So my first love was St Petersburg and I really thought there could be no other. But then I came to Moscow. And I thought it would be dirty. And smelly. And filled with mafia (which it probably is but they generally don’t advertise) and pickpockets and all tea would be served with either lemon or enriched uranium and every doorhandle would be covered in novochik virus and… and… and…

…and then I arrived. And it is simply wonderful. And big (everywhere in Russia is apparently humugous in size) and beautiful and ancient and modern and high and low and fast and slow and everything a really vibrant and amazing city should be. And the Muscovites are an elegant and stylish bunch whereas the St Petersbrugers look like quarter pounders with cheese. The people are still horrible here, but they look much better. Its a start.

And when in Moscow… ya go to the Bolshoi, don’t’cha. Its just the thing to do. The world’s best ballet right where it lives. What could go wrong?

We saw La Sylphide. A wonderful tale of a two gay men madly in love with a woman? Although one of them really fancies this fairy. Which sounds more appropriate until you realise that the fairy is a woman too! Then a witch comes along and there’s lots of Scottish dancing because the men are, in this ballet, wearing dresses too, well kilts anyway, and then it all goes tits up and everyone dies except one of the gay men who marries his dead best mate’s ex-fiancee. Brilliant. Like a soap opera. And so true to life as to be… as to be a ballet. But the dancing is spectacular and the music divine, the orchestra not exactly shabby, the building a dream and the ice-creams over-priced. If you work on the fairly safe assumption that ‘all ballets are a load of bollocks’, then you might as well see the best load of bollocks in the world. Really, really enjoyed it. And not just because it made me laugh in all the unfunny places, honest. I almost felt cultured for a while sitting there.

There’s a buzz around Moscow that you can only feel. An excitement. Not about the KGB, they’re gone now. But just a wonderful energy like you feel in Berlin, in parts of New York, in Shoreditch. And its great. Today we did a lot. And ended up getting the tube back to the hotel. Which involved changing tube lines twice. Sounds easy. But try doing it with no English names written anywhere, either for directions or train destinations. There’s a distinct lack of signage all over Russia but the Moscow Metro wins the prize for ‘opaque’. Even the entrances to the stations are often hidden.

But I love it nonetheless. Nothing had prepared me to actually like Russia. But I do. I really do.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx