Thread by @PaliparanDotCom

Time to fly again! Destination: Russia. Otopeni Airport is rather empty apart from some disappointed North Macedonia fans heading back to Skopje on a Wizz charter. Unfortunately no Air France for me today (une autre fois, ma chère compagnie aérienne) but a TAROM flight to start.

The current aviation crisis summed up in one picture. It seems like this airport cafe has been closed since the start of the pandemic with all that dust...

First flight: a short TAROM hop to Chisinau on an ATR 72-600.

3B next to me thought it was a brilliant idea to take off her shoes and put her feet on the central armrest in front, while 3F had shitty headphones and allowed all the surrounding pax to listen along to her video game sounds. Normal flying life is back.. ugh! #flightshaming

And when booking the flight I ofc forgot that the Netherlands was playing, thus I completely missed the footy match.. At least the neat little business lounge in Chisinau makes up for it with large individual bottles of Cricova sparkling wine and pistachios! Not a bad layover!

Heck, I don't need much more than pistachios & sparkling wine to have a great layover tbh. Move over Swiss SEN lounge at Zurich w your 200+ bottle whisky bar, Air France & Finnair with your saunas and Turkish with your live cooking stations. *opens 2nd bottle and 3rd bag of nuts*

EU airlines: let's avoid flying over Belarus.
Aeroflot: Belarus, what's wrong with it? Ukraine is the country to avoid!

So that's why my upcoming Aeroflot flight to Moscow takes three hours..

Did I already say I like Chisinau Airport? While other pax have to go in crowded buses, they have special minibuses for business class pax & frequent flyers slugging it out in economy (basically, me). This airport is soooo much nicer than Bucharest in about every way possible!

An exhausting flight and way too little sleep, but I made it to Russia. Entry was smooth, only had to show fan ID at passport control for a visa stamp, and a filled in PLF form to a girl at the health/corona check desk.

On board the aero express train for the journey into Moscow.

Belorussky vokzal - or Belarus station. One of Moscow's main train stations and the place where you connect from the Sheremetyevo aero express to the metro.

Into the communist cathedral of public transport! I love the Moscow metro. Amazingly beautiful and you never have to wait more than 2 minutes for a train. Pictured: Belorusskaya station.

Although almost all of Moscow's stations are stunning, the most beautiful are IMO on the inner ring line (no 5). It makes for easy sightseeing w trains every 2 mins! Train out, take some pictures and admire the beauty, train in again. This is Novoslobodskaya.

Prospekt Mira..

Komsomolskaya is a stunner. Almost like a palace ballroom.

Some more Moscow metro shots..

And some Kievskaya (1-2), Arbatskaya (3) and Ploshchad Revolyutsii (4) pictures to end the Moscow metro tour

Unfortunately, Red Square is sealed off today and only people with some kind of book festival ticket (if I got that correct!) can enter the square. So this time it's just taking a glimpse of St Basil's Cathedral from the distance.

Back down in the metro on line 2 to Belorusskaya, with a quick intermediate stop at lovely Mayakovskaya. Line 2 still uses these cool old metro cars unlike the modern carriages on the ring line.

And back to Sheremetyevo for my domestix flight connection. Sheremetyevo has a brand new domestic terminal which looks fabulous.

The business lounge (Rublev Lounge) is great. Miles better than the dark, small lounge in the old terminal. Perfect place to await my next flight.

A shower, a beer, and a bit of food are most welcome at this point, having slept only ~2 hours on the plane..

And on to Murmansk in the far north. Equipment change from an A320 to A321 meant my exit row seat was now windowless.. fortunately, the last row of the plane was empty so I still could take a proper window seat. I just love the vast emptiness of Russia as seen from the window.

Touchdown! What a difference in weather.. (28 degrees Celsius vs 14, sun vs rain).

When walking out of the airport I managed to flag down the marshrutka to Murmansk which had just departed. From the airport it's a bumpy 30 mins ride into the city, passing by some dreary towns and factories on the banks of the inlet.

The avtovokzal of Murmansk is right next to the train station.. and next to an actually pretty decent faux Irish pub. Good steak, good beers, old fashioned pub life, happy me.

The view outside in central Murmansk. At 11pm. The sun (not that you see it behind the cloud cover!) never really sets this time of the year.

Good morning! Time to explore Murmansk a bit.

On the hill where the Savior on the Waters Church is located you can find several monuments, among which one dedicated to the sailors who lost their lives in the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster. This is the original sail of the salvaged submarine.

