50 (fifty) or 15 (fif-teen)

We boarded the bus at noon and appeared to be the only non-russians on board! Most people we thought took the train. It was dark and stifling with heat until the driver turned on the engine. Luckily Andy had scored a last minute cold bottle of water and a couple of yogurts.

The scenery along the way from Helsinki through Porvoo to the border was not very distinctive, yet very green. Lots of trees and a few open spaces. After 3 hours and just before formalities, the driver (thankfully) stopped at a gas station for people to get food. It was hard to figure out (based on asking a few russians), but this stop was either 50 (fifty) or 15 (fif-teen) minutes long. Since we weren't sure, we just closely watched the bus driver as he went through this cafeteria style line. Hot food seemed to indicate 50 minutes. Cold, 15. Turns out he got a little of both so we still had to follow him through the 'meal.' We scarfed down some food and saw at about 12 minutes, unfortunately, the driver got up and put his flat and silverware away. We were enjoying the reindeer meat and salad from the hot buffet, but had to scarf the rest down.

The bus pulled into (what we thought) was the Russian border station. Everyone got off the bus and walked through on foot. The guards were friendly, spoke fluent English and even bantered with Sarah about Canadian Hockey. 'What was this?' we thought. This was so easy. Not nearly what we were expected from the Russian border. It was not long before we realized that we were LEAVING the Finnish border. We still had 10 miles of no man's land to go before crossing into Russia.

The minute we crossed into 'no man's land' the timbre changed dramatically. Rougher roads, bigger, more 'impending-ness' in general, and of course the occasional stripped down vehicle lying on the side of the road.

Truth be told, only after a few histrionics of the female guard being distraught that we didn't know Russian forcing her to have to mark our declaration forms, it was actually surprisingly painless. (Perhaps not for the convict-looking guy in front of us though who was getting totally grilled by patrol). One more once through check of our passports from another Russian guard and there we were on our way to St. Pete.

The signs passing by in Russian allowed Andy to start to try to learn the basics,--deciphering basic Cyrillic -- which would be our world in as we crossed the country over the next 16 days. What was even more different though was the feeling in the air of what I call 'Non.' The strange feeling that you are not supposed to be doing anything. i.e. going anywhere, taking photos, talking to people, etc. Which is hardly the reality -- except for the photo taking part. As Andy found out at the gas station he was filming when all of a sudden on the loud speaker someone said something about not taking pictures here. At the gas station! Yes, we all know what great secrets could be compromised here if anything got out. No, no one should ever know that Russians use gasoline.

It did give us the opportunity to make anomolies of ourselves on the bus however and invited all types of questions from fellow passengers about where we were from and what we were doing. Who are these people that film gas stations? It was good for us because one nice older St. Petersburg woman gave us the low down on the city and how to get around as well as some perceptions of Russian life at the moment. "Everyone loves Putin," she said. "He had over 80% at the poles at the last election." And that most Russians considered, after now fighting a common, more 'terrorist' force, for the United States and Russia to be "Brothers," she said.

The bus dropped us off in a random area of St. Petersburg. We were advised not to walk to our place we had reserved, that it would be too far, but excited to explore, we set out with full packs. We should have taken their advice. It took almost 2 hours to get there, but we did see some amazing scenrery along the way including, of all things, a gorgeous blue-tiled mosque. And we learned a valuable lesson. St. Petersburg is not a walking city. The blocks, while few, are enormous and you could walk for 2 hours easily to cover just a small part of the city. A little too late, the Metro became our friend.

The next few days, we tried to get to know the city. Nevsky Prospect -- where people watching is a nightlife event in itself. An old cemetary where Dostoevsky and Tchicovsky (among others) are buried. A market complete with whole cow heads. A public Banya (Bath) which combines an ungodly hot sauna with a bracing plunge into an ice water or literally pull a cord for the 'treat' of an icy cold bucket of water to be dumped on your head.


Even saw the results of the dangerous St. Petersburg traffic when a white Lada ran into a blue one at an intersection and flipped it over on its top like a matchbox car. While everyone around was stunned, the driver pulled himself out of the window of the upside down car, unharmed enough to argue with the Middle Eastern young driver who had just hit him.

