last day in mother russia land. so we went to moscow's kremlin once more, to also see the enclosed part[01-49], which of course requires to pay some entrance fee. inside there were only a few people, which we really enjoyed. first thing you see when entering the inner kremlin is trinity tower[01,48]. then we walked by the state kremlin palace[02], the assumption cathedral[05-08], archangel's cathedral[09], the annunciation cathedral[11], the twelve apostle's cathedral[12-15,26], the armoury chamber and the backside of the kremlin palace[17-23]. standing in front of the tsar bell[28-29], that is world's largest bell (but it was never rung because it broke during a big fire) was quite impressive, same with the tsar canon[33-38], one of the largest canons ever made. finally a walk over ivan square and cathedral square[39-47] led us to the exit again. i really hope i got all those cathedrals here right, it might easily be i mixed them up somehow - if so, i'm sorry. inside the cathedrals no photography was allowed. too sad. then we drove home, i packed my things and olga's uncle fetched us and drove us to the airport, where olga's father is working. he said we should come a little earlier, so he could show us the new airport tower they were just building at the airport area. so we climbed up and ended on the open roof of the tower. it was very windy and cold, clouds were coming up along with rain. but i enjoyed the view. unfortunately, no photography again (due to airport security concerns). a final coffee at the airport and then olga and her father left. it then began to snow. in the end of april. what a contrast to the weather back in austria... it was a really impressive trip to this fascinating, but also strange country. i encountered nice people, wonderful landscapes, very impressive buildings, and weird bureaucracy. thanks a lot to olga's and dima's family, and friends for their hospitality, their willingness to spend some time with me.

for today we planned a trip to gorky park. but before that we started our day once more at costa coffee[01] the place we already have been several times. they have good coffee, free wifi and nice cakes and the like. via the metro[02-03] we got to the bridge again to search for the geocache once more[05-16], but besides a nice view we did not find anything at all. so, admittedly a little frustrated, we went on heading towards gorky park[17-91]. there were almost no people there besides us, and also most of the fun park attractions were under construction[27-28,33]. since olga and dimas like shooting (it seems), they stopped at some shooting galleries[45-52] and had fun. inside gorky park there's is another little park[55-91] full with statues and monuments that were deconstructed. they were then collected over time and brought there. so you can find lenin busts right next to stalin busts. foreigners here have to pay almost double the price than locals. after our visit to gorky park we brought dimas to the railway station since one of their cats got very ill. so he took the train back to get some veterinarian help for the pet. i hope the cat will be fine. olga is pretty worried about it too... ps: it's lenin's birthday today.

