Metro mosaics

When people have spoken of soviet style architecture, this always conjured up images of grey concrete appartment blocks stretching to the horizon with no colour or relief. And there is such stuff, but there is also some pretty funky design happening to keep the masses happy. The Moscow metro is well known for its chandeliers and ballroom-like halls, as well as its very long escalators. We also found mosaics depicting proud revolutionaries - red flags flowing, others showing idyllic settings and relaxed lute-playing types, as well as what looked like scenes of glorious 19th century armies (but I'm no expert). Even the ventilation grates are decorated with brass plates, finished with garlanded hammers and syckles (sorry about my spelling, incidentally).

Some of the buildings, also, have a real art deco feel to them, like something out of films like 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari' or 'Brazil'. We've decided to skip the onion domed churches and do a tour of Stalin's towers tomorrow instead.

Today we went to Red Square and saw St Basil's and Lenin's mausoleum (though not the man himself). We went inside the Kremlin where the guards have long sticks and blow their whistles if anyone steps off the footpaths.

Then we caught the metro across the mostly frozen river - beautiful - followed by an expidition to a cinema showing movies in English which was just near the Olympic stadium.

So the next step is the first leg of the Trans Siberian - we leave on Sunday night and don't arrive in Irkutsk until Thursday morning, 5 timezones later. We go from about -7 degrees here to around -20 there. We've arranged to be met there to save ourselves from being snap frozen.