Day 45.

I spend the morning working on the bike, painstakingly cleaning each chain link with tissues, derailleur, chainrings and anything else I can find. The afternoon is more fun, more exploring the Olympic Park, and its Stadium which is being refitted presumably for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. I finish in Arbat, close to my hostel. I am beginning to really like Moscow!

Day 44

Walking, walking, walking. Not interested in cycling today.  Along the Moscow River, past Cathedrals, Peter the Great, busy streets and Stalinist architecture. Not all but one of the Seven Sisters. I finish in a rather overpriced bar that played Die Antwoord. I move on to the less over priced and far more enjoyable Kamchatka Bar and watch Muscovites go about their business.

A political rant written in December 2014

My name is Daniel John Dispain, a British citizen who has decided to ride a bicycle around the world. As a consequence I will meet many people from many different lands, some of which will have very different ideas to me, some of which will have similar ideas to me. Now whilst in Moscow I met a nice chap and we had a long chat about Democracy. "Russia is democratic" he said. I was curious to see where this was leading. "Russia is democratic. Show me where you do have true democracy? In the United States where you have one party led by a load of fat lawyers, and" there was a little pause here for effect, "another party led by a load of fat lawyers!" Now I left the conversation agreeing with him to an extent. Where is democracy and what is it? By this I mean what does it truly mean to the individuals living in the democratic nations of the west? And at this point please don't give definitions of universal suffrage and the right to vote. I want to know what it truly means to live with "Democracy."

At present in the UK we are 5 months from a general election and the four main parties all tend to follow the same neo liberal paradigm except arguably one is a bit racist, one is a bit nasty, one is a bit useless and one is a bit hypocritical. Do we have a one party system where people no longer vote for policies but for personalities? Images of Farage drinking a beer and smoking appeal to some voters. Not what he says. The two Ed's queue outside Greg's to prove that they are in touch with the common man. No news on what changes New Labour would make in the event of electoral victory however. To an extent it does not surprise me that voters feel disenfranchised and do not vote. But where could this lead?

Earlier in 2014 elections for the EU parliament occurred. Turn out was poor, around 42% for the EU as a whole and 34% in the UK. Of those that did vote many voted for Euro skeptic and extreme parties on the left and right as a protest. The European Parliament is often accused as being poorly run, bureaucratic and inefficient. I personally am pro European, and I feel that bringing people closer together can only be beneficial. I remember as a child the division between east and west in Europe. The Wall, check points between friendly nations. barriers everywhere. That now has largely gone. They lie redundant on the side of the road, boarded up and covered in undergrowth. Monuments to a restricted past. Freedom of movement in Europe and other Co signatories of Schengen can only in my opinion be good. I look at the European parliament with confusion tho. But then I think there must be an explanation for this. Could it be that here we have a parliament that is largely not voted for, and of those that do vote vote for extremists like Golden Dawn, UKIP, Front National, Jobbik, Lega Nord etc. Fill a room with monkeys and typewriters one does not end up with the works of Shakespeare but ends up with shit on the walls, bananas everywhere and broken typewriters (if my monkey based stereotypes are correct). But should I blame the voters here? No, not really.

Where do people get their information on the world and current events? The media I suppose. Friends I suppose, relatives, personal experiences. What nuances are out there that shape a persons mind? Are people really interested in current developments in such and such a parliament or are they more concerned with daily life? Getting to work, buying clothes for the little 'un, looking for cheap deals at the local supermarket. Newspapers in the UK are often read so as to have ones own ideas reflected back and confirmed, there by one can feel good about themselves or outraged at some other current event. A form of entertainment perhaps. Left wing people buy The Guardian, right wing people buy  The Telegraph and The Times, (imbeciles buy the Daily Express). Perhaps left wing people should buy The Telegraph and Times, and right wing people The Guardian (and no one The Express!) so as to get opposing view points. If that would change things I do not know.

