The Father of Modern Communism

We started the day as Lenin no doubt would've. With a meal at the first McDonald's in Russia which is also the biggest. With CD listening booths to entertain you while you wait, leather couches, multiple rooms and even aerobics on the video screens, it was the communist experience par excellence.

Then we cruised down to Red Square, deposited our bags and queued up to see the great man. We did the trip with a guy, Morgan, from our hostel. Morgan's an ex-US Army guy who served in Korea. For the last eight months he's been finishing off his undergraduate degree in Russia at St. Petersburg and a place called Sukdokar.

So the guard's usher us through and you're inside the mausoleum. With three guards in front of us, one of them motioned at me to take my hands out of my pockets. Then you go past another three guards, turn right and it's into the austere death chamber. To tell you the truth I didn't get too good a look at the old fella, I was to busy being spooked by the ultra solemn trios of guards standing in every corner. Then out in the daylight all three of us turned to each other and said "Fuck, that was the wierdest thing I've ever done."

Then we walked along the wall of the Kremlin taking in the graves of General Zhukov, Brezhnev and Stalin. Next stop was the Lubyanka, the infamous home of first the Cheka and then the KGB. Now it houses the Russian intelligence services. We weren't sure we'd found the right building until security guys told us we couldn't go in.

After that we checked out the Mayakovsky Museum which was a massive art installation featuring his paintings, notebooks, posters, all types of miscellania, creatively scattered over four floors. The top level had the room where he shot himself, faithfully preserved, minus the blood stains.

Then with Morgan's help we purchased our train ticket's to Riga and headed on down the famous Arabat. Finally I saw some of the bizarre Soviet stuff I've heard so much about. Nearly every stall was selling genuine MiG helmets, there were a couple of space helmets and even a complete space suit. Awesome!