day 10 was entirely dedicated to doing touristy stuff. of course first thing to do was to go to the kremlin's red square[004-020,075-102], to saint basil's cathedral[016-055], the gum department store[011,056-074], and some historical place[015] where people were beheaded a few centuries ago, nowadays used by people as a wishing well. unfortunately lenin's mausoleum[012] was closed due to preparation[010,012-013,091] works for the 65th anniversary of victory in WW2 celebration, and kremlin would have been open for only one more hour, so we decided to come back here on friday, the day of my departure. so we went by metro[103-108] to get to a park where we met with two friends of dimas (although the second one, alexander, was a bit late, so we met him after the walk through the park). on our way to the park we came by the monument to the conquerors of space[109-110,195] which also houses the memorial museum of cosmonauts in the lower floors of the monument. the monument itself is 107 metres high and on top of it there's a rocket. the park, called all-russia exhibition centre[112-194] (aka "VDNKh-USSR") consists of many pavilions, loads of sculptures (including the quite famous one named "worker and kolkhoz woman"), fountains, a ferris wheel, and many other stuff. since the area of the park is bigger than monaco, we only had a look at some places there like the propylaea[112-114,117,123] the central pavilion[118,120-128], a fountain[129-135] dedicated to the friendship of nations, a pavilion[136,143, dedicated to moscow, ryazan, and tula regions, another pavilion[137,139,178] dedicated to uzbek SSR, next to the ukraine pavilion[146-148,162-170], a pavilion[157] dedicated to mechanization and a spaceship[149-155] and an airplane[159-160] right next to it. guess what, all this stuff is next to another pavilion[158], namely one dedicated to cotton, which is next to a pavilion[179] dedicated to karelia, which is located right beside the pavilion[180] of armenia, which... we entered. puh. inside[181-184] were a cafe, and some shops which were already closed. next we took a ride on "moscow-850"[185-193], a ferris wheel, constructed for moscow's 850th anniversary back in 1997. it's around 75 metres high and you get a good overview over the exhibition park and moscow. then we went to some sushi bar and had very delicious meal there. alexander then offered to drive us around a bit, so i could get a glimpse on moscow by night. of course i didn't want to miss that chance. so we got on his car and drove to kremlin[196-203] again. this time there were almost no people. another thing alexander wanted to show me was a bridge[207] where young couples put on locks. i have already seen several of these locks on all kind of bridges, but this one was quite impressive. they put up iron trees[204-209] and all locks were attached to those trees. next stop was another cathedral[210-212], another bridge[213-215] (we thought there should be a geocache, but we never found it. even when we returned there in daylight, the next day. but there were construction works going on, so maybe the cache was inaccessible). then we stopped at a nice viewing platform[216] which gave an impressive view over moscow. last stop was a park that had clown statues[219-225] all over the place. looks like it was founded by some clown enthusiast[217]. unfortunately alexander had to get up the next morning early to go to work. so we then stopped the tour. thanks very much for this awesome and interesting tour through moscow, alexander!

not much happened today so no pics again. we got up early, olga's mom drove us to the railway station of bryansk, we got on the train, we stopped in sukhinichi, had a look at the toys they were again selling at the station, played some multiplayer games on three nintendo DSs, ate, drank, and got off six hours later at around 15:30 in moscow. there we took the metro to get to a station where we were fetched by olga's uncle by car and brought back to the place i've already been on the first day. so far i've only seen three metro stations in moscow, but most of them (namely two) were very impressive. there are a lot of security and police men, so i hope i can somehow take pictures of them without running into troubles, because they think i try to make plans for the next bomb attack on moscow's metro. since all of us were quite tired, and i'm still not fully recovered yet (but feeling way better), we decided to not go back to the city, but rather go to the shopping mall with the IKEA, OBI, H&M, C&A, mango, esprit, and all the other shops we have in shopping malls in austria too. untypically i had american food today in a friday's restaurant. plain old boring burger i had. no borscht, too sad. also i already miss the cats, and i'm very curious about moscow by now.

i stayed home today, because i got a terrible cold, headache, and a sore throat. so olga did some stitching, i was mostly sleeping, surrounded by sleeping cats. only exciting thing that happened today was the news of the first flight from russia to vienna by aeroflot after the volcano eruption in iceland. still three days left, i hope things are back to normal then.

today was a strange day. firstly i woke up with a cold, headache and a sore throat, secondly olga got bitten by one of her dogs while they were fighting the neighbour's dogs. there was blood all over her clothes. so we went back inside to have her change clothes. then we were walking through bryansk again, having a coffee[01], and going to a market[02-03]. there they had all kind of stuff like food, clothes, accessories, and covers for mobile phones. i bought one for mine. also, i saw two teenage girls sucking cock in public there. but besides me and olga no one cared about that it seemed. well, unfortunately i didn't take pictures of that, but olga said she might do that one day, especially for me, so i can take a picture of her while she will be sucking cock. the only problem is to find those rooster-shaped lollipops somewhere. they were all red and looked quite delicious - nomnom. after strolling around[04-13] for quite a long time, we took a bus[14-16] back home to enjoy the presence of the cats[17-29]. we had some barbecue in the backyard of the house with olga, her mother, her sister, her nephew and niece, dima, me, the dogs and the cats. unfortunately i did not feel too well, so i went to bed early and could not really enjoy the barbecue.

