Wanna hangout?

Just stumbled upon a new emailing joint. A little bit swanky for my taste but hey new things is good. It is the start of another weekend and so everything is full of promise. Tomorrow i will check out Botannical gardens and river trips. Weather is beatiful - sun every day, no rain. T-shirts all the way. The stray dogs that hangout on mass at the metro station bask in the sun all day. They never bother you, but they're always there - just chillin. At some metro stations they all go on adventures together - crossing the road, finding water, whatever... - if i'm ever reincarnated i want to come back as one of them. I wonder if the ones at our metro stop would mind if i joined their gang. What do you reckon their iniciation ceromany is? Who knows?

No time to construct ordered sentences - on a timer..... must learn to touch type.....Just been on a sight seeing trip to St Peter's Monastry. As usual we walked off the metro in a different place and walked for what seemed like miles in the wrong direction! Traffic, roadworks, noise was all contrasted by a sudden tranquillity as you walk into the monastry grounds. Its really brightly painted red with green turrets. It kinda looks ridiculous. Its an interesting place and the people were very friendly even though we didn't kno what they were trying to tell us. I was mistaken for male so didn't have to do the flower ritual thing that all the other women had to do. Shaved heads have their uses. There is so much gold inside and chandeliers and stuff and icons and madstuff like that. And babushkas screaming every now and again and some priest guy with the biggest beard.

Last Friday we went on a school trip to a honey market - there was so much honey and you could taste it all and everything like 100s of different types. We made ourselves feel sick in the first 10 minutes cos we tasted so much. We are in a really low class. We draw pictures of rockets and alien objects and act things out a lot. We also get no half days - cos we have loads more to catch up with - this is a bad thing. There is much too much to see and do and often its much too tiring to even think about it all. If you think posting a letter in Chapeltown is complicated you wanna try it here - i queued for a good 40 minutes 3 times until i realised that particular counter only dealt with pensions. When i work out how to get stamps i'll start posting letters - i have written some - honest!

Right times up - send us a line when you get the time, Lots of love.......

Its a beautiful sunny Saturday morning - t-shirt weather if you walk quickly enough. I set about doing some chores this morning. Today my metro card works - i do not have to resort to joining the "My metro card doesn't work today" queue where some cross babushka will shout at you and then proceed to spit and stamp on your card until the machine accepts it. After two weeks here i do not know quite whether i like living here - there are good things and bad things but most things are just really odd. I have two favourite metro stops - Tretyakovskaya and Vorobevi Gori. At the first you can get lost very easily but once you've worked it out there is a weird boat staue thing, a rather run don yet picturesque church and of course my favourite internet cafe and the second is a stop in a bridge over the river. Its cool.

The most astounding thing about Moscow is the opposites - beautiful buildings stuck right beside 60s concrete blocks, regimented trees and proper parks, Amazing dining halls with chandalliers and gold everywhere juxtaposed with an ABBA soundtrack blurting out from the speakers!

There are many bad snacks on the roadsides. Dont eat the cheese pies - they're very bad - always stick to greek ones in greece. They do these pretzel shaped things - some are nice. They are sweetbread things that spin round on a machine thing. Most are iced but you get them with nuts and cheese and stuff. If you pick a bad one though you get landed with luminous green/yellow - really unappetizing. There are jam pies - they're alright if you like bad jam. Russian soups are really good(usually) . Chocolate is terrible, i don't care what Russian people say - it really is!

wel only 1 minute left so i'll leave it here, take care - ansd have a nice time Mum and Dad,
Love Hel

Well this is it... The train pulls into some station in Moscow and the trumpets sound (no really - they do) and here i an - Moskva. i have 11 minutes to tell you about a week. My goodness - what do i say. it really is fashionable to dress like the Lenningrad Cowboys!! Hot chocolate fans should get themselves here right now and those that have any addiction to the ole' PS2 - the same. The metro is like being in that little box of a games console. Confusing and all the same and not sure if you've been here before?? And terrifiying too but im not quite sure why. i really have lots to say but being a little enibriated i can't think what. It is realy going very well and hope u are well too, Lots of love....

Everything the helpful woman at Warsaw bus station told me was incorrect - time, destination and price. However, i boarded an earlier bus that went a greater distance for a lesser price.

Cash back.

Riga train station has nothing on Warsaw bus station. Firstly there is nowhere to sit down. Its full of cops that move you on all the time. Even from the waiting room. Where am i supposed to wait 10 hours, with my heavy luggage, for my train? Secondly there are no good snack shops Thirdly when you give all your polish notes to the money exchange woman she gives you a couple of coins in return. Its roibosh. No-one understands my Russian, everyones unhelpful and i just got thrown out of the women's toilet. I'm not coming back here in a hurry.

Borded bus yesterday at Victoria. First change Greenline bus station?? It took hours I could have walked it quicker. Dover was warm and sunny which is a first for me It was oddly pleasant. I do like Dover. The road you come down from London - the A whatever it is, just shoots out into a winding ramp thing like a playmobil toy and there you are incacerated whilst your strip searched in one of those customs box things. The channel was choppy, Belgium was tedious, Holland unrememerable and Germany dark. Poland was a welcome change. I've never been before. My excitment didn't impress the polish woman sitting next to me. It was 3am.

From Warsaw bus station you can go to Hel. Buses go from stop number 2 at 0900, 1015, 1200, 1300, 1345 and 1900 hrs. It is a lovely bus station. Very calm. No noisy announcer shouting constantly. And you can sit facing any direction on one of its many long benches. It is 36 C today. It costs 1.50 zl to pay for the toilet, water 4zl for 1.5 litres. There are many activities to be checked out - bars, lovely internet cafe and feng shui. People walk slowly. I have lost my list of uesful polish phrases but found some italian ones. My polish is unfortunately limited to - hello, where, ticket and moth. i haven't used ALL those words yet.

Oh dear its Friday.....

After a 2 hour cycle ride accross London, commencing 5am, i find myself 20th in the q outside the Russian Embassy. Contrary to other peoples experiences that u are in the same position as the other people and everyone will talk to you and u'll have friends for life, i find myself between some very nice brazzilians who, unfortunately, speak only to each other (in portugese) and a man doing advanced su doku puzzles. Who does hard stuff like that at 7 in the morning?? By 8am i have been singing "i would walk 500 miles and i would walk 500 more" for three hours solidly. (i blame u Andy.) In actual fact the cycling means that i couldn't walk half a mile let alone 1000 as the song suggests. Also im dying for a piss. I get to the front at 10. they take my passport and my money. I return at 4 they give me my passport complete with my very expensive sticker. I have a visa.

My first quest is to seek out Moscow's 4 types of picnic bar. I leave London tomorrow. I will keep u posted.

Some time ago I bought a game called Fooling Nosey from a charity shop in Leeds. It advertises itself as a fascinating game that you can play again and agian, rekindling strong emotions and is for the least used of our senses - smell. It does in fact contain 14 little bottles of red artificial chemicallised dye. The aim of the game is to recognise what flavour each one of them is - apparently if you get 4 right you are doing very well. In reality some of them are obscure beyond recognition and most some of them are plain horrible. The game isn't very interesting, takes an inordinate amount of time, you can't play it repeatedly and it gives you a red nose and a headache.