Last day in Moscow (continued)

Tuesday 24 April (cont'd)

After gathering food supplies for the train, as detailed in my last blog post, we go off in search of the Russian Gulag Museum. It takes us a while wandering the streets to find it, even though we had (sort-of) been given directions. It is an unpretentious building with a small entrance.

What were the Russian Gulags? They were the notorious camps (often called Russian or Siberian labour camps – though most were not actually in Siberia but other parts of Russia, the coldest, bleakest, and most inhospitable parts, with the thickest snow and longest winters ), where anyone who Stalin's government thought could cause a problem to the state were sent, including political dissident. Thousands of ordinary innocent Russians and Poles were sent there – and Reg's Mum was one of them. This museum therefore has special significance for Reg, and for me too, as Reg's Mum Kazia would occasionally when pressed tell us the horrific, fascinating story of her time in the camp near Archangle. She also told us of her long journey to Iran and then East Africa, when the camps were finally liberated. Kazia's story had a happy ending. When in East Africa she met Reg's Dad, who was in the British Army. When he got back to England, he sent his demob money to her, to bring her to England to be his bride. He couldn't speak Polish, she couldn't speak English, so they communicated in the African language Swahili! Once in England, Kazia had to be taught to say “I do” for the wedding ceremony. Bob and Kazia were married for 47 years until Bob died in 1995 and they were devoted to each other.

A few years ago, using the internet to discover more about the Russian labour camps , amazingly Reg was able trace Kazia's name, the actual train that took her to the labour camp near Archangle, the date she was taken, and who was in charge of the train.

Many, many people died in those camps. Some died due to starvation, the harsh conditions and bitter temperatures, some were shot on the slightest pretext. The inmates were forced to do hard labour. Kazia was only a teenager when she entered the camp, and had to chop down trees. In the Gulag museum, we viewed a saw that was used for tree felling. It was a vicious circle, because the prisoners were only given their daily ration of watery soup if they felled their quota of trees; of course, if you didn't have any food you had no energy to fell trees. At one point Kazia had to eat grass to survive; she was so starved that her periods stopped. To the day she died. Kazia was never able to throw away a morsel of food.

The Russian Gulag Museum told us much about life in the camps from letters, artifacts, and personal testimonies; most of the information, letters etc were in Russian but there was an overview of the situation in English. Also Reg bought a book (translated into English) detailing one inmate's experience of the camp. We saw one of the original “beds' the prisoners slept on – just a wooden board. The museum stewards were Russian, but a young Russian woman, who was visiting, spoke excellent English. She was fascinated by Kazia's story and spent a lot of time translating the curator's words for us.

Stalin was portrayed in the museum as the evil murderer he was. There was a fascinating exhibition of original and “touched up” photographs, side by side. Most of the originals had Stalin in them, together with other politicians or people who were part of Stalin's entourage. In the second set of photos, those of Stalin's “friends” or “cronies” who'd lost favour with him, had either been removed from the original photograph completely, or had their faces blacked out. The museum records informed us that most of these “out of favour' people were either subsequently shot, or occasionally they mysteriously disappeared.

It seems to us that Russia is still trying to shake off it's secret police image – not helped by the fact that tourists have to complete registration forms when they arrive in Moscow and are warned to carry these with them at all times, with their passports. But, we are told, show your passports if asked – but never hand them over!

In the afternoon we decide to visit the famous TV tower on the outskirts of Moscow, by far the tallest building in Moscow. We are really pleased with ourselves for navigating the Metro without too much difficulty, and alighting at the right Metro station to get the monorail connection to the TV tower. After a bit of a walk we finally get there to find it closed for a meeting (!! - Russians have these as well as Methodists!) and the next tour isn't until 7 pm. That's too late for us as we want to have time for a rest (we are OAP's after all), a meal, a shower, and to sort ourselves out in time for our taxi arriving at 10.45 pm to take us to the train station– for our marathon 3 day, 3 night journey to Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

I'm bitterly disappointed after all that effort to get to the TV tower, not to go up it and see the magnificent view, but c'est la vie; so we do the next best thing. We go into the adjoining cafe and have a cuppa.

We leave behind the Godzilla hostel, an absolutely brilliant place to stay, and our lovely taxi driver who brought us to the hostel on Sunday takes us to the station, booming out English pop and rock on his radio, tapping his steering wheel to the music as he manoeuvres his trusty vehicle through the 5-lane wide major routeway towards the station.

Our driver gives us a fridge magnet of Moscow as a memento, we tip him well because we like him, and he hands us a sheet of paper which he extracts from a huge wad of papers in his pocket, each sheet appearing to contain the same information – the taxi driver's name and address. He must have friends everywhere.

We have our usual trundle along the the platform with our mountain of luggage (including the two carrier bags of food for the journey) and climb into the train, ready to embark on the next stage of our epic journey.