"what do you want to see in russia?" olga asked me when i said i will visit her. i said i would be interested in abandoned stuff, like houses, cities, villages, and such. and so today was the big day for such things. but before leaving to those places, we had to go to the doctor, because in the night dima and olga's mom were keeping the dogs from killing a hedgehog, and dima was hurt when trying to lift up the hedgehog, so we went to the doctor to have him checked for rabies and having a vaccination if necessary. the doctor said if the dog, who also got injured by the hedgehog, would still be alive in ten days, everything will be fine with dimas. nice prospect. afterwards we drove to the town where dima was born and his family still lives, to see some abandoned villages. the first place we visited was a memorial[005] for a burnt down village during the second world war. several hundred people were killed by german soldiers here. next place was a small abandoned village[009-034]. actually it was not abandoned entirely, because there was still one house where an old couple was living. the old lady[025] showed me around. she told olga that they lost almost all their bee hives[027-028] due to too much snow. inside the house they had several ovens for heating and cooking, and an old cat lying next to one oven. in this village there was also a geocache[030] hidden. there is a geocaching site for russia, that's why i did not find any caches on geocaches.com, but geocaches.ru did the trick. since those two sites are not really connected (in terms of caches and users), i still have my traveling bug with me. i hope i can get rid of it in moscow. then we drove on to the next abandoned village[036-084]. we found a place where someone was collecting juice from a birch[075]. it's pretty common here and so birch juice is easy to get here. it tasted like water with a little sugar in it. after that we got to a holy spring[088-110]. they even built a small hut there for people that want to take a bath in the holy water. it is said that one gets young and good looking if they wash their face with that water. so i did wash my face - maybe it helps, we'll see. afterwards we had some sort of barbecue[106- 107]. dima's father brought some lard[110] and bread. quite tasty, and common (according to olga), but definitely not my favourite every-day food. last building we stopped by was an abandoned school[119-131]. people started to dig at the corners of the ruins, because rumour has it that there should be some gold hidden (of course there was none - i was looking myself). then we stopped by at dima's parents to have dinner. we had some chicken with salad, of course borscht, and a delicious cake for dinner. all served with several rounds of vodka (yes, i ended up slightly drunk this evening). on our way home we were listening to scooter (because olga's mother likes it and thus had a CD in the car), stopped at a super market to buy some food and at the train station to buy our tickets for the train back to moscow on tuesday.

today we planned to go to another part of bryansk. but first we had to get back my piece of paper they kept the day before. the lady in the office pointed at a box where quite a lot of papers like mine where in. so as picky as they are when it comes to bring everything and having filled out everything, as sloppy they are when it comes to handing out back any forms or papers. we could have just taken any pieces of paper, which for sure would have meant loads of troubles for the people that would have ended up without them. but of course we didn't. we walked around a bit until we came to, what olga called it, the suicide bridge of bryansk[008]. according to olga a lot of people here commit suicide. next olga showed me an abandoned bridge[013-020]. though fully functional it is not used by anyone. so no cars, just a few pedestrians and one woman on a bike were there. also i'd way more prefer this bridge to commit suicide, if i'd ever decide to end my life in this city. next we walked to the university, a place where olga was working once. there were so many girls, i totally forgot to take any pictures (or actually i was so busy staring, i had no time to take pictures). so olga dragged me away from the main buildings and showed me the area[024-072] around the university, again with abandoned buildings[028-045], bridges[051-071] and huge areas of swamp, wood, and meadows. on the bridge there were a lot of locks. they are put up there by newly wed couples, and on most of them there's something written on it. on our way back we found an old, but still working public telephon booth[078-080] (or... sort of booth). it still was beeping when we lifted the receiver. later we met one of olga's neighbours[082-085] and the girl asked me to take pictures of them. after having a coffee break we went on to see another memorial[088-094] where people of bryansk were offered to help building it. right next to the memorial is some amusement park[095-098,114-116], an abandoned ski jump[099-113], and an abandoned driving school[118-124]. the amusement park unfortunately was closed. on our way back home we hit rush-hour it seemed, so loads of people[129-135] waiting for, and in the buses. notice that about 90% of the girls here wear shoes with (very) high heels. back home we had dinner. of course borscht, a soup called okroshka[139], and belmin[140-148], which we made ourselves. at first we stuffed the dough ourselves, but then olga's mom came up with some device[146] to speed up things a little bit. as usual, very delicious.

