We got up early in the morning and got ourselves down to Helsinki station to get on the train to St Petersburg, feeling a little worse for wear. We made quite a lot of money at Tuntuma fest, but realized now that we blew most of it getting drunk in Helsinki, where prices are (in the centre) comparable to London. Oops. Jamie was also continuing his trail of sick across North-Eastern Europe by mking ample use of the porcelain facilities on board the train. Our breakfast was also a failure - an attempt to buy bread and water had turned up garlic bread (which Jamie, a vegan, couldn't eat) and fizzy water (who drinks fizzy water, seriously, I want to know). We had our passports and visas inspected carefully at the border, and after 5 hours or so pulled into St Petersburg. Unfortunately, due to the train mishap, we had only about 12 hours in the city, so we didn't see masses. We were met at the station by Vetal, the man with the plan for Russia. Whilst traipsing around town as much as we could, we saw a lot of flyposting, which was nice, as well as checking out some cathedral action (left), the river and the Nevsky Prospekt (the Dosdoyevski fan in me was going nuts). We met up with Kirill, the guy promoting the show that night, and played some table football ('Kicker!') with Vetal and friends, something Vetal seemed to be mildly obsessed with. The show was in a club called Platforma, a sort of Arts Cafe type place, and we had to wait for a Russian poetry competition to finish before I could play. This meant that we encountered some total loon in the dressing room, who told us that the only thing you should wash or style your hair with was beer (she proceeded to demonstrate), and that she was a big celebrity poet. We nodded politely. The show was great - very well attended, not least by a lot of English ex-pats, in part because I'd had a feature in the English newspaper for the city. We met Josh and Mia (more on them later) and a couple from Preston, who worked in Pakistan, but were holidaying in Russia. Small and weird world. I started noticing, during the show, that the Russians weren't drinking much. I made the mistake of pointing this out and demanding vodka during my set, which meant that I came offstage to about 10 50ml measures, the disposal of which finished me off good and proper. The rest of them were still pretty sober. We staggered off towards the train station to catch the overnight train to Moscow, which is where Vetal lives, for the next few shows. Unfortunately, the scheduled show for Pskov, the next day, had to be pulled because we were on public transport now rather than driving and it wasn't possible to make it there. The train left at 1am. It was a sleeper train, which was pretty scary for two English guys still wrestling with the alphabet, let alone the language. It was pretty crowded, every berth taken, with not much in the way of comfort. But Vetal and friends made sure we were OK and we bedded down for the night. We woke up somewhere in the outskirts of Moscow, pulled ourselves together and got off the train. We were headed to Vetal's flat to dump our stuff, freshen up and so on. There was no show that night, so it was old-fashioned tourism for us. On leaving the station we got into one of Moscow's insane minibus taxis, which seem to be pretty lawless affairs - the price and the route all seem to be open to negotiation. We got back to Vetal's flat in about 45 minutes or so, realizing all the time that Moscow majorly reminds me of London. His flat was in a tower-block that looked pretty gnarly and Soviet from the outside, but (as with most Moscow appartments, we discovered) was really nice inside. He had an amazing view of the city from the other side of a massive park, not unlike Hampstead Heath, and a really cool little kitten. After a much-needed shower and some food, we set out again. One of the problems that became apparent here was that Vetal, as much as he was a total legend, didn't have perfect English, shall we say. This meant that Jamie and I were often not entirely sure what was going on. So we headed into town, where we hung around at a metro station for about an hour with little idea why. Eventually some more people turned up and it all made sense, but the theme of hanging around not really sure what was happening was to characterize our Moscow experience. We did the tourist thing - Jamie was happy to have located the Kremlin, but miffed to see how small St Basil's was. We went across Red Square, but to be honest by this stage we were so fucking hungry that we didn't pay masses of attention - our attempts to persuade Vetal of our needs didn't seem to be working. Eventually the message sunk in and we hit a Krishna place that did a vegan buffet. Jamie and I sank into the food like ravenous wolves and stuffed ourselves for about £6 a head, which we thought was thoroughly decent. After meeting up with some more of Vetal's mates, we headed to a bar. En route there was the Sting incident - I was trying out my faltering ability to decipher Russian letters on a big poster, and said to myself: "S... t... i... er... N... G.... Sting!! Fuck me!" and noticed the massive photo of Sting for the first time. At the bar (selected because of the presence of a 'Kicker!' table, natch) we set about getting drunk. First mistake - Russians don't really do wine. On ordering 'White Wine' off the menu i was given a warm bottle of Lambrini. Oh well - we polished it off anyways, only to discover that everyone else was heading for home after a modest half-pint. Eh? We'd been told that Russians drank Vodka for breakfast. Not this lot. We went to the flat of a girl called Natasha, where we were staying, and ended up having a few more beers and playing a few songs into the night, which was a lot of fun in a decidedly civilized way. Nothing wrong with that, just not quite what we were expecting. We got up slowly and after checking how Jamie's arse was doing spent a lazy traipsing from Natasha's flat (west) to Vetal's flat for my guitar (east) to the venue (south west), via the visa place. To explain: you're supposed to get your visa stamped within 3 days of arrival. We were told, by lazy non-English speaking workers, that we didn't really need them stamped, were given some Russian doll keyrings, and politely told to fuck