As the plane touched down at St Petersburg, a curtain of snow rushed past the window.
I'd been to Russia before and imagined winter would just add a dusting of magical white to the place. But in the blizzard that greeted me I could sense it might confound my expectations. The hotel was pure spy story. Shady characters appeared out of the gloom in reception. They kept my passport in return for my room key. My bed groaned as I dumped my bag on it and I showered in a bathtub surrounded by mismatched tiles. But the water was hot and plentiful. This was a theme I recognised. Nothing looks like it could ever work in Russia, yet somehow it does. As I drifted towards uneasy sleep the phone rang. Two wrong numbers in quick succession.
The Beetroot Bus is a backpacker tour that runs between St Petersburg and Moscow, taking in several typical regional towns en route. There's no five-star insulation from real Russia. You stay in functional, Soviet-era hotels in ill-lit suburbs; you get around on local transport; you share cabins on overnight trains. It's cheap, cheerful and disarmingly authentic. A local guide provides walking tours at each stop, but there's plenty of time to explore on your own. The winter version of the trip is scaled down, because the weather is so harsh, only stopping off at the fortress town of Novgorod and making use of the train part of the way.
My imagination was fired by the curious and the extreme next day in icy St Petes. The Zoological museum's huge collection of preserved animals is a taxidermist's paradise: Komodo dragons, crabs the size of motorbikes, swordfish and Siberian tigers stare out from dusty glass cabinets. The mammoths are stars of the show. One mammoth skeleton leg was the breadth of my chest, one tusk as wide as my head. You can even see the hair on the back of a 40,000-year-old baby mammoth found preserved in Siberian permafrost in 1900. An hour or so later I was face to faces with a two-headed calf. Peter the Great was obsessed with freaks. His collection is displayed at the Kunstkammer museum nearby. Some of the specimens were originally preserved in vodka. It's rumoured an impoverished official would drain it from the preservation jars to sell to unsuspecting locals.
Vodka isn't just a preservative. In the depths of Russian winter it's an insulator for most of the population. At the group meeting that evening, Neil our guide demonstrated. Coke and tonic are not part of the equation. You pour a large shot, breath in slightly, down it and exhale through the mouth, following it up with zakuski - slices of pickled cucumber, salami or cheese. The first shot burned on the way down, but soon my whole body was surrounded by a warm force-field of joy. By the end of the evening, we had all become life-long friends. Neil explained that my phantom phone calls were not the KGB. They were local prostitutes who are tipped off by reception whenever a single male checks in. Fired with vodka, I dragged some of the group out to a local, cheesy nightclub. Here we met a couple of off-duty policemen and communicated via more vodka, karaoke and my phrasebook. A word of warning: wearing thermals to a hot nightclub is definitely to be avoided.
Next day was more frozen sightseeing, with a hangover to match. The high point was the Hermitage. It's one of the world's greatest museums. Stuffed into its run-down splendour are Egyptian mummies, Roman mosaics, Impressionist tableaux and vast European masters. The low point was the cold. I was finding it almost unbearable. Outside the spectacularly gaudy onion domes of the nearby Church of the Spilt Blood - which merits the 300 Rouble entry fee - I found a sad-looking souvenir market. Here, a grey bunny came to my rescue. Whatever your opinions about fur, you can see why people use it in cold climates. It works. My new fur hat had huge ear flaps and kept my head warm all day long.
By the time dawn arrived next day at around 10am, we were on the bus bound for Novgorod. Hues of pink fringed the distant grey clouds. It reminded me of the Impressionists' bright dapples of paint in the Hermitage. 'Novgorod' means 'new town', but this is Russia, so the town is the country's oldest. It boasts a fine mediaeval fortress and numerous ancient churches. It was Christmas card-perfect in the snow. Novgorod's one restaurant of merit, Deteenets is an atmospheric banquet hall housed in the walls of the old fortress. Here we downed glasses of mead and ate veal and caviar. Fortune-tellers predicted I'd get married next year and most of the girls on our table would fall pregnant. And, of course, there was more vodka.
A sleepless night on the express train brought us to our final destination, Russia's capital. Elena, our guide, told us stories as we shivered in minus 25 degrees. Stalin ordered a competition for the design of the vast Hotel Moscow and picked the winner personally. Unfortunately, he chose two and no one dared point out his mistake. The result is pure Russia: two buildings in one, depending on which side you look at.
By mid afternoon the lack of sleep had got the better of me and I took the metro back to the hotel. In the depths of Russian winter, I discovered life here, deep underground. The stations are crammed with kiosks selling everything from underwear to fake Rolexes. Mothers and Fathers of the Revolution doze in the warmth on marble benches, heads nodding, chests bedecked with old medals. Leaving the train I was engulfed in a rush hour of smelly bodies in drab brown fur. Slowly, we shuffled up towards the cold earth above. In an alcove two violinists were playing sad melodies. To complete the scene, another guy was brandishing loofahs. Who on earth would want one of them?
By the last day the cold had won. My skin was chapped and my voice a dry croak. We visited the outdoor market at Ismaylovskiy park for some souvenir hunting. Bargaining was not an option - it was too cold to stand still. I bought imitations of Soviet posters and corny matryoshka dolls. For more authentic souvenirs I should have been packing my rucksack with bottles of vodka. But I'd done enough vodka drinking. For now at least I was leaving Russian winter behind.