Moscow

Red Square

Kremlin

St. Basil's

 After waiting for literally 2+ hours in the immigration line in Domodavo (not sure that is completely right) International airport, Chris and I finally entered Moscow! The first thing we needed to figure out was how to get to our hostel which was    located in the center of the city. Since the airport was really far from our hostel Chris and I agreed that taking the trains would be the cheapest option. Let me first say that if it was not for Chris's amazing navigation skills we would have been doomed :)

 For those of you that did not know, Russia has its own alphabet which is extremely confusing because everything is pronounced completely different then how it truly looks. On top of this pretty much no one speaks English. All of this made taking the train system a pretty amusing time. We had to take three separate routes which involved a lot of transferring between the various train lines. Our planed had landed at 1:30pm, but we did not make it to our accommodation until around 6:30pm. After checking into the hostel Chris and I did the only sensible thing any exhausted and hungry travel can do - DRINK!

Our goal was to have a few beers and try to stay up till some reasonable hour in the night and then go to bed so that we could acclimate to our new time zone. So we found a a real neat bar a block from our hostel and ordered a round. This bar gave you a variety of size options and we decided to split the biggest option available for our second as was a lot cheaper then ordering two individual beers. As you can see by the picture below it presented Chris and me with great amusement :)

3.5 Liter beer in Moscow!

We finished our beers at 8ish and began waling to back to the hostel, when we spotted a very tall and well lit building a few miles down the road. I said to Chris that I believe that is STALIN's TOWER, which is famous piece of Russian architecture. As you might imagine we decided to check to take a nice walk and investigate my hunch. Finally arriving at the building I approached two guys outside and asked if they spoke English in order to figure out what we were looking at. One of them did speak English and it turns out i was correct!

As we began walking away the guy who spoke English started laughing and said "very nice mustache" so inevitably we walked over and started a conversation with him. This decision would turn out to be the best thing we could have ever done. Soon another one of his friends arrived and we began talking about our two cultures and the next thing we know the second friend is telling us to come with him to go get some beers from the corner market. Next thing we know me and Chris are up inside this historical building, which is now an swanky apartment building, drinking and sharing stories with these guys. One thing leads to another and they introduce us to the tradition of Russian VODKA and it becomes 4am quite quickly!

 Stalin's Tower

 Our amazing Russian friends

 John with another of our great hosts

Handstand on horseback

 

Mosaic on St. Basil's

After two of our new friends walk with us back to the hostel, we arrange to meet them the next night for dinner and drinks. Let me say meeting these guys was amazing. We opened up to each other about how our two cultures behave, what type of music we like, social traditions, and shared hilarious stories. They we some of the best hosts i have ever met. Going out of their way to show us their city, and buying our drinks and meal! Simply put these guys are some of the kindest people i have ever met and i really hope our paths cross again! Thank you Pascha, Daniel, Oleg, and Alex for making our time in Russia so memorable!