In and out of Moscow in 24 hours

3 years ago, I set foot into Moscow and was reasonably wowed by how everything are so gigantic. 3 years later, I still get this same feeling. This time round I got a taste of the train stations after arriving from a packed overnight train from St Petersburg with 3 other blokes in my cabin - glad it was a peaceful sleep through the night. Will be a short stopover this time round as I am catching the night train out of the city, and only had few things in mind to see. The former KGB building off Lubyanskaya Pl, which was slightly disappointing since it hardly look any sinister to what the guidebook mentioned; St Basil Cathedral - still fascinated by this "funky" looking cathedral which stands out from the many others that I have seen around Europe; and a first hand experience in a public banya, or traditional Russian steam bath. It is very similar to the hammam that I had in Istanbul, with the main difference been the men (I think there are different sections for women as well) going into a ridiculous hot steam room, armed with birch branches, which they will use to hit against their bodies, legs, arms, etc to improve the blood circulation. As usual, my high tolerance to heat means that I struggle to sweat initially and had to shower myself and go in and out of the steam room few times to get the glands going. Have to admit that I underestimated how hot it can get as I almost fainted at one point after it got so hot from the constant steam generated by the caretaker who was splashing bobs of water into the heater. To make it even more exciting, you are supposed to dip yourself into freezing water outside the steam room to cool yourself off. You repeat this to the point that you think you finally have enough! I have to admit that sitting in the steam room, flanked by huge naked russian men, with the smell coming from the birch leaves, was quite a weird one, but it left me feeling so refreshed, especially after been on the roads for 2 over days and warmed me up considerably under freezing Moscow weather. I stopped short of letting the Russians do a body scrub - not without any towels!

Took a short detour to see the world's biggest Mcdonalds, which opened in 1990, to queues of crowd lining round the square in front of Pushkinskaya Metro station - there were probably 20 or more counters and seats 700 people! Elsewhere, one will only be surprised by the number of luxury cars on the roads, and the number of new luxury stores that keep popping up along the streets...I guess this is true Capitalism, especially when you see how many beggers are around the streets as well.

Had another bad encounter with Russians whilst collecting my rucksack from the luggage room, where the old man handling the bags as I misplaced the token that was given to me in exchange for the bag. He obviously knew which bag I was carrying as he was on the verge of handing it over before I struggled to return him the token, and started shouting and cursing at me, even though I offered to pay for the "loss". After 10 minutes of "begging" him to return my bag, the token finally "reappeared" in one of my zipped compartments which he then finally literally threw the bag back at me. I apologised and knew I was in the wrong but he doesn't seem to take in anything I said and continued to shout at me...he's probably had a long day, wife made him sleep on the sofa the night before, and did not have enough to drink for the day, but still, there is no reason for me to be on the receiving end of such service.

Can't wait to get on the 23:25 train to Yekaterinburg and leave 2 forgetable cities behind me...not the best start to the journey, hope the worse has ended here...