fourth day in russia started out with dealing with russian public authorities again. i have to be (re?)registered within three working days, once i had entered the russian federation. i think this is just to make sure that i really got fetched from the airport by the person that is named in the visa, and that i really still stay with them. so we went to some administrative office to have the paper work done. they require a copy of my passport, my visa and some paper that i was handed out when waiting for the passport control on my first day here. the paper was split into two parts, both requiring exactly the same information to be filled out, namely again my name, the place where i stay, the sequence number of my visa, when i arrive, when i leave, etc... so all this information by now should be registered at least a five, six times. but... yet they wanted olga (of course the both of us had to be there personally) to fill out all this again on two double-sided forms. the first part of the paper i handed out to someone at the airport when i came to russia, the second part i have to hand out when i will leave. they say if i don't have the second part when leaving russia, i might get into serious troubles. ok, so i just always put it into my passport. i should be able to not lose this one. the bad thing actually is, the lady at this office kept the second part. notice, she sent us away to get a copy of it, still she keeps the original. so we have to go there tomorrow to get it back. oh well... after spending about one hour at this agency, we went to some other part of bryansk. we got there by bus. they have two types of buses here: small ones, that are actually vans that have about ten seats in them and they drive quite fast. the other type of bus is an ordinary one as i know them from austria. you get on, have a seat and get off somewhere. in both of the buses you pay as you get on. on the first one you hand over the money to the driver, in the second one a lady is coming to you to collect the money. no matter how far you go, be it one station or 20, you always pay the same price, 12 rubles. so we finally arrived at an historical place, namely another first settlement found here. there was a graveyard again[01-06], and hiking a little off road, we got near to the flooded river[07-25] of bryansk. after a while we got back to a road[26-34] again, which we took to get back to o&d's office. there we had what they call "business lunch". they offered "schnitzel" there, but i had minced meat with smashed potatoes and of course borscht[36] and some strange, but very tasty fruit-juice[35]. coffee was next[37]. after getting on a bus again we got to the monastery[38-52]. there was a mass, and i dared to enter a little (but not to the room where the mass was taking place). olga stayed outside, she had no clothes to cover her hair and dress properly to enter the church[41-43]. next to the church is a little "graveyard"[44-45] of dead monks and the house for the highest monks[46,50]. the rest unfortunately was not open to public[48]. behind the monastery there was a cool toilet[51], and some stairs[54-59] leading to a small spring[60-61] where one could take a bath. next our trail led us through a wood and a swamp[62-86] to some meadow next to the river. finally we arrived at the cemetery[87] again and took a bus to o&d's home again, where we had bryansk some beer. then we went home and had blov, a dish made of rice, vegetables, and meat. reminded me of risotto somehow. today iceland's volcano had a break out. aeroflot canceled all flights from and to europe. if the volcanic ash cloud wont disappear within the next seven days, i'm in troubles. i guess. i just don't want to deal with visa-issues and russian authorities anymore...

