Moscow

After a night in a Russian train, in an open compartment with over a hundred people, I arrived in Moscow on the 3rd of October. I was greated with the delightful sight of a grey metropolis with grey buildings on a grey morning.


Still, I was in Moscow, me, in Moscow... I was glad to have made it that far.
I had to find a hostel and there are not plenty of them in Russia. I managed to find someone who rented beds in her flat. Galina had a cat and was in her fifties but she spoke decent english.

There is one thing St Petersburg and Moscow have in common, the metro system. You have to see it to believe it. It is the stations themselves, they are on a huge scale with massive chandeliers and marbles columns. The trains run every two minutes all day on a network that is bigger than London's. It is very cheap too... someone tell Boris, it is possible!

Everything else between the two cities is differen. St Petersburg is more organic and grew as it went while Moscow was planned from the ground up. It has much less soul, the streets are well laid out and the only really big sight is the red square with the church and the Kremlin.


Apart from that, there is nothing "big" but there is lots of little surprises. Nice little parks, quirky architechtural features and a brige with metal sculptures of trees where newly weds put a lock and throw the key in the river as a symbol of their love (given than most marriages in Russia end up in divorces, I don't know if they go back to take it off).
   

All the sightseeing was nice but I had to get a VISA for Mongolia if I wanted to carry on. If you are ever stuck in Moscow and need to do this, you will need a letter of invitation from a hostel. I got mine from Zaya's hostel for 10 US$. Then go to the Mongolian consulate with your Visa aplication form that you downloaded from their website. Get your passport and a passport photo and that's it. The Mongolian consulate was being renovated while I was there and I had to go through a building site up to the fourth floor, asking Mongolian worker if it was the right way for the VISA section... Needless to say that they didn't speak a word of English, nevermind French.

Next step was to get a train ticket to Mongolia, I was dreading this one even more, expecting none of the Russian staff would speak English. I talked to Galina about it and she wrote me a note in Russian saying "I would like to buy a ticket for the next train to UlaanBataar". Richard Dawkins bless her little socks, it worked a treat. I first went to the wrong ticket office where nobody spoke English but after reading my note, someone drew me a map of where I needed to go. Once there, I showed my note around until I was at the right counter, doing sign language to a nice Russian lady. We couldn't communicate with words so she showed me everything with numbers... date of arrival, of departures, prices and times can be writen with numbers, and we both understood akwardly what the other wanted.

I had my VISA and my train ticket in hand and Elizabeth was coming to Moscow after her cruise. I was happy that things were going so well.


We obviously took a few cheesy tourists shots and met up with some of her friends, some of whom ended up dancing on the bar...
    

But all the fun had to end eventually and I had to take the famous trans-Siberian. The next five days would be spent in a train, all the way to Mongolia...

Saint Petersburg

After a short time back in Estonia, I went back to Russia. I took a night bus from Tallinn to St Petersburg, a thing I will never do again. You can't sleep in a bus when the road has potholes the size of Switzerland.

I arrived on the 28th of September (see mum, I put the dates) at 5 in the morning and walked in the mist, for a hour, in the middle of a massive Russian city to Elizabeth's flat. It was good to have a warm place to sleep at last.

St Petersburg is big but Elizabeth and I are keen walkers and she knows the city very well so I got to see all the main sights pretty quickly. The most memorable being the church of spilt blood with it's weird onion shaped tops.


We spent time in cafes eating great Russian pies and drinking bad Russian coffee to get away from the cold. Shots of vodka with the evening meal did help too.

Beside the cold, I was reminded that I had been travelling for a long time by the colors around me. It was autumn and the trees were going yellow everywhere...
   

We visited one of her American friend an evening. We got "geographically challenged" on the way but that gave me the oportunity to take a few night shots while she was trying to get directions on the phone - imagine a woman giving direction to another woma, how could anything could possibly go wrong?
   

We eventually got there and Anna cooked us some trout which tasted much better than it looked. I took over the desert and did some fried banana and apple slices, drowned in butter and sugar. It was finger licking good.

Remember Anna, you have to heat the butter first ;-)

Unfortunatly, after a week, I had to go to Moscow and Elizabeth was going on a cruise along the Volga.

Bike Tour in Russia

Crossing from Estonia to Russia is an experience in itself.

Everything you've heard is more or less true. We had to wait about 4 hours in line to get to the border in the first place. Crossing the Estonian border was no problems at all but once on Russian ground, everything is more complex and admisnitrative.

We were two drivers, in two vans, with a trailer each while all the cyclists were going through the pedestrian border. They went through easily enough. Meanwhile, Toomas, who speaks good Russian, and me, who speaks none, were trying to explain to the custom officers why we had luggages for 50 people.
It was easy enough, 50 people went through the pedestrian border while we drove their luggages, but they didn't seem to find it logical so they called big daddy(I think that's an official rank in Russia).
Big Daddy was not the most subtle of man and I knew what was coming. Toomas was taken in an office and came back 10 minutes later. Everything was magically in order now and Toomas was 100 Euros slimmer.

Once you pass the border, you are in the Motherland and you can't really believe what you see. Five kilometres behind you is a nice country with good roads and now it's pothole central and the road and curb is in total state of disrepair.
It's not just another country, it's another world!


The hotel and the food quality dramatically dropped but we were warned.

All the cyclists made it all the way to St Petersburg though, with only one fall and a disjointed finger.
I have lots of respect for the "Magnificent seven", especially for a lovely, if overly British, couple David and Margareth. We celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary and her 73rd birthday during the second week, he is 75. Not only did they do over 2100Km in four weeks at their age but they did it on a tandem!!! With a smile all along. I want to grow old like them.


It was the end, I was supposed to stay in Russia and carry on my travels from there but it was not to be.

