Elena, our roommate Oguz and I left very early in the morning on 2008-Dec-30 to catch our plane at the Doha International Airport. After a brief stop in the Istanbul airport, we finally arrived in Moscow and met up with Oguz's girlfriend Natalia. Together, we took a taxi to the Budapest Hotel, from where we began our 4-day whirlwind tour of Moscow!

Our first destination was to see The Nutcracker Suite at the world-famous Bolshoi Theatre. But first we needed to eat something. We quickly learned that Moscow is a very expensive city when we sat in a cafe that offered a simple soup for $15 USD! We had some trouble finding the Bolshoi due to construction, but once we finally did find it we were humbled by the amazing beauty of this recently restored ancient edifice. The interior made liberal use of green marble and crystal chandeliers. The show itself was wonderful. It was obvious why the tickets were so expensive: the show included a full orchestra, along with a massive cast of at least 30 ballet dancers. The performers put on a wonderful show. The combination of skillful dancing and Tchaikovsky's music was an honestly moving experience.

The following morning was New Year's Eve. We scouted out the Red Square ahead of time and admired the amazing sites. By a stroke of luck we gained entry to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis shortly before it closed. Little did we know it at the time, but we were actually walking over the bodies of hundreds of buried people. Inside Lenin's Mausoleum (where the guards were very serious about us being respectful) we witnessed the preserved body of Vladimir Lenin. After we left, we walked past the graves of important Russian people, including Joseph Stalin. Finally, we basked in the glory of St-Basil's Cathedral. Natalia told us the story of how Ivan the Terrible, who had commissioned the building, burned out the eyes of the Cathedral's builders. We were quite shocked to learn this (being engineers ourselves), but fortunately a check on Wikipedia revealed that this was actually a false urban legend!

After a rest at our hotel, we braved the cold once again and returned to the Red Square, which was heavily guarded for the New Year's celebration. There were thousands of soldiers out on the street, perhaps tens of thousands. For simple Canadians this was quite an unusual sight, but the locals were unphased. We waited patiently for midnight to strike, and were rewarded with some nice fireworks set behind St-Basil's Cathedral.

The next day we slept in and went back to the Red Square to skate. We met up with Oguz's friend Mourat, who introduced us to his Russian friend Ilia--a resident of Moscow. Ilia was kind enough to show us around the Moscow metro system, which was built in the soviet era and was surprisingly well appointed. He took us to Arbat street, which is the old quarter of Moscow (now a tourist trap like Montreal's Old Port). After that he took us to a trendy bar where we had some nice micro-brewed beer and goofed off with our cameras. After polishing off our beers, we took a taxi back to the hotel.

The next morning, all too soon, we boarded the plane to return to Doha.

Next: the Qatar Open Tennis Championship!