Also, we checked out the Hermitage for a day. The highlight, however had to be when they raise the drawbridges during 'White Nights.' -- which means even at 2am there is enough light in the sky to see your way through the streets and they raise these mammoth bridges (street lamps, cable car tracks and bus cable tops and all) at surreal angles to accomodate larger ships on the Neva river at thinner traffic periods.


After a couple more nights (one of which included playing an electronic slot machine which we never understood but still liked the awful animated graphics of cherries and lemons kissing each other),
we joined an organized group which we were hoping would be a nice break from independent travel for a while as well as help with the numerous rail tickets and transfers it would take to plan out a proper Trans Mongolian rail- trip across Russia, through Mongolia and into China. The next few days would see us getting to know the group, getting our stuff together, and taking in some more sights before we headed to Moscow to begin our journey.

Our first leg (technically before the Trans Mongolian train was to begin) was an overnight train from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Our deep, communist-red train with 'C C C P' emblazoned across the bottom, left a few minutes before midnight and was due to arrive in Moscow at 8am. Oh yeah, they even set out a little plastic breakfast tray which included a descent instant coffee and salami but stale bread an indescribably awful turkey pate.

Woke up disoriented on the bus

for some reason for a moment, Andy was thinking that the sun rose in the west -- which didn't make reading the Stockholm map any easier. turns out the trashy chain in the u.s., 7-eleven, turned out to be our savior. it had internet hookup, traditional stockholm pastries AND the best cappucinos we had since Italy. We didn't question it. We just drank them. Lots of them.

The place we were supposed to stay who said, "no problem, call us at 9 on Monday" wasn't answering repeated calls OR trips going there on foot buzzing their door at 9, 9:10, 9:15 and 9:30, so we decided to try another place. So we checked out "The Red Boat" -- which is exactly that. A little hotel on a red boat in the river there. They had a vacancy and we grabbed it. Everything else was booked and we can no longer rely on 'dropping in' as much as tourist season starts to heat up in every country.

Biked in a beautiful park in the East that jutted out to the water and had random world-class sculputures in the gardens there. There was even another Rodin, "The Thinker" (How many of these are there?). Somehow Andy managed to flatten his tire again as well. Twice. Both times he assured the guy that it wasn't intentional. Chalk it up to reckless driving or, perhaps more likely, massive weight gain.

Attended an 'international' food festival, which means they had everything there but Swedish food. Even 'Tennessee' ribs made it seemed by arab immigrints which was quite respectable and surprisingly good.

Checked out the modern art museum and got caught in the middle of the 'Sweden Day' parade, an ecclectic mix of people (yes, there are black people in sweden) -- piled into the backs of big flatbed trucks with a fence and dj hooked up to huge speakers playing r. kelly and everyone "wooing" to people below. It also bore a eerie resemblence to the graduation flatbed trucks, with freshly minted high school grads, drinking to hip hop on these trucks and also 'wooing' to pedestrians on the street as the trucks zoom by. We also think some were wearing toga-type white sheets with some kind of 'plant life' like leaves and branches of trees scattered around them, but this could not be confirmed. The trucks of people for the Sweden Day Parade were wearing yellow and blue, the national flag's colors.

As with Denmark, there's fantastic design everywhere here, and most everyone speaks English. Although whatever you do, never, ever try to burn a DVD in Stockholm, Sweden. You will end up cursing as much as the day is long -- as people/photo studios/internet cafes who have burners (which is very few to begin with) mainly only can write to cd's, or, if they have a burner for DVD's it always seems to be, from the three shops we went to, mysteriously "broken" and in need of repair.

So, we will have to Frankenstein a solution by burning some cds now, making sure they are recieved by Anne and Steve, then delete photos to free up memory and try to find someone with a dvd burner in Finland (Helsinki) -- Andy is emailing different contacts there -- it seems to be the best solution to instead of going to a store, just find someone at home with a damn Mac! It's now getting to the point where we might be missing shots because of low memory. We have 4 gigs and it seems to always be full!

Great design goes hand in hand with interesting shopping so we tried a bit of both on our last day. Our ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki leaves at 4pm so time passed quickly and before you knew it, we had to pick up our packs and head to the dock.

