OK, so... Russia!!!!

I realize I haven't really posted anything on this blog like I had intended, so I am going to try to start posting at least semi-regularly now. To start I will give a short description of my recent trip to Russia. Please look at my photo account for pictures. I will post Russia ones soon, in the meantime get some idea of what I have been doing from the Finland ones (and their captions).


This past weekend I spent a long weekend in St. Petersburg. We left early Thursday morning and came back late Sunday night. The bus left to cloudy and slightly drizzly weather. We soon left the city and were driving through the Finnish country side. It was pretty, mostly forest and gentle hills and the rock outcroppings I have grown accustomed to here in southern Finland. The bedrock here is some of the highest in the world, and often pokes through the ground. Here and there there are breaks in the forest for small valleys containing small farms and fields. The fields were generally brown or covered with a thin layer of snow so they were kind of sad, but spring is coming soon enough. We drove for a couple hours through this sort of country side, I stayed alert for the most part but drifted in and out of that strange state between sleep and consciousness.

Eventually around 10:30 or so we neared the border and stopped for gas and a short break. Then we continued on to start the border formalities. We each filled out a small 'immigration card' for the Russian side of things, I don't know why they needed it as it had no information that we didn't already give them when applying for the visa. We passed through Finnish customs quickly and easily, there were 3 or 4 lines open so after a quick passport check and stamp we were on our way. We were now in the no-man's land. After a minute or so the bus had to stop so a Russian police man (or maybe military, I am not sure) could come on board and make sure everyone had a passport/visa/immigration card. We then proceeded to the customs point. It was slow and inefficient compared to the Finnish side. And the building was older, imposing and not definitely not welcoming. There was only one line so it took quite a while to get the entire bus load through (50+ people). After they took half the immigration card (there were two identical parts) and stamped or passports we continued on our way. One more boarding by a Russian official to make sure everyone had a stamped passport and we were finally in Russia.

The first thing I noticed was that the road seemed to be in much worse shape than the Finnish side. I told myself I was probably imagining it, but it turned out it was true. Several small gas stations and cafés alo)ng the sido of the road provided our first (after the customs check, of course) introduction to the Cyrillic alphabet. The road got worse when we turned off the highway to stop in the small town of Vyborg. We crossed a huge bridge over an inlet of the Gulf of Finland (itself a spur of the Baltic) where Vyborg is located. I saw some small houses across the water first and then a large castle built on an island. It was quite imposing, built strictly for defense but still oddly beautiful in its own way. we then entered the main part of the town and stopped for a quick lunch break. I wasn't too hungry so I didn't eat but walked around the little square in front of the railway station. Most of the buildings were in pretty bad shape but some looked like they may have been nice once. The main part of the town may be a little prettier in another season (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyborg). But my impression of it was pretty negative, though not quite as bad a some peoples. We didn't really have time to explore anything though, so I didn't get a feel for anything other than the dingy gas station/convenience store/café where we had stopped. My impression may be a little biased, I would like to go back some time in the summer and see the town a little better, to give it a fair shot. We continued on a road out of town past decrepit soviet era buildings, abandoned places with broken windows and crumbling brick, and I could hear rumblings from some of the Europeans around me ("Even the worst places in the EU are better than this"). I think this was probably the worst part of the town and we didn't get to see any part that made the town worthwhile. The roads here were pretty bad with potholes and bumps everywhere. But after we got back on the main highway the roads improved significantly, especially as we neared St. Petersburg.

I am not sure when our tour guide got on the bus but at some point she did. As we entered St. Petersburg she introduced herself, went over the itinerary and pointed out a few places of interest along the way. She was the sister of the owner of our travel company (Bair from Bair Travels). She said her father was originally from eastern Russia near Mongolia and moved to St. Petersburg to study, where he met her mother ("A pure Russian, blond hair, blue eyes"). She told us this to explain her slightly Asian features. Whatever the reason, she was quite pretty. The travel company is a family affair for the most part. Her brother (the owner), her sister, and her all worked for it. She is studying to be a fashion designer like her other sister however. They grew up in St. Petersburg and you could tell she really loved her city even if she made a few jokes about it. She said that St. Petersburg gets only 30 days of sun a year (as much as I enjoy the rain and snow, that sounds really depressing for a Colorado native like me). We drove through traffic for a while(apparently its pretty bad in St. Petersburg) and eventually found ourselves driving along the Neva river, the main river that St. Petersburg is built on and the reason for its existence. St. Petersburg was built on a bunch of islands at the mouth of the Neva river as a trading area and port to serve the interior of Russia. The Neva is still an active river today and carries goods in and out of Russia during the summer. All the bridges over the Neva are draw bridges and in the summer (when the river is not frozen and impassable by boats) they all go up at night. So if you are in St. Petersburg in the summer you have to be careful not to get stuck somewhere at night as there is no connection between different islands separated by the Neva.

