Like most normal pleasure seekers, I arrive in Russia hoping for the best but expecting the worst. I know Moscow is gagging for tourist dollars, but is a decade of perestroika enough to make a smiley heritage culture out of one built on bread queues and five-year plans for combine-beetroot-harvesters?
I've heard the place is sprouting capitalist wings but when I think of entrepreneurs I think of mafia goon squads blowing up cars and a high caste of glittery new socialites sprung from the corrupt ruins of the old. I've heard about neon Coca-Cola and Daewoo signs flashing where stern monuments to human industry once towered, but can't help wondering whether Levi's still count as hard currency. Oh, and according to the Rough Guide the 25-storey hotel I'm booked into is 'teeming with prostitutes and gangsters'.
So... have a nice day how, exactly?
Certainly, the Aeroflot experience ('No legs in economy, please') and shuffling through the purgatory of Russian immigration live up to my wildest dreams. There are some mesmerisingly hideous housing blocks lining the road from the airport. And Moscow's concentric traffic 'system', following a design based on Dante's nine circles of hell, is an allegory of futility.
But oddly, it's not until you get acclimatised to the city's ugliness that you can start to fall for its extravagant beauty. First up are the exquisitely ornate fairy-tale churches with their trademark Mr Whippee minarets and golden cupolas (the most dazzling, St Basil's, is surrounded by scaffolding, but they're all fantastical). And in every direction you look there's one of Stalin's seven dark Gotham City skyscrapers slung across a piece of horizon. Historically, Moscow builders have erred on the side of stupendous. The architectural term 'Goodness me!' might have been invented for Red Square. I know the world was agog when a German teenager landed a plane here in 1987 but, looking at it now, it's hard to see how he would miss it.
I am on a tour bus, doing the sights. 'On our left is a monument to Rachmaninov, an outstanding Russian pianist,' Gennady is saying. Gennady is the perfect guide: personable, well turned out, multilingual, GSOH, blond highlights, mind like an encyclopaedia.
He takes us into the Kremlin, walks us round the world's largest cannon, abandoned by Napoleon (and who can blame him), waxes erudite on the breathtaking art of the Assumption cathedral - practically radioactive with the glow of icons and angels - before talking us through the artefacts of the Armoury Palace, a rambling treasure-house stuffed with silver and jewels, imperial coaches, chalices and crosses, diamond-crusted cake stands and other unwanted imperial wedding presents.
I am not generally one to gaze on old frock coats with any genuine interest but am fascinated to hear how Peter the Great single-handedly encouraged posh Russians to stop dressing like Genghis Khan and start thinking French gigolo.
We stop for lunch. It's official: Russian food is good enough to eat, if a bit samey. After a couple of days I am able to recommend the salmon, or pancakes with red caviar, though admittedly I have lost what passion I might have ever had for cucumber, which I suspect may be the national vegetable.
Wednesday evening and we're on the bus again, heading for the Moscow State Circus. We set off early, not so much to beat the traffic as join it. I am happily dosed up on Kwells. Moscow is an excellent destination for a car-sickness holiday. 'On our left is a monument to Dostoyevsky, an outstanding Russian writer,' Gennady is saying.
The circus is brilliant. Well the acrobats are, and the trapeze artists, who think nothing of swinging about upside down hundreds of feet above our open mouths with no visible means of not killing themselves.
We are less enthusiastic about the animal acts. We know dogs will do anything for a biscuit, and at least have the grace to look as though they are happy to wear leather trousers, but I'm afraid it demeans us all to watch a bear riding a buffalo. Or, more alarming, a goat riding a buffalo. And I don't know what it is about the spectacle of 13 beautiful tigers being put through hoops of fire by a man in evening dress holding a small baton but at least six of us in the audience are hoping he gets eaten. We sit on our hands while the crowd roars its approval.
The Russians do like animals but not in the same way as us. In Red Square you can buy a stuffed moose head for $6,000. Obviously, you'd really have to want one. It's just down the mall from the Levi's shop.
The next day we visit the Lenin mausoleum. I've never seen anyone dead before, so it's odd that it should be such a household name. The rest of Russia's chosen finest are interred in the Kremlin wall, or buried alongside it - Stalin, Maxim Gorky, Yuri Gagarin - even John Reed, the American who wrote Ten Days that Shook the World and got to sleep with Diane Keaton in the film. After lunch (salmon, cucumber - pancakes optional), we pursue our theme at the Novodevichi cemetery, an attractive, leafy place where you can spot notable dead people by the pictures or sculptures on their tombs.