As I climb further on the hill, the weather seems to improve and there is even some sun and bits of blue sky. Great views over the inlet!

The view back over Murmansk, its port and railway station is great too. But it's not why I climbed all the way up. It's that Soviet brutalist statue in the far distance.

That's Alyosha, a 35 metre high statue of a Red Army soldier to commemorate all Soviet soldiers in WW 2 and Murmansk's status as one of the "hero cities of the Societ Union".

There are medals for all hero cities of the Soviet Union. Minsk, Tula, Smolensk, Brest Fortress.. and of course there is an eternal flame too!

At the nearby lake there is a small amusement park and some shashkik and beer gardens. Ten minutes after I sat down it however started to rain again.. Changeable weather here above the Arctic Circle!

Let's walk a bit around the city centre of Murmansk..

There is even a local footy match being played. Nice warm-up for the Euros in St. Petersburg later this trip, the sole reason why I actually could enter Russia as normal tourist visas currently all temporarily suspended due to COVID!

A bit outside the city centre is Tundra Restaurant (thanks for the Norwegian TV item recommendation, @kristianaas). Great place! Weizen beer from the local microbrewery, Arctic scallops, and grilled reindeer. All yummy.

Some more Murmansk impressions..

Prospekt Lenina is the main street of town, with some of the nicest housing blocks and, of course, a Lenin statue.

Across the railway tracks to the docks and the maritime station, where the world's first nuclear power ice breaker (called 'Lenin') is anchored.

And back using the footbridge over the freight yards and station platforms. With a steam locomotive from 1951.

In Mother Russia, hopper wagons move automatically on the tracks without propulsion, making all kinds of loud bangs as they crash into other wagons. Seriously, no locomotive to be seen in miles on the track on the other side of the bridge!

Time to ride the trains! Murmansk Railway Station looks lovely. Some decent waiting areas, a small café, lockere, clean toilets and a beautiful dome. Do note the red star on top of the roof!

*lockers that is.

I'm on the Arktika @sleeping_train which runs all the way to Moscow, although I will get off at roughly a third of the journey at Kem tomorrow morning. This train also has through sleeper cars to St. Petersburg and Belgorod.

I splurged a bit and I'm in first class (Spalny Vagon - or SV). Comfy couches (still in daytime mode).

After some factories and small towns along the inlet, we follow the course of a wild river as we head deeper in the vast taiga forests of the Russian far north.

It's a stunning ride really if you like wild landscapes.

Meals are included in the spalny vagon ticket. The language used on the menu ("feeding ration") might sound very Soviet, but quality is good. Salmon & oily fish as starter, trout as main. And ofc Russian tea in RZD glasses to finish the meal. Free chocolate & fruit as well!

Of course, there is a @_DiningCar car too on the Arktika train. As the provodnitsa insisted that I had to have my complimentary meal in my compartment, I only had a beer here.

The scenery is just superb on this ride.

This is as low as the sun sets. What a gorgeous journey..

Some Crimean sparkling wine and a Russian book before going to sleep. I just bought it at the supermarket for the 'balaklava' name and it being a bit more upmarket than 'sovietski champanskoe', but its surprisingly good! Time to sleep now. Goodnight!

This morning, a friendly police officer this awaited me on the platform at Kem in front of my carriage door to ask what I was doing here. Tourist? To the Solovetsky Islands? Then all is well, davaj! A taxi ride later and I'm in the nearby port of Rabocheostrovsk.

Torrential rains today, so everyone is packed inside on the boat. Don't expect many pictures from deck today..! Most passengers are from large Russian tour group.

Fortunately, the White Sea looks calm enough today.

It's getting a bit more choppy and windy on the open sea, but I'm quite enjoying this. And I have a reputation to hold up, after all I hail from a great shipfaring nation. Peter the Great actually visited my home country to get fresh ideas how to build a navy and trade fleet!

On the White Sea..

Solovetsky island comes in sight!

Thankfully, the weather here in the middle of the White Sea is actually more pleasant! Let's head into town..

Solovetsky is famous for two reasons: its monastery, and it being used as one giant labor camp by the Soviets, earning it the nickname the Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn wrote about it in his book of the same name, Bulgakov mentioned it as well in The Master and Margarita.

Let's take a look inside the fortified monastery!

Although Solovetsky Island has been (seasonally) inhabited before (more on ancient history tmrw!) it all became more permanent when the first monks arrived here in 1429. Thanks to royal patronage, the complex grew and in the 1570s the monastery was fortified.