Andy John Mark

Masha Dot

Ali Will

Nizhny Novgorod

It all started with through the sheer will of a man called Will. We have to do something! he said. After a couple of weekends procrastination we vowed to just go to the train station and book tickets...anywhere. Somehow Will's expert powers of persuasion managed to entice some great people to join us losers. So a few text messages and calls later and we were all off...somewhere. After the longest wait ever to actually buy the tickets and some tears (actual tears) from the ticket lady we managed to book tickets to Nizhny Novgorod and back. We managed to get all four people in one carriage with one person spare in another one. Will was SO annoyed that his name was on the 'lone' ticket. After assurance that I was going to be the hero and volunteer to take this ticket the mood lifted slightly. Nevertheless there was still some doubt in Will's mind I think that I would 'double cross' him at the last minute in the hullabaloo of the journey. I did actually think about it for a second. At this stage we had established a group of 5 travellers: William, John Mark, Andrew, Dorothy and Allison Young. One of the tasks involved in booking the tickets was to spell all these names in Russian. Young became Yang and Andrew became Endru. A few days later we were joined by Masha Filonova, for which I was very thankful; despite being thoroughly good company, she would then join me with the 'lone' seat in the other carriage. She would not thank me later.
It came to the Friday of departure and Dot the genius suggested meeting the shopping center next to the train station in a restaurant where we could smoke sheisha. She must like it or something. After a couple of beers in 'Habibooby' (the silly English girls' version of Habibi) surrounded by a week's worth of groceries bought especially for the 7 hour train journey, we decided it was time to get to the station considering the train was to leave in 20 minutes. On that short walk to the train station we became 'that family' rushing for the train, having the odd panic about the platform, time of the train, people walking too slowly and where the fuck was Will? (who decided to do all the washing up before he left the house... Oh yeah and he lost everyone's train tickets for half an hour before I left the house for Habibooby). Luckily we met Will on the platform and got on the train with no hassle.
We were on train and Will's relief that me and him did not have to have a standoff over the 'lone ticket' was visible. So we all sat down in the same carriage and tucked in to the food and champagne. Having polished off a few glasses of champers we tucked into the vodka and began to play my favourite game. 'Sing the Song from the Ipod' game. Basically, you have to sing a famous song from my ipod without actually singing any of the words. Alli was a bit good and got people guessing a few toughies. Will was rubbish. In fact, the sounds that came from him while 'singing' sounded and looked more like he was trying to predict the words and melody of a song he didn't know. Maybe I didn't explain properly. Dot put so much emotion into each song that you could just feel what she was trying to sing. Andy was just a very solid 'sing the song from the ipod' game player.
Suddenly Victor came and knocked on our door, at which point Will immediately invited him to take a place in the cabin. Someone then invited Victor to kiss Dot. Victor was a short man from the regions with a beard and breath that smelled like he'd been chewing a lemon for so long it had fermented and formed some kind of lemon liquor in his mouth to which he had recently added a few pickled gherkins. nice. After some polite conversation Victor departed and we continued our merriment for a short time and then went off to bed.
Having been harrassed all night by someone desperate to get Dot's number we woke up in Nizhny Novgorod.
We were all knackered at the this stage and to start with could not navigate out of the train station. Eventually we did and found two lovely old men to take us into town to our hotel by car. We were given the 'what's that! while pointing out the window' tour. Arriving at the hotel we thought we were staying in a bank, we searched for the entrance by circling the building once and then waking up the security guard who answered, 'over there you idiot' to my question, after he saw us go all the way round the building once. With the two people sleeping in the reception I thought the place was definitely overbooked and we would not be able to check in early and have a little nap having arrived at 4am. Anyway they let us in and I was out for the count straight away.

