The birthday was a nice mixture of drinking on the streets, sightseeing and getting totally drunk at Cechmans place. The beer here tastes really good but definitely is something what we would call “headache brew” in Germany. On sunday I was totally destroyed, with an headache so worse I haven’t had since a couple of years. But Russians are friendly and know a receipt against that: more beer. In the evening we met with a journalist who’s doing a tv documentary about the countercultural scene in Russia for what he needed an interview with Ukrop, too. The beer we had during this was on his bill so I felt already a little bit better when we came to the flat of Ukrops friends where a nice party with a couple of people was going on. The guys in 
the Apartment were a great, funny and interesting company so we stayed there for two days 
I got a lot of practical tips about hitchhiking in Siberia and some useful telephone numbers even if my mobile is not working at the moment (somehow in a very sleepy condition I dropped it accidentially in a glass of water which was standing beside my bed on the ground) but I’ll get a new one this evening from Ukrops Dad.
Yeah, so my days in Moscow are almost numbered. Tomorrow in the morning I will start to hitchhike to Irkutsk. People told me here that it will probably take 8 to 10 days and I don’t know if I will have the possibility for internet access along the way so it might take some time until you will read the next post. But I’m pretty sure that you will be able to read some very interesting anecdotes from a 5000km journey on russian countryroads
I still don’t have a mongolian visa. I will apply for it in Irkutsk. But I found a way to get a free invitation to Mongolia so that really shouldn’t be a problem anymore.
memorial for thousands and thousands soldiers fallen in the 2nd world war (really impressive, so many names…) and nice churches, for example. When he turned left to go to Vladimir I had a little bit more than 100km to Moscow left, which I made in a small tiny Lada. Ukrop, my host for the next days lives in a small town named Troitsk in the outskirts of Moscow which takes some time to get there. From the 2nd last metro stop I had to take another bus for an half an hour to get to his place. I’m not the only visitor at his place at the moment, with Ukrop there were Muri from Greece/Spain/Poland (it’s not so clear where he’s actually from, he lived in a lot of countries) and Tina from Leipzig, the girlfriend of Ukrop, so theres always something up in his flat at the moment, what I like.
The next to days I mostly spend with organising my mongolian visa. It’s not so easy as I read everywhere before. Everywhere it was written that it’s no problem to obtain for a visa without an invitation from a travel agency or a mongolian private person if you stay in Mongolia less than 30 days but the people in the mongolian embassy want to see an official invitation. The next day I tried it again at the mongolian consulate but they told me that I have to apply in the morning (the office is open from 9am to 12.30pm and 4pm to 5.30pm but in the afternoon they just give out the ready visas), so I have to go to the consulate at monday morning again, what a pain in the ass. If they refuse to give me a visa, too I will start to hitchhike to Irkutsk immediatly on tuesday to apply for a visa there. It should be much easier in Irkutsk as I read in a couple of internet forums.
Beside all that hassles I’m really fine. Moscow is an impressive city, in a kind of strange way. The traffic is enormous and it’s really hard to cross any major road. Traffic lights are seldom and the roads have at least 3 lanes in every direction with a lot of car. In the rush hour it looks like the same with the people. I somehow understand why Moscow has the reputation of the most expensive and the rudest city in the world. What disturbs me a little bit, too, is the thing that in the 
city centre it’s almost impossible to find a normal shop for normal people. You can walk for kilometres and you pass just shitty bourgoise food-, coffee- or designer shops. It’s almost impossible to find a normal supermarket. It’s a very exclusive city as I’ve got the impression yet and I have to say that I probably liked St.Petersburg more. On the other hand, you can find some very nice and remote spots for example in parks here and the sights are very nice, too. Even if I expected the Red Square a little bit bigger.
From sunday on there’s a one week anarchy congress in the City of Ufa, 1500km east of Moscow. If it works out with my visa I will go there for my next destination. If I will have some trouble with the visa I will try to get to Irkutsk as fast as possible… it’s just 5000km to there, so that should be done quickly 
with channels and Cannabis, no, sorry, not the last stuff, here in front of his home (Moscow), too. So nowadays Piter comes along with a lot channels and a lot of water in the city. It was the russian capital from 1703 to 1920 and so has a lot of historical buildings, churches (funny 
colourful), a forstress and many bridges which open at night. I think St.Petersburg is one of the cities you can spend days just on sightseeing and you still can’t see everything. Our group (Francesco from Italy but now living in Moscow, Anastasia, Polina, Rinat and me) was a funny composition. That we had no common language didn’t really matter (especially not after a couple of beers) so the night from saturday to sunday was very rich of different events. After spending the day with sightseeing and searching roofs to see the city from a 
bird’ eye view (that was not succesful but we met interesting persons who live a hard life under the roofs of this otherwise very “clean” city) we had a fantastic vegan pasta made by Francesco. We were a little bit to slow with the food so we had to run with full stomachs and beer and cigarettes in our hand to the metro station to get the last metro back into the city center but we made it. The night went on with these unbelievable great 1l beer bottles, climbing on monuments and watching the bridges open while peeing in the Neva river. Just great! 
Even if I don’t remember so much about “later” pictures and some videos of us say that we went to a club, sat in something white on the streets (people laughed at us) and somehow ended up in a hospital. Rinat felt an ache in his breast but it turned out that it was nothing serious. Anyway, that took us one or two hours so we were at home not before 8am in the morning. The next day is easy summarized: We slept until 6.30pm and went swimming at a local lake out of the city. That’s it. Today it was again some mixture of sightseeing, eating pasta and buying train tickets for a friend of mine, that’s how a really great weekend ended.
through all of that. Beside Arnis and me his small son Kristers was with us what was a special fun to have him with us. Really a cool, clever and funny boy! After a couple of hours of hiking fun, good views and 
breathing history we went back to Ogre where once a again a delicious dinner waited almost already waited for us. Thanks a lot for all the great hospitality you showed me!