Full marks

Irkutsk, Russia

English translations are a guaranteed pleasure of travel. However, Russia has a special skill for taking already-translated words and then re-translating back into Romanised spelling. One of my favourite examples of this was the ballet production of Romeo and Julietta, based on the Bill Shakespeare play of the same name.

Among all this Romanisation chaos, Irkutsk has taken the cake. The town’s main drag is Karl Marks Street. What would Lennon have said?

One word: Marksists?

The neighbour of the beast

Yekaterinburg, Russia

After 24 grueling hours on a train, we were salivating over the prospect of a shower and a clean set of clothes. We arrived in Yekaterinburg, the site of Tsar Nicholas II's last stand, just after midnight.

Online accommodation booking in Russia is in its infancy. Perhaps more accurately, English online booking is in its infancy. In any case, the choice of hotel is sometimes straight-forward.

The limited choice of hotels in Yekaterinburg led us to booking at the Bolshoy. I would strongly recommend staying anywhere but this hotel. We dragged ourselves up the stairs only to discover a shoebox of a room sans toilet and shower. Although there was a solitary communal toilet to service the entire floor, there was no shower.

After much gnashing of teeth, directed at the hotel's reception, I concluded that the tsar was not murdered here after all; he died of shock on arrival at this hotel in Yekaterinburg.

One word: Hell.

Glorious jeans

Kazan, Russia

A Russian blog that fails to mention denim is not really a Russian blog at all.

In the West, jeans are associated with casual dress, dressing down, or even (at a stretch) the working class. In Russia, however, denim represents wealth, modernity, style, and (don't tell anybody) America.

It is not uncommon to catch an eye-full of an ensemble including jeans, jacket, hat and handbag; each in an identical wash of denim in a display of affluence.

Somebody needs to tell these aspiring fashionistas that, sometimes, more is...

One word: Less!

Grand central (and not so central) stations

Moscow, Russia

Is it a ballroom? Is it a palace? No, it's a Moscow subway station. To serve a secondary purpose as bomb shelters, stations in Moscow were built hundreds of metres below ground-level. However, commuters are rewarded for the long, long, long escalator ride down with the unique designs of Moscow's Metro stations.

While the station pictured looks to be for first class passengers only, other stations celebrate the glories of revolution, the proletariat, or just a good old-fashioned cult (Lenin). Alas, such architecture can be found solely in subterranean Moscow.

One word: Façade.

It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Moscow, Russia

They say that Moscow is a country within a country. But there's more: within Moscow itself there is often an era within an era within an era.

Standing inside the Kremlin, it is impossible not to notice the juxtaposition of the Kremlin tower, the Soviet star, and the gigantic Mercedes Benz logo, which is perched on a building in the background.

It is combination that defies logic but, in Russia, it is totally natural.

One word: incongruous.

Spasiba (thank you)

Russia

If you were on a Russian train, would you know where the hot water urn was? Would you know the toilet protocol? How about understanding the Russian-language timetable?

As railway novices we were confronted with scores of such mini-challenges on our journey from St. Petersburg to Murmansk. To the lovely railway staff who guided us through this minefield, we left this note (right) and some perfume as a token of our eternal thanks.

One word: Grateful.