Getting up at around 11-12 o'clock it turned out that Will and Andy had scampered off into town while the rest of us sampled the plush dressing gowns having taken the best shower ever! I also managed to squeeze in a whole film during the waking up and getting up process. We ventured out to the Kremlin to get some grub and found a place where the tables were so thin that you sat a foot away from the person opposite you. After pig bread and some cokes and coffees it was time to take a stroll towards the Volga. At this point the girls began to take pictures of each other taking pictures of each other and Will began to get frisky. So warming our hands on the monument called the eternal fire of love (lie, didn't actually read the inscription because it was so cold) which consisted of a fire in the middle of a slab of marble. We made our way out of the kremlin and headed for the main street where we made a beeline for another cafe that Masha had designated a 'must-visit' and so went there, but only after hanging out in the addidas shop for 10 minutes. Got into the 'Biblioteka' cafe where we encountered the first of many 'no's' on our trip. This is where the every insightful me developed the rule of thumb for any employee of any company that provides a service. They always say no first time. Then the second time they'll say no again. When you probe as to why and then ask a third time the possibility seems to get better. Then finally they relent and let you do what ever it was you came to do. In our case it was sit down and have some hot drinks and a little bit of cake. Dot loves cake. There was also a battle between myself and the local 5 year olds for possession and playing rights to the antique typewriters on display in the cafe. I still think they only wanted to play with them because me and Andy looked so cool when we were playing with them.

We finished up in there and went on to hug a massive telephone shaped like a man. After that Will ran into an empty football stadium and the rest of us watched to see if he was going to do anything funny...he didn't so we started throwing snowballs at each other to take everyone's minds of the anti climax. Somehow we found our way back to the hotel by foot and we took another nap. After the sleep on the train and the initial sleep on arrival and then the nap in the evening it felt like we had already been there for 3 days and 4 nights. We were getting some real value for money on this trip. Next was the hunt for bowling.

Having been told the wrong address for a bowling alley and found that the nearest bowling alley was 7 km outside of the center the spirits hit an all time low. Taxi haggling suddenly became really tiresome and the leadership skills honed in advertising agencies and classrooms and banks hit rock bottom. Finally we got into a car. The mood sunk a bit more and people were forced to sit on knees as we all thought we were in for a long ride and an impossible journey back into the center. On arrival we were assured that it would not be too tough to get a taxi back into town and the journey only took 5 minutes. It was a good start. As was to be expected the fine people at the bowling alley first of all said 'no'. It was my turn to go through the routine so I asked once, twice three times and they gave us a lane for as long as we wanted and that was to be paid by the minute.....STRIKE! 3 bottles of champagne and mayonaise with pizza and chips later (we all had heart attacks) we had played a thoroughly bloody good game of bowling. There was the bit when Will celebrated so hard that he got flattened by Masha on the way back to his seat and other such great times. Oh and the chairs were fun to play around on...so fun that I wasn't given one to play with. The whole thing was AWESOME! anyway....

It was time to have some real dinner after stocking up on the mayonaise on the pizza so we taxied back to Tinkoff - the beer joint where we drank beer, vodka and ate sushi and other such delights. This point was a major turning point. There were some who were feeling tiredness overcome them like after a general anaesthetic administered in the foot or Will's conversation administered to the ear. It was time to play the 'most likely to' game. We wrote down some stuff we thought up that people were most likely to do, and doled out the pieces of paper with this information to the relevant people to whom the statement on the piece of paper most applied (breath). Will was most likely to lose the plot, Andy - most like to sleep with Ally, Me start up a take that tribute, and the girls got - best sex in mouth, most likely to pay for their own book to be published and something else about Ally that I can't remember. That woke everyone up and got everyone prepared for the Nizhny clubbing experience that was about to take place - Wohoo! ....Couldn't get into the club downstairs but quickly got some advice of a guy with an american accent that we should go to ZTop! We got there and immediately got a bit worried about the old Feis Kontrol that we thought we'd left behind in Moscow. The guy on the door told us to F off but after some coaxing by Dot to say we had come especially from England to visit this club (replace 'this club' with anything else and that is what we said to everyone all weekend). Smoothly as I could I told him this and he gave us the 'get out of my face' expression but let us in at the same time. I think everything is backwards in Nizhny. Pizza comes to complement the mayonaise, bowling is paid for by the minute and people tell you to f off and usher you inside their clubs. The club was filled with woman, it being women's day and all, and there were dancers on the podiums, and a man dressed as a rabbit on the stage, later to be replace by two men dressed as priest doing weird robot dancing (In Nizhny the people dressed as robots dance like priests). A few drinks later and I was in the dancers' changing room, Dot was staring at the naked male dancers who didn't even get a changing room. Next Ally was in there but missed all the nakedness. Will then introduced me to a guy who was inexplicably pleased to see everyone, who's name I never caught. The women's loo was a coke den and can't remember about any other stuff. We went home to Mc Donald's just before closing and wait2w for 20 mins just for an f'ing McChicken. And then bla bla...was asleep and woke up the next day at 12.