h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah yes. Thanks.

Very good article; allow me to add some (recently discovered) details:
Most metro carriages have maps next to the doors with station names in Cyrillic and "Western" alphabet. This map is very useful for non-Russians, however I could not find a printed copy anywhere. The names of the stations are not always clearly visible.
The Arbatskaya/... station should indeed be avoided at all cost!! Other stations are relatively easy. Note some stations (Kitai-Gorod) are enormous, and it is almost impossible to find the exit you really wanted.
Almost all fellow-travellers are friendly, don't expect that any of them speak any other language than Russian. Nevertheless they will (try to) help you.

It's true about the maps on the trains, but they aren't near every door. The new lot also have a clear indication of the nightmare that is the Boro terminus, mind, which is a definite bonus It was an embarrassing six monthes before I realised the trick to that one.

I seem to end up with metro maps from all sorts of sources. I have small calanders with it on (i think you can buy them from kiosks selling things like pens and what have you). Most of the big hotelly places also have free leaflets, maps of the city and travellers' magazines which all have metro maps on, usually with latin letters. Then there's always one of those T shirts...

True about the hotels.. they have latin letter maps however & I cannot (yet) decrypt these into cyrillic! The bookshops/kiosks have cyrillic lettered maps and these leave me comparing on a letter-to-letter basis.. The combo-maps latin & cyril would be ideal however I am afraid I'd have to saw myself a piece of wagon..

As for the hotel: I don't think I'll undress on a station to find my way out..

[six months for the Boro trap? ouch]

Well, you can buy the beauteuos maps they stick on the carriages... But it might look a bit suspect unfolding one on the platform

Hello. Me again. My one trip to Moscow seemed to rotate around a single trip to the Metro Museum at Sportivanya. It is up a staircase ont he right side of the exit at the Luzhniki stadium end. Could it be added or do you think you can put together an Moscow Metro Museum entry in its own right?

Trout.

My god! There's a museum, and I haven't been !!! *clutches hair wildly and runs around in horror [no really: I love the metro]*

Hmm, not sure about adding anything. I mean, obviously I would, but I'm not sure how it's gone about, once the article gets in... A seperate article would, of course, be entirely possible. Wanna write it?

What were you doing in Moscow? Why on earth would that centre around a metro museum?

You too, Hapi? Or do you live here?

Oh, no I don't live in Moscow; I just work there a couple of weeks per month, until somewhere next August.
METRO MUSEUM??? A REAL METRO MUSEUM?? Oh well, something for the weekends..

I and my travelling companion Old Spice had just come from Beijing by Trans-Mongolian Railway (an Entry I am working on). We had a couple of days in Moscow during which time we had to work out how to get out. We eventually settled for aeroplane.

I am not there now, but it seems that you are, so would be most suitably placed to write the entry, especially as you are responsible for the guide's excellent current Moscow-Metro resource.

Quite why I was attracted, I don't know. Maybe the romaticism of being on a train across two continents had given me a temporary loco-buzz.

So, go and pay it a visit. It's not extensive - unless you're a real trainspotter, you'll be through in an hour, including the time it takes to find the discreet (sp?) entrance.

Dr Trout.

Beijing <=> Moscow ..
I'd maybe plan that for next year.. End of summer is reasonable?? I'd rather not try it in full summer(..)

We did it in February. Siberia is, well, how it's supposed to be. and We stayed a copuple of days in Listvyanka ... Lake Baikal was completely frozen.

Here is an extract from my travel journal ...

"For two days we travel westwards, out of Siberia and into the Urals, crossing from Asia to Europe. For two days, our world is in monochrome, a brooding grey sky hanging heavily over a lifeless winter's landscape of thick thick snow and dense black forest. In places, the snow is so deep that the never-ending hypnotic catenaries of the telegraph lines are almost buried. We pass by desserted hamlets of A-frame wendy-houses, each whose boundary is barely defined by the tips of the fence-posts poking through the snowy eiderdown. The starkness is punctuated occasionally by flashes of brilliant tangerine dream, the colour of the waistcoats worn by teams of labourers clearing the tracks."
- Extract from the Travel Journal of Montague Trout and Old Spice, 26/27 January 1998

A very good travel guide I have (by Bryn Thomas) says that it is a time of fur-coats and vodka, and the snow-covered landscapes and ice-laden fir-trees ensure that Siberia looks like a scene out Dr. Zhivago.

He's dead right.

Clearly it was January not February as stated!

Dr Trout (stupid at the best of times)

Damm, I meant to reply to this ages ago, but must have started back at work at that time and clearly had a bit of a brain overload...

I was going to say: you really do write well 'Trout (if I may?) don't you? Really transported me out there. I love winter!

What an unusual time to do the trans sib. I must say I agree that siberia should be seen in winter, but on the other hand, I've heard great things about Bikal in summer. I still haven't done it yet. Oh well.

How was China?

China seems (to my addled memory) sort of rustic in a medieval peasant kind of way. We stayed around Guilin for a few days and also in Beijing. I'd never wanted to bother with The Great Wall, shying away from the hype. When I saw it my breath was taken away. It is spectacular.