today olga and me were strolling around in bryansk. the city itself is rather split up, with loads of woods and swamps in between. so we focused on the centre. first we went to a chernobyl memorial[13-14], armenian's memorial[16-17], some public school[19-21] where one can just walk through the backyard of it, bokrovskaya mountain[34-40] the place where the first settlement was (or at least the people believe so). next stop was the obligatory "lenin" place[47]. every town has it, together with some lenin street and most of the time some lenin statue. olga said at some time people wanted to remove the statues, but then they decided that it's part of history, so they just left all the names and statues as they are. next place i was shown was a memorial[51-52] of soldiers that died during the second world war. next we arrived at the company of o&d[61-74]. they are producing flash games for mobile phones, so there were some artists and some coders, and two bosses. all of the staff was very friendly and they gave me a warm welcome (i hope they were not forced to do so by dimas or they would get fired). last sight was tolstoy park[75-89] with wooden sculptures. olga told me that once there was a park with very old and big trees. but one day all of them got some strange disease and people tried to save the trees, but they couldn't. so the trees had to be cut down, and artists were encouraged to make some sculptures out of the wood blocks. later we went to some little grocery shop[90-91] and we bought some traditional russian ice cream. it tasted nice and was actually not very different from what we have - surprise, surprise. it seems like russians don't go out for dinner or coffee. thus there are only a few cafes in bryansk. poor me, i'm used to sight seeing then having a coffee break here and there and then going on. here i have to wait for quite a long time to get to a cafe[92]. but once we found some we have some desert and cafe. very nomnom, just like the rest of all the food i had tried so far. after coffee we went to olga's sister olesya and her kids. they also gave me a warm and kind welcome. there i had caviar. later dimas joined us, since he finished working and the company is just around the corner of olesya's place. so we went home and had once more a very delicious meal prepared by olga's mother. this time she made buckwheat with chicken hearts and sour-cream sauce. rather strange to me, but very tasty. nomnom. the rest of the evening we spent playing some wii games and having fun. ps: there are _no_ geocaches here in bryansk. too sad...

this day started off with a nice breakfast at "costa cafe"[03] at the shopping mall we've already been to yesterday. the cafe can be found right next to an "obi" store[02] there. for breakfast i had a croissant with miscellaneous fruits[03]. then we were brought to the "bryansk railway station"[05-15] in moscow by olga's father and uncle to get our train to bryansk. the station itself is very beautiful with loads of nice details and a huge hall[09]. the train ride lasted six hours and there were only two stops. russia is pretty vast, so going by train here has some other meaning than going by train in austria. additionally we had a sleeping compartment, so we took some naps[14] during the journey. the second stop was in "sukhinichi". at the platform there were sold loads of plush toys[15]. at the station in bryansk we were fetched by olga's mother that drove us to my new home for the next few days. in the pretty big house there are nine cats (maunz!) and three dogs (although they have to stay outside). olga's mother also prepared some very very delicious food like some pie[19] with meat and potato filling, borscht (but without beetroot, since olga does not like it it seems), and very nice halibut. afterwards we had some japanese tee and nice cherry cake made by olga herself. woah, so much eating, i'm not used to that any more after my ireland trip...