off. We suspected this might have been bullshit, and weren't wrong - more on that later. The venue was called Tabula Rasa. It was a really plush place, with a balcony, leather seats and that kind of thing. After a quick soundcheck, we went outside to meet up with Tasha and Felix. To explain - Tasha is a good friend of mine from London, who is Russian. She was back in the country with her friend Felix, who I'd met once or twice before, to have a holiday and renew her passport, and she'd booked it to coincide with my shows, which was nice. It was in fact a total godsend having her around, as she can communicate fluently in the Russian clicks-and-whistles speak. Without her I'm not sure me and Jim would have survived. Anyways, we got some drinks in, and met up with the other part of 'The English Contingent' - Josh and Mia - who had also been in St Petersburg. They're friends of friends of mine many times over, and Mia can also speak Russian, so we felt ready to face the reds. Vetal's band opened up the show, playing some cool Mudhoney-esque rock. Incidentally, Russians as a whole seem to be very clued up about their underground music. Anyways, after a Russian version of Dashboard Confessional (dear god), it was my turn to play (left). The show went well and was packed out; I was amazed by how many people knew MD and even my own stuff, it was awesome. Afterwards we decided to celebrate, not least because there was a dancefloor. Jamie romanced the locals pretty thoroughly. Suddenly the dancefloor was cleared, and a bunch of girls came on... and started stripping! I'd been a support act for a stripper! My life's work was complete. In the end, it was actually kind of annoying as we'd been enjoying the dancing, although it was entertaining to see Josh getting dragged onstage and debriefed, much to Mia's chagrin. Eventually we got taxis back to Natasha's flat again where we layed guitar into the small hours, before a well-earned rest. I woke up feeling pretty special (right), as compared with Jamie, though I appeared to be doing better than Tasha, hahaha. We mooched around Tasha's flat for a little while, hanging out and eating pizza, before hitting the music markets. There were three sections of the enormous record stores: a real section (actual, bona fide CDs), a pirate section (duplicates) and a Russian music section (which every Russian person we spoke to warned us away from). I managed to pick up a whole lot of old stuff like the Meat Puppets that you don't really find in the UK anymore, which was cool. We then went back into the centre to a bar called J'Est. I was due to play a show here that evening, which we'd announced the night before and which Vetal had been plugging on the internet overnight. We got some food and some drinks and chilled out. There was a slightly hairy moment when a massive Russian approached our table and started talking to Tasha. The gist of it was that he was accusing me of having a bomb in my bag and demanding I empty my bag on the table. In fact he was trying to hit on Tasha, but was apparently a Chechnya veteran and a bit wrong in the head. This was actually pretty scary, because he could have eaten us all for breakfast if he so wanted, but in the end he was persuaded to fuck off. Phew. The show was fun, a more relaxed affair than the day before (I even sat down to play, horror), but with a good turnout. We decided to crash at (English) Tasha's place and headed back (with a worse-for-wear Vetal in tow), for a few beers, some mild debaunchery, and sleep. The next day was another day off in Moscow. We had plans to do some sight-seeing this day, but a combination of getting up, taking ages to get back to Vetal's to get our big rucksack and take it back to Tasha's (long story) and a longing to hit the vegan / Krishna place again won over and we decided to postpone until the morrow. In the end we left the Krishna place pretty late on in the day (though much refreshed - Jamie was getting pretty sick of "crisps in bread" for a meal). We met up with Josh and Mia, Tasha and Felix, and headed to a bar suggested by Vetal. It turned out that he'd never been there before, and had selected it simply because its website advertized it as having a 'kicker' table. That was all very well, but the bar was a crappy sports bar that only served beer, and after a while the romance wore off. We opted for going somewhere else, and then embarked on a massive wild goose chase around Moscow trying to find a bar that was (a) open, (b) would accept English people, (c) had seating, (d) wasn't too expensive, (e) et cetera ad infinitum. In the end we just gave up and went home, thoroughly sober and a little disappointed, and resolved to concentrate on tourism the next day. Jamie had, in the meantime, discovered this stuff called 'smash' - instant mash potato, which was keeping him alive. So it wasn't all bad. Our final day in Moscow began with us heading for Red Square to see ol' Vladimir lying in state, as he is wont to do (apparently he gets sponged down once a week... ew). We arrived to find a queue about four miles long, and decided it really wasn't worth wasting the whole day for 2 minutes with the comrade. So instead we headed out to the Borodino museum to check out some 1812-style history action. After some thorough learning about Napoleon and pals (or enemies, I guess), we had some breakfast (the driest, meanest croissant ever), found some entertaining beauty products in a shop (how we laughed) and set out to meet Vetal to say goodbye. We were supposed to be hitting a festival with him in Moscow, but timing was such that we couldn't really make it and be sure to catch our train. So we bade him a tearful farewell, picked up our stuff and headed for the 9pm train to Riga, armed with bananas and bread for more sandwiches. Russia had been quite an experience - more alien to us as English people than the other countries we visited, and somehow more substantial, as an ex-imperial capital. There was none of the parochial feel of the Baltic states, and Moscow really is a lot like London, in size and feel. By the end of it, we were pretty drained, and I for one was not sad to be getting back to the comparitive homeliness of Latvia. But it was great fun, and I definitely want to return sometime, for more shows. Part 3 is here!