Moscow is Crazy - Anna Keel. Date of travel: Aug 2007
Nowhere else in the world will you feel so disorientated and excited, confused and amused! It's superb, love it!

Go Russia! - Igor. Date of travel: Jul 2006
It was my first visit to Moscow after ~12 years abroad & was pleasantly surprised. I need to mention, perhaps, that when I was going there, I was almost scared - after reading Australian foreign correspondent Eric Campbell- with flying Russian airplanes, of Russian drunks on every corner, mafia & KGB, I did not want to see the promised filth & dirt & poverty everywhere. And did not want to be harrased by the Russian police & buerocracy. Well, I was not harrassed, did not see dirt, a single drunk on the street, was not even once stopped by police etc . The service (& quality of the plane itself) on Russian Aeroflot TU-154 was better than on Australian Qantas Canberra -Sydney flight (I estimate the airoplane quality by the amount of noise inside the cabin during the flight & the service quality - by how easy it is to get the attention). Food served was also better than in Oz. I had no problem with Russian customs & visa control. Yes, Russians did not smile -this is simply because they still did not consider SERVICE to be a part of their official duties - one should remember that after all they did not have SERVANTS for 70+ years! But it pays (you) to be polite - and to remember that if a person you are talking to does not readily demonstrate his/her dental work, it does not mean that he/she is unfriendly - as, by the way, the American smile does not give you any guarantee of friendliness. One must remember this & don't react as if he was not treated appropriately - it is when YOU start to SHOW that you think that you are not being treated well, when you might be given a chance to write about Russian "rudness" in your travel memoirs - because they will not understand what you don't like & assume that you don't like how they do they REAL work. Remebering this - that it is YOU who shows "unfriendliness" first - is especially important to remember when dealing with Russian authorities. Watch yourself and you will have no troubles at all & usually, the most pleasant experience. Moscow itself was extremely clean - much cleaner than eg. Sydney. And it appears, the Russians don't try to save on buildings repair. There are many new and restored churches - some are quite nice (see photo) and new buildings in "traditional" (not-Soviet) Russian style built everywhere. You may not feel rich in Moscow - prices sometimes are well over the roof. Just remember that you are in Russia & dont expect to feel like a millioner when you are not - Russia was and still is very rich country - it is the disbalanced distribution of its wealth that you see as a poverty. And Moscow is not the place for the poor.

Dorothea Tomlinson. Date of travel: May 2004
I found Moscow very surprising. Not the dull, colourless place I always imagined. Red Square is stunningly beautiful, especially at night but there is much more to see besides the Kremlin, Lenin's mausoleum and St Basil's. The shopping, for instance, is great with lots of designer boutiques but very expensive! Also found some good restaurants. Can recommend Pushka on Pushkin Square for good pasta. It's also worth putting up with the queue to go to the Bolshoi Ballet. My advice is to get clued up before you go: go online and suss out MoscowCity.Com for the lowdown on this fascinating city.

Susan Bateman. Date of travel: Sep 2003
The moscow underground is most astonishing - stations are very, very far down as they doubled as bomb shelters during the war and they are also incredible works of art. Most stations are beautifully decorated with exquisite mosaics, paintings, chandeliers and statues and are a tourist attraction in themselves. The metro is highly efficient, but can be quite confusing knowing when to get off as station signs are in Russian. We made sure we had our guide book handy so we could match up the cyrillic characters in our book to the meaningless writing we saw on the signs, or else counted the number of stops to know when to get off!