Big Catchup Post - St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Tallinn

Arriving into St. Petersburg early in the morning on or about May 4, I had the definite sense that I was ready to move on from Russia. It is an intriguing place with lots to offer a traveler, but something about it just seems to put a strain on one's soul, and I was feeling a little bit depressed. To make this sentiment even sharper, I arrived to near-freezing temperatures and a steady drizzle in Russia's gateway to Europe.

My first hostel choice was full so I caught the metro and walked a fair distance to another place, dropped my bags there, then was forced to walk around for four hours until they let me check in. I used this opportunity to explore the center of town on foot and see the State Hermitage Museum, allegedly one of the best art museums in the world; to me it just felt exhausting. It did allow me an opportunity to warm my hands though.


As a result of the poor weather, I spent the greater part of my first day in St. Petersburg indoors. I finally ventured out just as all light was fading from the sky at about 10pm. I found an Irish Pub where I joined a pair of old Brits to watch Man U beat some Germans in the semi finals of the Euro Championship.

I awoke the next morning determined to escape Russia as soon as possible. I ventured over to the train station and inquired into a trip to Helsinki. I quickly purchased a rather pricey ticket to the Finnish capital on a high-speed train leaving at 3:30 that afternoon. I used my remaining few hours here to explore the grand government buildings, which housed the Russian government until the revolution in 1918.

Making my way back to the train station, I boarded the fancy European train along with a bunch of business travelers and rich tourists (a different crowd than in the rest of my Russian trains), and we were soon zipping towards the border at 190 km/h. The border crossing went smoothly as I was easily stamped out of Russian and into Finland, and the European Union at large.


And how grand it was to be in another country after two weeks in Russia. As if on cue, as soon as the train passed into Finland, the skies cleared, the sun came out, and the landscape turned sublime as we passed by small farms with nice cottages, all surrounded by a noble evergreen forest.

It took only about 3 hours to reach Helsinki, so there was plenty of daylight left. Feeling like I was about to blackout, I quickly procured some Euros and a sandwich, and was shocked into the realization that I was now truly in Europe, with outrageous prices to match. With some food in me and new strength, I walked the 2 km up to the old Olympic stadium which houses the Stadion Hostel, where I booked a bed for two nights. I rested for the remainder of the day, writing my reflections on Russia into my journal, reading, and otherwise enjoying my new-found bright spirits. I also admired the novelty of the fact that the sun did not set until nearly 10pm here, and there was still twilight at 11:30.


The next day in Helsinki, I set out on a self guided walking tour through the center. I bought a ferry ticket to Estonia for the following day, then went over to the central harbor and took a boat to the fortress island. There are, by the way, countless islands in and around Helsinki, low-rise granite outcroppings that reach south into the Baltic Sea. And it was good to see the ocean again, which I had not seen since disembarking Hanjin Pretoria so long ago.


The fortress island, which starts with an "S", is a naval base where the occupying Swedes, then the occupying Russians afterwards, protected their interests in Helsinki from other invaders. I navigated the tall stone walls and bunkers and enjoyed the seascape all around me. It was a pretty nice day in Helsinki and I was able to wear only a sweater.


After that, I explored some more of the city on foot, witnessing the mix of old and new architecture and the mild natured Finns, who spoke remarkable English. This has been the first country where I have not been motivated to learn a few words of the native language, mostly because my time here would be short and the incentive was low. Unfortunately, the restaurants, cafes, and bars here are damn expensive, so I opted to go to the grocery store and prepare my own meals, and not venture out to explore the nightlife. To be truthful, I was not feeling remarkably social here and was enjoying my alone time after so much time of traveling with other people.

My remaining hours in Helsinki were passed without event, and late the next morning I shouldered my rucksack and hoofed it down to the Viking Line boarding dock for my 3-hour trip across the Baltic to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, a trip of about 70 km. The ferry had no assigned seating, only bars and restaurants, so I grabbed myself a beer and sat out on deck and felt ecstatic to be traveling the seas again.

So now I arrived into Tallinn early in the afternoon on May 7, and now you might ask, "Where the devil is Estonia?", to which I would reply to get yourself a map. It is actually a beautiful place that is trying earnestly to get over the Soviet occupation, as they call it. They are enjoying their new-found independence after fifty years of alternating domination by the Soviets, then the Nazis, then again the Soviets.


I ended up staying at the Tallinn Backpacker's hostel, a true party place located in the heart of the old city, (the old city being a cross between Medieval Times and Disneyland). I will not continue with a chronological description of my time in Tallinn, and I will just say that the nightlife here is something to be experienced. For three nights I stayed up until the break dawn, which does not take as much effort as it sounds in these northern latitudes. During the days I explored the history of this place in the museums and cathedrals, ate elk soup and pies in a 700 year-old town hall building, took a ride to the beach with a fellow Californian and enjoyed the relatively warm weather.