since the day i decided to go to russia only olga and dima, the people i stay with/at for the next few days, gave me a feeling of being welcome to russia. russian authorities so far totally did... not. applying for visa was a pita. at first, olga had to send me an invitation, because you must be registered to some place where you stay - be it a hotel or some private accommodation, as in my case. once this was done, i additionally had to bring a travel insurance, so that russia can easily get rid of me if i get sick on my journey. once you have all the stuff (which means besides all the previously mentioned stuff, things like a printed out request for the visa, two current pictures of yourself and some other stuff and forms i already forgot about) you can apply for a visa. in my case this means going to the consulate in salzburg. the totally annoyed and unmotivated guy behind a thick glass window then sent me away again with a postal money order, because they don't accept cash there. so, in a foreign city you have to fulfill the quest of searching for the nearest bank to pay the 35EUR for the visa request. notice, this is all just for the request - no guarantee you visa will be granted so far. i already have booked my flight, bought my travel insurance and would have most likely already booked a hotel, if i would be staying at one. funny thing is, the only word the guy at the consulate said to me through the two-way intercom was "no" when i asked if i could pay cash. the rest of the "conversation" was pointing at some notes that were put up somewhere in the room, or nodding or shaking his head. but, as you can guess, the visa request was approved - yippieh, lucky me! this also means i got my passport back again, after ten days in which it was kept in the russian consulate. of course i had to go to salzburg again to fetch it. the visa itself is a one-page entry stapled into my passport with a nice awesome hologram. people here are totally into this hologram-thingie it seems. besides the address where i stay it also has a line that represents my name in russian letters, so that people know how to pronounce my name - nice. at the airport i pretty felt unwanted again, as all the people that arrive at the airport are heading for passport control. but there were only two counter windows, and one of them was for diplomats only. so people were queueing up, me amongst them. it took an average of two minutes for the lady at the check-point for each person to check the visa and passport. although loads of other staff people were frequently running around, no other counter was opened. this way i spent one hour in a queue that was slowly getting smaller. when i was the fourth in queue, the lady at the counter decided to take a break now, leaving about 30 people waiting. finally it was decided by some other guy there that we were allowed to queue up at the "russian citizens" counter. this was speeding things up dramatically, because the average time per person suddenly was around 30 seconds. two lessons i got here: firstly, russians are never in a hurry, secondly, i am convinced by now that they really do not like visitors. fortunately the warm welcome by olga and dima made me forget about all these troubles pretty fast. we got fetched from the airport by olga's uncle and drove to some flat pretty close to moscow (though i really don't know how close it is to the center or the city limits). first thing i got to see here was a mall and an IKEA[10] (though the "I" was russianized to some strange letter). the opening hours here are from 10:00 to 23:00 o'clock. pretty cool. inside the mall were loads of shops you can find in austria too, like H&M, C&A, esprit, salamander (the shoe shop), MANGO, zara, and of course some McDonald's[03] (with some very, very weird russianized spelling). since olga and dima (from now on referred to as o&d) were hungry we went to some uzbek restaurant called "kuschmusch"[09]. they had stuff like mutton, sheep, lamb meat and other stuff i've never heard of. so i was recommended some great soup with lamb meat, vegetables, potatoes and fine herbs ("shurpa"), and some dumplings with mutton meat and onions ("manty") as main dish. i was also allowed to taste a little from o&d's meals ("dolma", some rice mixed with meat, herbs and stuff wrapped into a grape leaf, and "chebureki", some dough with meat filling). everything tasted really nice - i now know that i would survive in uzbekistan. at least when it comes to eating. after dinner we were strolling around at the mall. besides the shops, restaurants (sushi and the like), a cinema, and cafes, there's also a big ice rink[04]. but it seemed everyone was fed up with winter in the meantime, so no one was skating. i was told the ice rink is opened even in summer - i think this is great fun. afterwards we went to a cafe[05-08] to have some exotic coffee (mine[08] was with white chocolate and other stuff) and sweets[07]. at the flat[01-02] we had some tequila (yop, no vodka - i was surprised myself), some russian sausage, bread, and russian chocolate (pretty dark one). so far, i think russia is a nice place. a bit brownish, swampy, and vast - but maybe that's just because i just came back from my ireland trip. so quite the opposite to what i had seen in the last few days. tomorrow we will go to bryansk by train. train tickets are registered to your name again and - of course - have a hologram. the trip will last for over six hours, and we share a compartment for four people, so most likely there will be another person with us. oh, and olga and me have to go to some police station(?) to have my stay here confirmed (or so?). i think this is just to make sure that i really stay with the person i named in the visa, and that i got fetched by the person that will be responsible for me during my stay here in russia. did i already mention that i sometimes do not feel welcome here? btw, today russians celebrate the "cosmonaut day". from now on it will also be known as "the day the starship has landed in russia". well... at least for me.