The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Ice creams in Gorky Park
To me, Russia is one of the world’s most fascinating places: 12 time zones of enigmatic vastness, unsurpassed natural beauty, a turbulent history, and a literary inheritance that could keep you supplied with masterpieces for a lifetime. I have been going there since the Eighties, spent decades struggling with its difficult language, made documentaries about it, and used it as inspiration for novels. Since becoming a parent, I’ve often wondered when would be the right time to share my enthusiasm with my family. Until now, I’ve quailed at the logistical difficulty and the cost, and the impossibility of persuading my wife Hannah – who’s never been – that there’s more to a great holiday than a sunlounger and a colourful drink with an umbrella in it.
In the last few years, whenever I’ve been in Russia for work, I’ve spent much of my time weighing up the pros and cons of a family holiday there in my head: here’s a museum Sylvie and Enzo would love, here’s a Dostoevskian alcoholic sprawled on the pavement; here’s an affordable family restaurant, here’s an inexplicably rude bus conductor; here’s a beautiful park, here’s a particularly vile squat toilet. What finally swung it for me was the Putin discount. The drop in the value of the rouble thanks to the president’s adventurist foreign policy has made things considerably cheaper. Nice hotels are suddenly in my price range. Even Moscow, whose economy is inflated by oil and gas money, is more affordable. I envisaged my son and daughter, seven and nine, scooting through Red Square, taking the night train to Saint Petersburg, and eating ice creams beside the Neva. I thought what an extraordinary introduction it would be to this country, which has been shaped by tragedy and idealism and tyranny, and which itself had such a profound effect on 20th-century history.
Right at the planning stage, I was forced to confront the bizarre contradictions of contemporary Russia. On one hand, there was the familiar behemoth of neo-Soviet inconvenience. I encountered it in the expensive and time-consuming hassle of trying to get our visas. Even the staff at the Russian visa agency in London seemed almost apologetic about the complexity of the form, and the obligation to muster the required letters of invitation, show them a bank statement, and hand over an £80 per person fee. If one thing could foster better relations between our two great countries, I believe it would be visas on arrival for UK citizens.
But, on the other hand, there was the brave new Europe-facing world of efficiency and excellent customer service, the world that fills my heart with hope about Russia’s future. In this world, I was able to buy and print train tickets and passes to the Hermitage online before I’d even left the UK. In this world, Uber and Airbnb were about to make the experience of visiting Russia’s major cities cheaper and more pleasurable.
Having won my wife’s grudging consent, I put together an itinerary that I hoped would show the best of Moscow and St Petersburg in six days. I knew it would be a short trip, one that I hoped would whet my family’s appetite for further adventures in the former Soviet Union. I dreamed of the day when my children would ask, “Please, daddy, can we go to Yakutsk?” In the meantime, my wife had more basic requests. “What are we actually going to eat?” she kept asking anxiously.
Finally, we flew in to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. Once, not so long ago, arrival in Russia was attended by huge inconvenience. Not any more. The terminal building is lovely, there’s no more customs declaration forms, no more haggling with taxi drivers who will only accept payment in cartons of Marlboros. It’s an easy journey on the Aeroexpress, a direct train to the city centre. Only a few cabins remain on this exclusive cruise, taking in a grand sweep of Russian history and landscapes. Andrew Davies, the writer who adapted Tolstoy’s 19thcentury masterpiece War and Peace for the BBC will be among the guests, as well as John Simpson and the Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent.
Highlights Hear from John Simpson and the Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent Roland Oliphant in the Russian capital.
Get behind-thescenes stories from Andrew Davies, the screenwriter of the BBC’s War and Peace
I had booked a room at the Hotel Leningradskaya, where I stayed for the first time 25 years ago during the final unravelling of the Soviet Union. It’s the smallest of the seven Stalin Skyscrapers that dot the Moscow skyline. Since becoming part of the Hilton group, it has undergone a huge renovation. Its once poky rooms have been knocked together and doubled in size. But the building retains its Stalinera charm: a dictator-chic hodge podge of Art Deco, marble and odd heraldic devices.
On our first evening, I booked a taxi through Uber and we went for dinner at a Chaikhona No1 – a chain of restaurants that serve Central Asian food. I wanted my family to try the Uzbek dishes that occupy roughly the same place in Russian cuisine that Indian food does in the British: grilled meat, flatbread, tangy salads, pilau rice. My wife’s low expectations of the trip were now all working in my favour. She was almost tearful with relief: a room with beds! A hotel with a pool! And now, not just actual food, but actual tasty food.
The next morning, we took the