Image by davecobb.
On what we expected to be our last day in Moscow we trooped down to Lenin’s Mausoleum to see the man himself. Standing in line, the guards said “no more Lenin” and closed the gates. We were devastated. You can’t come to Moscow and not see the dead Leni. We decided that we’d try and stay another night. That proved to be an enormous hassle, but more on that later.
Since we were so disappointed at missing Leni we decided to go to the cat circus to cheer ourselves up. It took some finding, and the woman at the ticket office sneered and waved us away when we asked for tickets (she was young – a babushka in training). But a helpful woman that spoke a little English guided us to the real ticket seller, and we took our seats amongst the screaming kiddies with their flashing lights and balloon dogs.
It was a standard circus really with some bored looking cats doing balancing acts – being pushed across the stage on a skateboard, for example. Some of the acts were quite amazing though. Imagine if you were hanging by your arms from a rope and you had to move sideways from one end to the other. Now imagine you’re a cat. That was pretty cool.
There was one act that was cruel and Tracey and I couldn’t quite believe that they’d done it. A cat was put in a bucket and then twirled rapidly around the head of the clown. At the end, it was clearly dizzy and couldn’t stop moving its head in circles. The kids thought it was hilarious — I just hope they don’t repeat that one at home.
Most of the show was good though, and it certainly warmed our spirits. One of the funniest things was watching all the rich mothers and their fashionably dressed muppets hailing down ratty cars off the street after the show. Tee hee.
We had to really fight to get a bed for our last night in Moscow. A large group of young German schoolgirls were coming to stay and apparently no rooms were available. Essentially, even though we had booked and paid and were already there they wanted to kick us out so they could fit in the schoolgirls. We’d book at least a month in advance for that night.
The hostel woman broke down crying at one stage because of the pressure of having to negotiate with demanding westerners (Glen, Matthew, B, D, Tracey and I) on one side and her Russian hotel bosses on the other all arguing for what they wanted. Thankfully, we held our ground and we didn’t have to pay more money or even move rooms.
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