A heart surgeon's grave takes the shape of a pair of hands holding a blood-red stone; a rocket scientist has missiles coming out of his head; a famous socialist artist has a naked woman in attendance. Gogol is here and Chekhov, as well as Raisa Gorbachev, an outstanding Russian statesman's outstanding Russian wife.
I am getting used to our hotel. The prostitutes in the bar are sweet and non-threatening and apparently a very reasonable $70 for anyone on expenses anxious to savour Muscovite culture in a more visceral form.
Prostitution is legal, as is having a chimpanzee sitting in the entrance to the casino wearing a tuxedo. I win $50 at blackjack. I am drunk with elation, not to say imported Czech beer.
The next morning a spunky colleague and I say goodbye to guided things and decide to explore on our own. The tour bus is fine, but Moscow is such a sprawl that it's hard to get a proper feel of it, we say. We need to get out among the people, we say. So off we go.
Buying a ticket for the metro is quite an adventure. I hold five fingers up to the woman in the kiosk - not quite having the word for ticket in my head - to indicate with universally accepted gestures that I would like one of the popular five-journey jobs that I dimly remember reading about two weeks ago. She responds with a number of urgent questions, or perhaps the same question phrased in a number of urgent ways.
'Si!' I say, if only to show willing, though obviously 'da' would be more appropriate under the geographical circumstances, or even 'nyet', since I have no idea what she is talking about. In the end she takes our money and gives us tickets, possibly for the lottery.
We have chosen the rush hour to get out among the people, and there are as many millions underground as overground, with every subterranean interchange and underpass crowded with sombre commuters and lined with vendors - some with a stall-ful of nuts and seeds, others with nothing but a single bucket of flowers or a fistful of paint brushes - as well as numerous representatives of the underclass, at least one of whom has been chosen to helped the day along by bemoaning his fate in song.
We surface at somewhere called Kropotkinskaya. Yes, it is some days later, but even so, there is something of the frontier spirit about wrestling with someone in a different alphabet, and negotiating a byzantine underground system, finding the patience to decipher street names without killing each other and still managing to get where we want to go. Flushed with triumph we make our way to the wonderful Pushkin Museum - packed with unfamiliar Monets and Matisses and Cézannes - and then to the Tretyakov, a fabulous repository of pre-revolutionary Russian art by people you've never heard of but could easily fall in love with.
It's hard to find a single pulse to Moscow, but each little neighbourhood throws up its own diversions. We tramp along the riverside near the Red October chocolate factory and pretend to admire the work of local artists (think kittens and fishing boats), before lunching on roast sturgeon and unidentifiable cheesy things in a sunny canteen that we find entirely by following a sign saying 'bap' through the back door of a commercial building, up some stairs and down a dark corridor.
Later, we find a long pedestrianised lane of stalls flogging souvenirs and fast food and little puppies. Young people are hanging out here drinking beer, watching the street musicians. Predictably, our orientation skills dry up on the way back when we get lost on the metro, but a cheery, solid citizen materialises unbidden from the gloom to puts us on the right track. Which is just as well. We do have to be at the Bolshoi for 7.30, darlink.
And our coach awaits.
Factfile
Phil Hogan travelled with Tari Tour, Moscow. (007 095 215 3168). He stayed at the Cosmos Hotel, Prospect Mira, 150, Moscow Russia. (007 095 234 1000). Rooms from $75 (£51) per night.
Flights: Aeroflot (020 7355 2233). Flights from £164 from London Heathrow. British Airways (0845 773 3377) has flights from £193.80
Tourist information: Russian National Tourist Office (020 7495 7555). Its website is aimed at Americans, but does have some useful information. Moscow Tourist Board.
Visas: All foreign nationals visiting Russia require a full passport and visa which must be obtained in advance from the Russian embassy. A tourist visa is valid for stays up to 28 days. If you are travelling on a tour operator package they should sort the visa out for you. If not, you will need proof of pre-booked accommodation in Russia in the form of a voucher - usually from the hotel where you have booked a room. The fee is related to the speed of processing your visa: £30 for six or more working days; £50 for three working days; £70 for two days' £80 for one day; and £120 for one hour. Call the Embassy of the Russian Federation visa line (0906 550 8960). Calls cost £1 per minute; or visit www.great-britain.mid.ru.
Tour operators: The former Soviet travel agency Intourist (020 7538 8600). offers a range of packages from £399 for three nights' accommodation, BA flights, guide, transfers, city sightseeing tour. IMS (020 7224 4678). Tailor-made packages to Moscow. Interchange (020 8681 3612). This Russia specialist can organise Moscow city breaks and longer tours, and also offers the option of homestays in the city.
Further reading: The Rough Guide to Moscow by Dan Richardson (Penguin, £9.99).
