Day 5- To Russia with Luck

I needed a little luck to get to Russia for a few reasons:

• The train station in Warsaw that my train left from was not the same one written on my itinerary from Polrail.
• The time my train left at wasn't the same as what was printed on my ticket.
• Neither the train number nor destination  printed on my ticket matched the those on departures board.
• The destination on the departures board didn't match the actual destination.
• All of the above had to be figured out at 2am, as the train I originally booked had been cancelled.

Despite everyone's best efforts, however, I did catch my train. The rest of the night was a strange mixture of terror and exhaustion. Tall uniformed guards and armed border police stalked the dark carriages and murmured in strange languages, as I drifted in and out of consciousness, passport clutched in my hand. I was ready to be thrown off the train at any moment.

In the light of day, the Russian train guard turned out to be my friend. He tried to teach me some Russian and helped me plan my journey to the hostel in Moscow. The rest of the journey was spent getting my head round the Cyrillic alphabet, and next thing I knew I was on the famous Moscow Metro.

A peep out the train window in Belarus

My luck didn't run out in Moscow, though. It was almost as if I'd planned to arrive on 'Russia Day'. But as it was, I simply followed my gut feeling from street to street until I was in a crowd of thousands in Red Square, belting out the national anthem before a triumphant, musical firework display over the colourful rooftops of the Kremlin. How's that for a welcome? I didn't have a camera with me (I only went out for some bread or something) but if you google 'fireworks kremlin' you'll probably get the idea- it was spectacular.

Edit: I was blissfully unaware of the political goings on earlier in the day. Happily, it seems I arrived after all potestors had given up, leaving the streets to us festival and firework goers...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40255908