My time in Tallinn was highly social and filled with excess, and it truly was one of the more enjoyable places on this trip. Estonia is a place for which I held no preconceived notions, and I have to say that I'm happy to have known it. On May 10, yesterday, I joined up with an English guy for the bus ride to Riga, Latvia, another place that is full of beauty and wonder, but one that I can not yet explain. Out for now America.

Moscow

Sometimes I'm never quite sure if I'm seeing a city in the right way. Let me ask you this: Given three days in Moscow without a guidebook, what would you do? I tried to answer that question for myself upon my arrival there on April 30.

From the train station, Francizka and I boarded the famous Moscow metro system for a ride to the hostel. The subway trains themselves are nothing special, but what is really unique are the ornately decorated Soviet-era stations, which put any other metro station that I have ever witnessed to shame. During the one-stop ride that we took, a Russian guy who spoke some English latched onto us and insisted that I be facebook friends with him. The journey was just long enough to allow me to get his contact info, which I promptly forgot about until this moment.

Using my innate sense of direction and a picture of a map, we found the hostel and checked in and all that mundane stuff. In the afternoon we took a self-guided tour around the city center, seeing the theatre district, including the Bolshoi, then over to another part of town by the river, where we watched people drink in the square and then got some typical Russian fare at one of a chain of buffet-style restaurants called MY MY (Russian for moo moo; it was cow-themed). I retired just after darkness set in, at about 10:30pm.

The next day was May 1, which for all you ignornat Americans, is when most of the world celebrates Labour Day (yeah, I used the British spelling). Labour Day in Russia is no joke, though I awoke too late to see the parades, which I'm told were more like demonstrations. We did see one group of demonstrators, arguing at least in part for justice for some of those slayed journalists, corralled into a small alleyway, outnumbered by cops by 2:1. They were not very vocal.

Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral were quite the sight. I took some pictures. I liked the onion domes. So after that, I walked around with Francizka and a good fellow American Greg for a while, until Greg and I decided that we both loved space, and wanted to go see the cosmonaut museum, complete with exhibits in Russian (which I can read, but cannot understand), a shrine to the first guy in space, as well as the real taxidermied bodies of the first two dogs in space; they died of natural causes, or perhaps solar radiation poisoning. Here is one of them:

After that it was back to the hostel to wait for that ever elusive nightfall, so we could go out to explore a bit of the Moscow nightlife. Greg had left and we were now joined by a good English boy living in Scotland named Chris. We went to a popular but not too fancy bar-club in the Kitay-Gorod part of the city, and it just so happened that we arrived on the weekly gay night. At first the place was somewhat relaxing; the music wasn't too loud and the people were low-key. But just before midnight the scene changes; the tables are removed and thus is born a dance floor. The DJs begin pumping the music and what seemed to be the entire gay population of Moscow jammed the smoke-filled club. Chris and I drank a sufficient amount of vodka and the three of us all felt compelled to dance for a few hours, while shirtless men..... well, it was an interesting glimpse of the Moscow club scene.

Later the next morn, I awoke with a heavy head and said farewell to Francizka who was heading back to Germany on a plane, then I went to Ploschad Revolutski and met an old friend from China, Nadya, who you might recall was one of my companions from Yunnan Province of China. She gave me a proper tour of Moscow (she has lived here for several years), as we walked around different parts of downtown, then bought admission to the Kremlin, the walled citadel that houses modern government palaces as well as 15th century cathedrals. My favorite part were some of these old cathedrals, which were painted from floor to dome with elaborate images, of the religious nature of course.

After a few hours spent with Nadya, I bid farewell to her yet again, as I had done just about three weeks prior, and I set off to do some internet research and try to figure out how to get out of Moscow (or Moskva, as the Russians call it). I figured I would take the night train to St. Petersburg the next evening, giving me another 24 hours to kill.

The next day I explored the city the best way I know how. Alone again for the first time in a while, I set about exploring my metro and foot, spending a few hours in a nice park along a bend in the river enjoying the great weather, until the schitzophrenic Moscow climate changed and it began to pour down rain. I saw some other places until finally it was time to return to the hostel, grab my bags and a quick snack, then head to the train station for the relatively short 8 hour journey that does not warrant mentioning. I got on a train at 10pm, went to sleep, and awoke upon arrival in St. Petersburg at 6am.

And that's the Moscow pooooossssst!

Trans-Siberian: Irkutsk to Moscow

So what can I say about 85 hours on a train in Russia? I'm drawing a blank. I was told this would be a very social event, but as it turns out, all the cabinmates I had over those four days were pretty content to not speak with the foreign guy.

I attribute this development to the language barrier. In fact, the only people in my car who wanted to speak to me were the ten year-old Russian boys traveling from near Vladivostok to Moscow, a trip considerably longer than my own. We managed to converse non-verbally for the most part, though they spoke a bit of English and I even less a bit of Russian. We had fun exchanging non-sequiturs that we pulled out of my English-Russian phrasebook.

Otherwise, I enjoyed only the companionship of my fellow Anglophone Franziska, the German girl who resided three cars down from me. We met up for the occasioanl cup of coffee and book exchange and snippets of conversation at the train stops.

