' he said nonchalantly 'If the police catch us, it could be a problem...'

Code for 'it's illegal'

'Oh, and when we go in, don't smile'

We walked in to the swish entrance hall, glumly passed the concierge who greeted us, blagged the floor we were going to and entered the lift. Dmitry pressed the number 35.

On the 35th floor we climbed the fire escape stairs up to the 37th floor.

'Thank God there are no cameras'

On the 37th floor we left the confines of the interior and found a little door with a padlock, long since broken and went outside, up an old iron staircase, through a gap in a plastic roof and into the fresh air. The view was outstanding, and made more alluring by its illegality. All around were the lights of the city; the skyscrapers and roads and cars and flats. It was beautiful. Windy and freezing, but beautiful.

That was something not in the guidebook.

Escaping the madness only to find it again.

Semyon poured out the chilli vodka into our glasses and took the kolbaski, boiled sausages, out of the plastic bag. Our fingers, numbed by the early evening wind and snow, gripped the amber liquid and turned blue.

Swig, fire in the throat, furnace in the belly.

'Arrrr, I can feel the wings!!!' He roared into the silent air, sending an echo flying over the snowy expanse.

Then the sausages scrunched and popped pleasingly in our teeth as we watched the sunset play in the trees and snowfall.

'This is the best Monday ever!' said Laura

Laura and I had packed our overnight bags one Monday and caught a little bus East to the historic city of Vladimir, about three hours away, with no firm contacts or plans. It was a city of great importance and was once a major capital, and would have been the present day capital if power hadn't gradually shifted to the newer settlement called Moscow. It is part of the Golden Ring and also contains some UNESCO sights (part of a collection of white buildings along with Suzdal and some other small settlements).

Having seen the historic centre - a strip of majestic white and gold cathedrals and churches stretched out along a ridge overlooking the Vladimirskaya region and stuck between snow and cyan blue skies - we found a little cafe that served Russian soups and home-made pizzas. I had started planning our evening escape back to Moscow if none of the couchsurfers responded to Laura when suddenly her phone buzzed.

'It's Diana! She's coming here, now'

As the last of the Solyanka was drained and the surreal pizzas were finished a mousey girl and her two friends blundered noisily into the little eatery. Kolya was fairly quiet and sheepish at first, but Semyon, with his manic hair and pierced ears flumped down and ordered two shots of vodka.

'He's getting over a hangover' said Diana, putting us at ease.

They toured us round a bit, but apart from a snowy mound from which people were sledding - and Semyon flung himself down - and a highly reflective theatre front where we tried, in vain, to capture us all jumping in a photo, there wasn't much more they could show us. The evening was slowly approaching, so we had to start making some decisions. Either we held on, hoping another couchsurfer would text back offering us a place to stay or we would get an evening bus back to Moscow.

'Let's go to Bogolyubovo then' said Diana

'But first' added Semyon, finger in the air 'we need weapons' - alcohol

So it was with that Laura and I left the bus in the tiny town of Bogolyubovo, passed the overblown white and duck-egg blue monastery, and found ourselves drinking spicy vodka and eating sausages with three absurd Russians who screamed when photos were taken and catapulted each other into snow drifts as the sun lowered and bruised the sky orange.

We walked over a elevated bump of ground that served as a pathway through the snowed over expanse and followed it over to a tiny, lonesome white church - the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, silly name - that was touched tan by the glow of the sun. At the building itself was one of the most quixotic and magical views I have even seen. The sun, at the tree-line, was spilling rays through the pine trees as the air above was a gentle spectrum of oranges, light pastel pinks and dark blues and the little church stood like some pretty, sculpted sentinel. The silence was tangible and we all just stood there, gawping.

After a failed dive into the snow bank, some snow angels and the buying of more 'weapons' we were back in Vladimir. Kolya, who isn't even a couchsurfer and only set up a facebook page for us to contact him after we had left, turned to us and offered us a place to stay at his grandparents flat.

'They're not alive now. We just use it to party'

It was a real soviet era timepiece. Everything was musty, wooden and mismatching. There was a funk of age and a feeling that no one had lived there for decades. The door to the living room creaked open and we dumped all the food on the table and ordered a pizza. While Semyon set up a hookah pipe Laura and Diana set up the feast: radishes, salad, kolbaski, mushroom sauce for dipping, brown bread, crisps, and a piquant cabbage mix. With the pipe bubbling away Semyon crackled an old LP player into life. Tchaikovsky streamed out, followed by the Beatles and then Russian 80s band Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine). It bounced off the fading wallpaper and old curtains. We danced, drank cognac, conducted invisible orchestras and blew smoke rings and stuffed ourselves silly.

At around half past ten Semyon had to leave. We walked him up to the centre through the dark alleys, all white powder, and past the little wooden houses - izbushki - to the are of churches and cathedrals which were all lit up.

'You'll have to come back in Summer' smiled Diana 'You will come back in Summer'

* * * *

In other news:

Sunday 6th was Maslenitsa - basically a week-long pancake day that ended on the 6th. I went and met a Russian girl, Margarita, for the first time in Kolomenskoye park. It was surreal and cold and snowing. I danced a jig with grandma, toboganned down the hill on a rubber ring, ate blinis with meat and drank hot medovukha - a kind of Russian mead.