I rode through China on my way to where I sit now (Vientiane). Another "Non democratic" nation. It is lovely, the people amazing. Friendly beyond compare. It is not a restricted open prison of evil tyrants oppressing the people as the western media would have you believe. But a nation full of people getting on with their lives. People go to work in the morning, come home in the evening, flop down on the sofa eat dinner and watch TV. A popular Chinese TV show at the moment? Chinese Pop Idol. If only these people had democracy, then things would change! The people of China, Russia and elsewhere seem to me to be just as bewildered with what is happening in the world. Putin is no more representative of the average Russian as Cameron is of the average Brit. And no, Russia is not full of ultra right, ultra orthodox homophobic nationalists. The Russians I met were people just the same as anywhere else, with similar hopes and dreams and just as confused about the world as anybody else. Wonderfully warm, welcome and curious about this foreigner on his bicycle. I don't think anyone really knows what is happening, people have ideas, thoughts, opinions. They act on them (sometimes) but most often people just want to get on.

Day 43

Crazy busy roads! A little rant but why is it when faced traffic jams the world over car drivers forget that they are driving cars and think they are in mosquitoes and start darting about the place in the most unpredictable of manner. Anyway, I made it. Moscow, Mockba, Red Square, The Kremlin and all! I push my bike onto Red Square (no cycling allowed!) and take the selfie. This feels really exciting, it feels like I have covered some ground. From one edge of Europe to practically the other. I have a wander around Red Square, see St Basil's and Lenin's mausoleum. I walk along some of the streets that lead off Red Square and pass a Ferrari dealership, and the plethora of stores that now inhabit the GUM department store. During Soviet times this store was famous (infamous?) as it did not suffer the same shortages of goods that other stores in the USSR suffered from. Hence it would have lengthy queues of people trying to get in to try and buy what was on offer. As a cynic I feel that an element of that tradition has survived as now it is full of elite and very expensive branded goods, again mostly out of reach for the common individual.

I spend my first Moscow evening bar hopping and end up talking to a Chap from Vladivostok about Democracy. More on that later.






The photo is not very good but it is of my first glimpse of The Moscow Kremlin.

Day 42

Getting close now!  I feel a real sense of excitement about the days ahead. I am about 30 miles from Red Square! Istra Hcra to be precise and it feels like the Moscow equivalent to Watford. A commuter town on the edge of the capital, it has all the amenities but somewhat lacking in atmosphere. I am noticing that every time I try to speak Russian Russian women find it utterly hilarious! I guess it must be the combination of the accent, my terrible knowledge of Russian and the fact that I am funny looking!

Day 41

I spend the morning walking around Rzhev to get a better feel of the place. It is here that I spot a tradition that is common amongst the former Soviet states, and that is for newly weds to have their photographs taken next to war memorials.

I trundle on down the M5 however, and make it to Shakhovskaya. A smarter town than Rzhev, and also a lot smaller.

Day 40

Another long day and another long ride. I made it to Rzhev by late evening. I stay in an old Soviet era hotel that I am sure is still bugged and walk around a town that seems to have blissfully ignored the last 20 years. War memorials abound and Lenin still has a watchful eye over the town centre. The war memorials are somewhat expected however. This area and town saw terrible fighting during WWII. Its location close to Moscow and position on the top of a large river gully gave Rzhev significant strategic importance. A quote that I have found gives a glimpse into what life was like here during Nazi occupation,

"In the town of Rzhev there is a concentration camp with fifteen thousand captured Red Army soldiers in it and five thousand civilians," noted a smuggled report of December 1941. "They are holding them in unheated huts, and they feed them one or two frozen potatoes each a day. The Germans threw rotten meat and some bones through the barbed wire at the prisoners. This had made them ill. Every day 20-30 people are dying. The ones who are too ill to work are shot." (Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale—quote from the Center for the Documentation of Contemporary History, Smolensk Oblast)