Wow - I haven't written anything here for a while. A few people have even started to complain! My brother suggested that it's because I'm finally 'going native' and just don't notice all the strange things happening around me. Trust me - I still do! But sometimes I'm too busy having things happen to me, to write.

So here's something from a little while ago.


UNORTHODOX EASTER

Julia wanted to experience a Russian Orthodox church service so I suggested going on Easter Sunday to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which is the newly-rebuilt and very impressive church in the centre of Moscow.

The four-hour service actually began midnight on Saturday night so we turned up at the metro station at about 11.30.

"I know which exit it is. Follow me!" I proclaimed, smug in my geographical knowledge of the metro system. It isn't often that I get to be smug about things like that, so I was feeling particularly warm and fuzzy as we walked along the station platform, deep in conversation.

Suddenly I was shaken from my warm fuzziness by a Russian military police officer shouting at me through a loudhailer: "Stop! Stop and leave through the opposite exit!" I looked up to see a quite formidable police barricade set up in front of me, manned by three heavily armed officers (we're talking sub-machine guns).

Naturally we left through the opposite exit, quite hurriedly.

We walked round to the church, getting there a little before midnight. A huge crowd had gathered outside the church, blocking several busy roads. We fought our way through the crowd, which was surprisingly young, and split pretty evenly between men and women. Actually, it was a good cross-section of society, with little old Russian grandmothers, groupd of young men drinking beer, couples...

Suddenly the church bells began to toll midnight. Easter Sunday! As some of the crowd dispersed we could get closer to the church itself. Soon we came across another, much larger and again manned police barricade, this one preventing anyone from approaching the building. At one point in the barricade an officer was letting through an incredibly small number of people. What was this? A one-in, one-out system? Moscow: the only city in the world where you can saunter into any old club but you have to queue for churches.

What could we do? We waited for around twenty minutes, finally realising that the chances of us actually getting into the church before the metro closed were minimal.

*

It was only later that we found out that the main man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself, was due to attend the service that evening and that was the reason for such high security. I don't know what it is about that guy - he seems to follow me about wherever I go.