Here is what I did do: I listened to the exact amount of music that the battery power on my iPod would allow. And I read several books, some that I brought and some that I borrowed. I finished Jung's Synchronocity, Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi, Freakonomics, Vonnegut's Player Piano, and another book called The Tipping Point that I didn't much care for but was my last resort. I felt very literate.

As far as the landscape, it didn't seem to change much between Irkutsk and Moscow, some five time-zones distant. Lot's of trees and snow patches and wooden homes. And of course the occasional train station platform. I don't know what I expected though.

Finally, on the last day, I had the chance to interact with a real Russian, Sasha (the nickname given to Alexanders). He joined our train on the last evening and was Franziska's cabinmate. He spoke a fair bit of English and we found in him the opportunity to share our bottle of vodka. Sasha showed us the proper way to drink Vodka in Russia, with a toast to a specific matter before each drink (the third toast always reserved for the health and success of one's parents), and a bit of food after each. We soon finished the bottle and were forced to buy another. It was a good time until I tried to lie down to go to sleep and had to consult the restroom.

The days, all in all, went by quickly, and melded into each other like [insert vivid simile here]. On April 30 just before noon, we arrived safely into Moscow and were set loose into this bustling metropolis.

I will save that for the next post though. I hope you enjoy the few pictures I managed to take. I got bored and experimented with the art filters for a while. My favorite is called "grainy film".

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Tran-Mongolian: Ulan Bataar to Irkutsk by Train

After my brief stint in Mongolia it was on on to Siberia on April 22. I boarded the train at 9pm and met my young Mongolian cabinmate, a student at a university in Ulan Ude, Russia. We exchanged the few words that we had in common then went to sleep.

The next scene begins just after sunrise the next morning as we are awoken and bombarded with instructions in Russian at the Mongolian exit station. We hand over our passports and wait about 3 hours to get them back before we chug 5km up the tracks across the border and stop again at the Russian entry station and are eventually greeted by a young Russian border agent wearing high heels and a mini-skirt. Depite being in Siberia, this has been the hottest border crossing thus far. Here, we again hand over our passports and wait another five hours. At some point the army comes on board with a drug sniffing dog. Whereas in China they use Golden Retrievers on advertisements for dog meat stew, here they are used to search for drugs.

Around 4pm, just as I give up all hope that we will ever leave this border, we slowly pull away from the station.The next few hours until the late sunset are spent enjoying the vast desolation of the Siberian landscape. Here are some thoughts I scribbled down during this period, paraphrased of course:

Analagous to the old American Western frontier, a land of occasional scrub brush and grasses chewed to the stub by grazing animals; open ranges and ramschackle wooden structures; low, bare mountains and wide valleys, frozen lake and lazy rivers; dusty double-track roads-- no asphalt; the occasional small town with rusted out ruins of industrial factories.

These were my impressions of Siberia (this small corner of it at least).

Sometime 'round about the end of twilight we entered the bustling Siberian city of Ulan Ude and I drifted off to sleep. Once again I was awoken by sunrise as we passed through a landscape of patchy snow, quaintly painted wooden houses and evergreen forests just south of Irkutsk. I arrived there and joined up with two German girls whom I had met several days prior on the train from Beijing. The date was April 24.

And then the basics: found a hostel, got some sustenance, met a french guy, then the four of us caught a minibus for a day trip to a town on the shores of Lake Baikal. The lowdown on Baikal: The largest lake in the world in terms of volume and depth, containing approximately 20% of the planet's fresh water supply. It is impressive. We arrived on the shores of the lake and were treated to a grand vista of an endless body of water just beginning to throw off the reigns of winter. The surface was still frozen except for the parts just at the shoreline, but at times we could literally see it crumbling and melting before our eyes. It is the changing of the seasons here.

This, by sheer luck, was Easter Sunday, which meant there were a handful of families celebrating on the shore by barbequeing and drinking copious amounts of Vodka. The French guy we were with spoke a bit of Russian and we were soon invited to join one of the families in their festivites. After three quick shots of vodka in true Russian fashion, we were feeling good and gave up our plans to hike up the hill. Instead we just enjoyed the shore for a few hours, eating smoked whole trout and enjoying the company of our Russian brothers and sisters. We returned tired to Irkutsk under a cold rain and spent the rest of the day in the social atmosphere of the hostel.

The next day, in short: exploring the market, getting some bland but filling Russian food, seeing the local art museum, and exploring the city, which felt more like Europe than Asia. In the afternoon I met a jolly Australian couple on their 6-month honeymoon, and we went to a beer house along with a couple of stray Russian youngsters that we picked up along the way. This led into another jovial evening.

On the final day, the highlights were a walk around town on this bright sunny day with one of the Russian boys, Igor, and his nice girlfriend who spoke some English. It was an unadulterated cultural experience, and it was beautiful. Otherwise, I just killed time with other hostelites until the time when I and Franziska, one of the German girls, who was on the same train to Moscow as I, left for the train station at 1am. And thus began the 85-hour ride to the great western capital of the world's most longitudal nation. Goodbye East, hello West.