St. Petersburg is situated on some 40-something islands (if I remember correctly) but was originally (before some artificial raising of land and filling in of small tributaries and canals) on over 100 islands. As a result St. Petersburg is built around its bodies of water and has many bridges (many of which are quite beautiful). We made our way around the right bank of the Neva and the crossed the bridge to our hotel on the main island right near the city center.

Our hotel (Hotel Moscow) was right next to the Neva river and at the end of Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare of the city center, which spans the main island. Our guide said that large streets in Russia are called Prospekt (from the word prospective) because of the way large strait streets appear to get smaller in the distance thus demonstrating the law of perspective. Our hotel is one of the so called "Soviet Giants", huge hotels made to hold hundreds of guests. Our hotel was 8 stories, 5 stories of which had rooms. Each floor had several hundred rooms (at least 200/floor) the ground floor had several restaurants, the main desk/lobby, a rental car place, and offices. The eighth floor was a restaurant.

Here we checked in and got our rooms. In Russia most hotels take your passports and immigration cards (the part we kept) and give you a temporary paper that would serve as proof that you are there legally for the duration of your stay. This is for the convenience of the traveler. If your passport got stolen or lost it would be a huge problem to sort out, so this way problems like this are avoided. I was sharing a room with Meya, a Singaporean going to TKK who is in my tutor group. We had free time until 8 that evening so we exchanged money (about 36 rubles/ euro) and went walking up and down Nevsky Prospekt a little ways to find a place for dinner. i went with Meya and several other Singaporeans(3 girls, 3 guys) plus an Italian girl and a Spanish guy we met on the bus.

My first impression was that the streets were fairly dirty, but I didn't really mind all that much. Additionally, signs were difficult to read as the were in the Cyrillic alphabet. Cyrillic is rather strange for someone used to the Roman characters because letters that look familiar produce a completely different sound. (More on this later, in the meantime for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabet, scroll to the bottom for what sound each letter makes)I also noticed that much of their transit vehicles (buses/trams) were fairly old. There were often trams, electric buses and diesel buses on the same street, which I thought was kind of odd. We ended up at some Russian fast food place that served baked potatoes and sandwiches and soup. After a lot of pointing and gesturing we managed to order. I had a chicken sandwich, it was mediocre, but I wasn't expecting too much. The baked potato another guy got looked pretty good though, I should have ordered one of those instead.

Afterwards we made our way back to the hotel for a night tour of St. Petersburg by bus. We drove out, this time I was with a different tour guide (but he was very serious and we didn't enjoy him as much so for the rest of the trip we made sure to get in the tour group with Bair's sister (I seem to have forgotten her name). We drove along the Neva a little ways to see the skyline of St. Petersburg from the other side of the river. I'm not sure you can really call it a skyline as all the buildings are quite small. This is a result of a former law that stated that no building could be taller than the Winter Palace (the residence of the royal family). This law is not in effect anymore but the Soviets did not break it too much and even today there isn't a building taller than 10 or so stories in the center. Gazprom, the giant Russian gas company is soon going to change this despite protest from many people in St. Petersburg. They are building a huge skyscraper in the center (300m tall, despite a law prohibiting buildings taller than 48m). Other than a few Soviet era buildings every building in St. Petersburg is also built in an old style (18th century or so) because of a law prohibiting buildings built with modern facades.

We saw the Smolny cathedral, drove past numerous churches and museums and a railway station. We stopped at St. Isaac's cathedral where we could see an interesting statue with only two points of support and a palace. We stopped at Rostral columns. Here we took some pictures and were able to see a great view of the city center (Especially the Hermitage museum), and Peter and Paul Fortress. We also drove past a large prison (which is right near the city center but used to be at the edge of town, before the city grew around it, it is still in use as a jail today). We made our way to The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, a beautiful Russian style church built on the site where Alexander II was killed(hence the name). And finally we stopped at the square of arts (right near the club district so people could go out if they wanted. We chose to carry on back to the hotel and make a party of our own in our room. Meya got some vodka, and I picked up a beer (a delicious Russian porter) and we headed back to our room. The Singaporeans and I all hung out in our room and played Kings Cup and poker. We played poker for drinks, since we had no chips, but we didn't really have the rules figured out to well on who should drink when and how betting should work, so we soon changed games. I taught everyone Kings Cup and we played that.

Thats it for Thurday in Russia. This post is already really long so I will stop there for now. Look for the rest of the days in the near future as well as posts about Finland. I will try to fill in some of my story from January until now. In the meantime you can get some idea by looking at the picasa account. Also look for my Russia photos to start appearing there as well. I will try to post some of them into this blog at appropriate places as well.