On Wednesday the 9th - I walked around the Stalin Skyscraper complex with Richard and looked at the vast panoramic views of the whole city from the viewpoint at the Sparrow Hills nature reserve.

On Friday the 11th things came to an abrupt and melancholy stop with Olga.

On Sunday the 13th I walked around Park Pobedi (Victory Park) in the sun - for now all is warm and melting to a soundtrack of drips. It is spacious area that includes a grand concave building that helps constitute the Great Patriotic War memorial, along with the massive obelisk and spread of poignant memorial churches for different denominations. An interesting fact is that the obelisk is exactly 141,8m high - 10cm for every day of the war. Nearby, under a skyline of business buildings and bouncer-like Soviet flats, is Moscow's massive screw you Napoleon Triumphal Arch.

In the evening I sat in a hot bath, reading Gogol and planning trips.

Competition Piece - Three Words

What follows is a piece I wrote for a writing competition last year. I didn't win.

THREE WORDS

I hate Moscow?

I love Moscow?

I don’t know?

How to describe Moscow in three words was my thought. What was Moscow? Or better still, who was it? I was living in one of the largest cities on the planet. A swarthy, broiling mess of pastel coloured spires, grand neo-classical theatres and stuccowork facades sidling up alongside soviet era blocks, Moscow was a city whose identity I was struggling to pigeonhole. Looking out of my window as the wind howled around the grey walls outside, the sky threatening to spit snow at me, I thought I would find help. Condensed Moscow in a can. Three words please.

Richard. English. Ex-pat here for 14 years: vast, surreal, apocalyptic.

I can taste their smell. The daily love-hate play of the Moscow metro and its millions of users. I flit from palatial chamber to sardine-packed train and then back into the architectural gem further along the line. People everywhere. Solace is rare in Moscow, as is personal space. It’s a musky, exciting, silly, tiring place to travel round. I fear it and relish it at the same time. Some rough looking Caucus men vault over the barriers and run down to the trains as a portly old lady in a grey uniform pointlessly blows a whistle at them. Then outside the dry, cool air and epic street scenes lurch about me as noisy cars scurry over them. To the left, crippling beauty, ornate and well looked after. To the right, outstanding ugliness, scruffy, peeling and designed by someone who hates onlookers. Concordance isn’t Moscow.

Ilya. Russian. Banker: wealthy, fast-paced, programmed.

The city drips with wealth. Money sloshes all around the place. The windows shine with reflected designer labels, glittering black cars line roads, Italian clothing wanders past in heels and fur coats laugh gaily as they drown cashiers in roubles. The bubble bursts when the paradox comes into the light. Utter poverty, depressing and brutal, lives alongside. Middle-aged men slump alone or in groups, dishevelled, Dostoevskian, covered in the filth of the dirty streets, cradling cans of beer and consuming themselves into oblivion. All this within three feet of the other and neither party paying any heed. ‘That’s Russia!’ one of my students told me.

Babushka. Russian. Street-seller: super, multi-cultural, enormous market.

In the mornings, come rain or shine or Antarctic conditions, little old ladies set up little cardboard box stalls and little wooden tables. The kiosks have the monopoly on ‘street beers’ and snacks and the scented effusions of either hops or urine – and if (un)lucky, the marbled coalescence of both. However, the old babushkas persist. Chatty, plucky and awesome saleswomen, they offer fresh, moist cheeses; dark green bunches of dill or parsley tied with little blue rubber bands; bags of nuts and raisins; pots of homemade jams, honeys and sauces; or some fruit and vegetables that sit as little supernovas of colour exploding in the blustery washed out Muscovite autumn.

Miguel. Spanish. Work placement, 2 months: gigantic, grey, unrecognisable.

Moscow, like the country it runs, is hard to make friends with, tricky to get used to and impossible to understand. Its history is a bloody tapestry of revolution, dictatorship, repression and iron-fisted rule. From the tsars to the communists and finally to the capitalist ‘democratics’, one feels that the city itself doesn’t know what it is. Vestiges of every stage remain, like fingerprints. These differences are also imprinted in the psyches of the people, who are as perplexing as the place itself. They admit they are unique and they have serious trouble describing themselves. ‘We’re not really like anyone else’ laughed one of my students. When you finally break through the barrier though, it’s more welcoming and friendly than anywhere else.

Eileen. Canadian. Teacher. Never visited Russia: cold, grey, intimidating.

Winter in Moscow can be genuinely fearsome. The record low was around the -42 C mark. At the time of writing, the start of December, it is -21 C outside and I am bundled up in a duvet on my bed. The old flat doesn’t have double-glazing, but rather two sets of old windows. They rattle a little as Siberian winds taunt me and slide in through the cracks to make sure that my toes don’t warm up. Outside I am lit up as I breathe in the frozen air. My lungs wobble. Smells sit, vague, waiting for a zephyr to move them. Dust and beer and pastries. Scents of the underpasses; Moscow’s ‘high streets’. Or my cheeks and nose burn as they are blasted raw by gusts spiralling around corners. It’s terrifying and wonderful at the same time. It certainly adds a little frisson to walking to the metro.

Me. English. Teacher: overblown, unfathomable, non-stop.