After all the problems we had at the Russian border, Toomas asked me to drive the van back to Tallinn because I was the registered driver on the way in so we would avoid trouble on the way out. He offered to pay for a new Russian VISA and free accomodation...

Off I was back to Tallinn, to see everyone I said goodbye to...

Bike Tour

Sometime in August, Toomas asked me if I wanted to go with him and Steve as aid on a bike tour.

A English charity was doing a bike ride for 4 weeks between Warsaw in Poland and St Petersburg in Russia, it would take 4 weeks and go across the 3 baltic countries. The ride was called "Bike the Baltics". We would rent our bikes and be with them from Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, for 3 weeks, all the way to St Petersburg. Toomas woud pay for my russian Visa, accomodation and food was included and the money was good. I could only say YES!!!

So off we went, on a Sunday morning, 24th of August, me and Steve in a van, with a trailer full of bicycles, heading for Vilnius from Tallinn. our first problem was that Steve, en English guy working at City Bike for the summer, took his driving test 3 years ago and never drove since. I was going to be his instructor for a refresher course, in a van, with a trailer... oh dear...

Look at him go... he's looking at the road...


I won't go through all the bike fittings, tire changes and saddle adjustments that we did for those 3 weeks but we did go through some stunning scenery, drove on dirt roads and crossed dissused border control stations.
   

Most bike riders were there for a week at a time apart from the self named "magnificent sevens" who did the whole 4 weeks. We had to help them whenever there was a problem with a bike, basically, we were sitting in the van most of the time, waiting for the group to get ahead. We would then drive up to the ast riders, stop and wait some more. Thanks you Steve for bringging your iPod, we would have killed each others if we had to listen to the awfull music on the local radios.

   

Unfortunatly, we didn't have time to visit Vilnius but we did have a wander in Riga, capital of Latvia, which looks a bit like Tallin but a bit more rough around the edges...
   

On the way, we stayed in stunning places, castles and hostels by the beach, and we were getting paid for it... yay!
We even got to cycle a bit which was nice, it was even nicer to know that we could stop whenever we wanted... unlike the people who were doing it for charity.

We went back to Tallinn for my last weekend there and then on to St Petersburg where I was to meet Elisabeth, a girl I met in Poland a few month before.

To be continued...

Good time in Tallinn

As posted previously, I spent 3 months in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

I worked in a small hostel, doing reception, making bed and cleaning.
My mum couldn't believe that I could actually make beds, let alone clean but as I said... I could do anything for money.

My boss, Toomas was a bit younger than me and started to rent bicycle to tourists a few years ago and realised that tourists also need to sleep. He has now 2 small hostels, he is a clever self-made man, married with 2 kids. It doesn't stop him having a good time though as this incriminating photo clearly shows:

One thing is is sure, he didn't have those glasses at the beginning of the evening and the handbag doesn't belong to him, or to the girl next to him, who is his employee. When I showed him this picture, he couldn't remember when it was taken. I believe he cycled home that night!

And what a night it was, I had my tshirt ripped open by Kristiina amongs other things...
   

3 months went by quickly with people like that on top of time at work.

I didn't actually get around to do my VISAs but something came up and it took care of itself...

Tallinn

Just to show how late I am on my blog, I had to find out when I arrived in Tallinn Estonia, it was on the 25th of June 2008. I am writing this on the 27th of October, 4 months later, so I'll be quick.

Tallinn is very very pretty and most people speak English and are friendly. The old town is... well... old... medieval looking with local tourist trap staff dressed in middle ages costumes.
   

I found a little hostel at the entrance of the old town, it was renting bicycles too. I stayed there for a week while wondering how I should sort out my Russian, Mongolian and Chinese VISAs. I would take about 2 weeks for each, whih meant waiting 6 weeks. I had to find a job.

I ended up working for that hostel for 3 months!

To be continued...

Turku

I went to Turku in Finland for a single reason.
I wanted to use my last day on my InterRail ticket!

It is a nice town with lots of boats and a church...
   

Helsinki

The capital city of Finland is a bit strange...
It's been recently voted as best city to live in, the transport is exellent, it's safe and clean.
On the other hand, it is lacking funkiness. There are some really beautiful buildings but some are very functional, almost brutal.
   

I like it though, it is by the sea, some of the walks you can do are nice... I still prefer Stockholm.
   

Rovaniemi

Nobody heard of that town, neither did I before reading the Lonely Planet entry for Finland.

First, I had to take the earliest bus possible to the Finnish border. A night on a bench doesn't make you want to stay in a place for very long. As short as it was, the bus journey was interesting. It started at about seven in the morning and there was already some drunk people going from Sweden to Finland... Impressive.

Once I passed the border, I took the train to Rovaniemi, there isn't much about this town but it is on the Polar Circle and is also home of Santa Clause. He even has his own village so I went to see him.
 

And without stopping, I took a night train for Helsinki.
I paid extra to be in a compartment with shower!

Lulea

Lulea is at the north of Sweden, It took hours for me to get there. I think I left Stockholm at about nine in the morning, jumping in a train with no reservation even though I needed one. A quick chat with the train manager and over-egging my French accent worked a treat, she told me to sit in the restaurant wagon, no fine.

Unfortunatly, the train only went half way up Sweden and I had to spend another few hours in a bus through pine forests and lakes.


I finally arrived around eight in the evening, starving, with stiff legs and no hostel in sight. It was around the 17th of June so the longest day of the year was four days away.
What was I to do? Get a proper hotel at fifty Euros or go through the night, which wouldn't be an actual night.

So I slept on a bench for a few hours while the sun just dipped under the horizon for a few minutes. It was never dark, I was experiencing the midnight sun.