So, some friends from London wanted to visit Moscow and took me with them as a tour guide of a kind. Overall it was pretty ok, even though most of the streets looked like this:
And people kept staring us down on the street and the metro, because apparently a Russian person is not allowed to be friends with foreigners, let alone Asians.
Of course, I am glad I was there since Russia does have a history of racist violence towards East Asian and black visitors. And the police don't seem to help much. The random passport checks always seem to be aimed at Central and East Asians, I won't say no more...
We actually got to experience this first hand when flying back to Moscow form Makhachkala. As our taxi drove into the airport parking, we got stopped by police. All those travelling had to present their passports, but they didn't even bother opening my passport, while those of my friends were throughly checked.
Of course casual racism was something we were prepared for. What we weren't prepared for was the lack of tourist infrastructure, did I mention the constant road-works already? Even worse, when we turned up at the Tretyakov Gallery Modern and Contemporary Collection 20 minutes before the supposed ticket-office shut-off time, we weren't allowed in.
As one of the super douchey guards put it in Russian: "there's no point searching for the truth, the staff have left - that's all there is to it".
As I later found out, we went to the wrong ticket office for the extremely popular Aivazovsky exhibition and the ticket offices couldn't cope with the amount of customers. Still, it makes me wonder why the guard didn't point us in the right direction since I asked him a couple of time whether this was the right entrance for the permanent collection and as per-usual there was an absence of signs in any language.
In the end, as my friend Delilah put it:
- Moscow, was it worth it?
- Yes, but I probably wouldn't come back.
Well, at least the food was cheap and good compared to London (no offence everyone)
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