What time you got up and the mood of the woman serving decided whether or not your free breakfast was good. On good days we got dumplings or fried eggs with bits of ham. If you were not in her good books you might just get a couple of pieces of cold, dry toast. Whatever, the time of day, there was always vomitous Russian and European pop music playing at high volume.

The worst song that we heard whilst away was called “The SMS Song”. Just so you can understand our pain, these are the lyrics of the chorus:

I’m sending you an S…    M…     S.

I know it won’t be the best.

But I’m sending you an S…    M…    S.

Yep. That’s it.

(SMS stands for short message service and is what most people term ‘texting’ on their mobile phones.)

We searched for the bar ‘Propaganda’ on two separate evenings and walked straight past it the night we found it. After we’d had a few beers in us and were feeling warm and jolly, a woman approached our table and asked if we spoke English, and then if we were ‘family’. “Yes, of course!” I enthusiastically replied.

Her two friends came and joined us and we chatted merrily about the perils of being westerners in Russia and the difficulty in finding the queer scene. One of them was Russian. She had gone to America to study, met Tammy and they’d been together for the last eight years. Tammy bugged Elena to take her to Russia and her best friend Michelle tagged along. And that’s how they were there. Interestingly enough, they had been hassled by the cops for their passports on three occasions. Three! That made Tracey and I feel good at our ability to cop-dodge so far, and slightly worried about the future. Having a Russian speaker on your side is certainly a good way to get out of blackmail situations.

They weren’t exactly backpackers. The Americans were from Miami and had never travelled before. Still, they were fun to hang out with. We left with them in an effort to find a bar that had a women’s night on Monday. We knew the name of the bar and the Metro station and nothing else, but we found it eventually. Tracey and I were envious at how much easier our trip could have been if only we’d had a Russian-speaking guide! The bar was closed for a private party but again our Russian speaking friend convinced the security staff to let us in and give us a tour. It was a cool club — shame we were leaving the next day.

On our exit I made a big mistake. We’d walked past the club a few times and I’d previously pointed it out and suggested that it might be what we were looking for. Outside, I banged their sign with my fist to emphasise my point, “I told you this was the place!”

The sign was only loosely glued together and a section fell off. I was mortified. All my street cool cred (yeah right) that I’d worked so hard to build over the course of the night disappeared in an instant. We swapped email addresses and I wrote my name as ‘Jen the Aussie sign wrecker’. I haven’t heard from them since.

Tags: Moscow, Russia