Paul Trunoff from Australia about his Military tour in Moscow

What I would really like to do is take this opportunity to thank you (and Alex the driver) for looking after so well in Moscow. The hotel was excellent and the trip to Red Square and Arbat street were good even though it did rain a bit. I also particularly enjoyed the tour of the Moscow Metro system. Some of the stations are truly extraordinary. However as intersting as they were our real objective was to visist as many of the Moscow military history and technology museums as possible in teh few days available to us.

The Central Armed Forces Museum and the Great Patriotic War Museum were both very good. Although I was a bit disapointed we ran out of time to visit the outside vehicle dispaly at the Great Patriotic War Museum. Please pass on my thanks to our museum guides in each place when you see them again.

I would also like to say what a lovely visit we had to the Air Defence Museum. Although this is a fairly small museum it certainly contains a wealth of interesting material for people like myself who have a deep interest in the technology of defence equipment and material. And what an extra benefit it was to be shown around by the director of the Museum himself. Not only was Yuri a charming person but he was clearly somebody who not only had a great deal of knowledge but a similar passion to ourselves about the details around thsi equipment and some fascinating stories about there use in real life over the years. (Also specially thanks to you and Alex helping out with the translation of some of those stories.)

However as good as all the preceding tours were the two main reasons for our trip was to visit the Airforce Museum at Monino and the Armoured Museum at Kubinka. The trip to Monino was just excellent. Our guide Alex was a former bommber pilot on PE2's. (See the attached picture of Alex and myself standing in front of a PE2.) He provide a rich and interesting commentary about the very many special aircraft on display as well as sharing some of his personal experience as a pilot prop driven and latter jet powered tactical bombers. I would have liked to have spent more time listening to him but I was also very keen to get as many phots of the planes as possible. (In the end I took over 700 photograhs that day.)

As I said above the two major reasons for the trip to see Monino and Kubinka. So you can appreciate how grateful we were when you were able to get us to Kubinka on our last day after finding out that it had been unexpectedly closed on the day we were due to visit. This would have been devasting if we had not be able to go there. The fact that you were able to get permission for them to open for just the two of us for three hours was absolutely fantastic. I would certainly like to thank you for managing to arrange this when it all seemed lost. The Museum certainly had a great collection of vehicles and it is attribute to its size and range that in three hours we only managed to see a bit less that half of what was on display. (I guess this means we will have to come back another day to see the rest!)

So once again I would like to say many thanks to you and your company for looking after us so well. I certainly feel sure I will be coming back to Moscow again. Besides the unfinished business at Kubinka there were at least 3 other military museums we would still like to visit in the Moscow area and that does not take account of the many other attractions the city has to offer.

I look forward to seeing you (and Moscow) again some time in the future.

warmest regards Paul Trunoff