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I first came to Moscow as a student from Cambridge in 1984 when Yuri Andropov was General Secretary of the Communist Party. There was a ban on alcohol, and we drank vodka in secret out of plastic beakers.
I remember standing in line all over Moscow: I stood in line for the one Chinese restaurant in town, for oranges at Gastronom on Gorki Street, and I joined the procession of Soviet citizens in front of Lenin’s tomb. I remember hailing an old Volga to take me to the Taganka Theatre, and the road collapsed beneath us.
Today, the only time I ever stand in line is when I’m trying to get into a fashionable restaurant, and the roads are so good that unfortunately everybody wants to use them.
Some things, however, never change — like the Russian winter; if you think that you can’t take this snow much more then our Survival Guide I hope will help you make it through to spring.
February 14th is St Valentine’s Day, it’s a new holiday for Muscovites but like all of us they’ll be buying flowers, chocolates and asking where’s that best table for two. Our Tips for Loving is full of ideas to make sure that it’s a day of wine and roses.
The PASSPORT explorers, husband-and-wife team Simon and Sarah Roberts, are back from their latest adventure — to Eastern Siberia; we thought that they were looking for salt mines, but you can see from the photographs that they came back with a very unusual idea for a holiday, a real getaway-from-it-all. If you can’t take one more day trapped in your car on the Garden Ring, how about a reindeer sleigh?
Jeremy Noble
Editor | 
