I didn't have much time left in the afternoon I arrived in Moscow, but I couldn't possibly miss the date with my Italian friend. It was "make or break" on that day because she was there only until her night train left from Kazan station, which is where we decided to meet. I hadn't seen her for a few years, and oddly enough, I was going to catch up with her in Russia, of all places.
When I walked out of the train station into Moscow city for the first time I noticed that many people in the streets had an unexpected central Asian type. The former citizens of the Soviet republics, now well settled in the Russian sphere of influence both politically and linguistically, turn to their former capital for more lucrative work possibilities. Some even come as tourists. But Moscow, in spite of being the capital city of the whole of Russia, finds itself at the centre of a small portion of its huge territory, indeed the most densely populated, but still in the first and westernmost of its nine time zones.
Vladimir was my first stage in the Russian province, the first town in the so-called Golden Ring, about two hours by train from Moscow. I arrived in the evening and was directed on the right bus by a kind lady who had some French, so we managed to get past the salutations and the numerals of my pitiful Russian. At the hostel a number of Russian speakers made me think of internal tourists, but something in their ways didn't sound quite convincing. It was not long before I found out they were Ukrainians from Luhansk, where the separatist war was raging. They had crossed the border in search of security, but wished the border had never existed in that place as they all felt their country was indeed Russia. The young man who could speak English expressed his strong views without resentment, his composure resting on the certainty that his oblast belongs to none else but Russia.
In Hochimin City I had resisted to morose curiosity that leads a constant flow of people to stare at the embalmed body of the former Vietnamese leader, and the same thing repeated itself with Mao Ze Dong's mummy in Beijing, but surely Lenin's mausoleum couldn't be a third miss. After all, he was the first to receive attention from Communist embalmers. My descent into this macabre underworld was prepared by a half hour's waiting in the slow moving line, in a climate of religious devotion that can finds its parallel in the queues of worshippers waiting to venerate Orthodox icons. The black marble vault was lugubrious. From within a glass case Lenin's illuminated face sticking out of a black suit and an immaculate shirt naturally caught the eye, but failed to match the gloomy atmosphere all around because of its wax-like aspect, too perfect to be real.
Suzal was a pleasant town to visit, only mildly touristy and with a pronounced rural character about it. Its houses, churches and monasteries with extensive green areas in between were practically scattered in the countryside astride a slow-flowing river, to the effect that it looked more like a village than a town in its structure. I hopped around the various religious buildings and finally reached the Kremlin compound. Then, from the tall bell tower of a nunnery I contemplated the itinerary of my day's roving.