It was beautiful sailing through the almost 20,000 islands that protect Stockholm from the Baltic Sea, then into the open water. The ferry was a mix of restaurant, lounge with singer, a random magician, sauna, nightclub ("disco" as they say) and makeshift casino with a roulette wheel and a black jack table thrown in a seedy corner.

We thought it would be like the Greek ferry, where everyone just sleeps out in the open, but they were not Greek and they only had limited areas in which to crash, which we learned our lesson the hard way. Sleep was hard to come by, but at least Andy scored 30 Euros at the tables. Woke up a little wrecked, but looking forward to chilling in Helsinki as the 10th place we had called, finally had an availability. Even better news was the sauna at the top.

After getting ourselves oriented, we found that, not unlike its Scandinavian brothers, Finland had an amazing design scene. Absolutely inspiring. We went to the Design Museum, The Cable Factory (old Nokia Headquarters now turned into industrial-type art spaces) The Contemporary Art Museum (which was hosting its every 10-year arts festival ARS '06 -- showcasing some of the most exciting work in the world of modern art going on today), and visited the "Marimekko" headquarters where they also make the fabric through enormous 'silk screening'-type machines into giant rolls sent all over the world to be turned into the famous Marimekko handbags, pillows, clothes, etc.

Went to the Sauna bar, but the Sauna was only functioning for groups. Watched some world cup matches. Seems like it was on everywhere. And of course, rented the requisite bikes -- a must for seeing Helsinki. Went out to some beautiful islands and of course along the southern bay. Also rode on Sveaborg Island, an old fortress, but definitely has to be one of the few remaining that will still let people ride bikes on top of the (now) grass-covered giant walls!

Crazily and suckily, on the 2nd day there, though, Andy dropped the digital camera. We didn't know what to do. The image was blurry/blowing out now and it was our only descent camera. Our option was to have it fixed, which we were told would take 3 weeks and cost as much as the camera. Or buy a new camera there, but we weren't sure if the charger would fit coming back. Or have Steve buy a new camera in Canada and overnight it to where we were staying. Amazingly, we found out we could bump up the three week time because they had the optic part that was broken there in the only (we were told) place in Finland that could really fix a camera. The bad news is that it would cost 240 Euros! Unbelievable. We decided to go for it as it seemed the only option for also allowing us to enjoy the rest of our time there trip. We got the camera back in two days without having to pay rush fees. Miraculous.


The night before leaving, Andy went to the Grand Casino for fun and to see if he could defray part of the cost of fixing it. After 2 hours and (scarily) going back to the cash machine for one big bet, he came back with, you guessed it, exactly 240 Euros.

Our bus to cross the Russian Border bound for St. Petersburg left at 12pm the next day.



Thanks: To Nina at Marimekko who took time out of her busy schedule to take us on an absolutely fascinating and inspiring tour at the headquarters.

``I don´t really like people with backpacks...´´

was the impression we were getting from the woman at the info booth. After all our questions, all she really gave us was some interesting looks. Dresden was a beautiful city, but for us at this time it was pretty miserable. Raining, we tried in vain for 2 solid hours to find somewhere to crash for the night to give us our ´out-of-the-city´ experience, which was slowly turning into an ´into-the-city´´ experience after failing online, on the phone, and on foot to three hotels. Everything was fully booked due to its being ´Ascencion Weekend Holiday,´ we learned. Oh yeah, guess that woman DID give us some info.

We rushed back to the train station as we knew there was something in the vicinity of 7pm leaving for Berlin. (No one had yet we asked knew if there was a bus station -- including info woman). Sarah deftly navigated the treacheries of the train info and somehow got a ticket from being 55 euros each to 35 for both of us. Turns out it was kind of a ´commuter´train, orange/red double-decker, which we had a mad dash at one station to change across the platform, but was actually quite fast and comfortable at the end of the day.

Got into Berlin Ostbanhauf late but didn´t have time to call our contact, Henryk Speiss beforehand to let him know. After 10 mins of international phone crap, giving up and asking 6 people for euro coins for the phone booth, we got in touch with him, thank godness and he was going to pick us up. While waiting, we checked out the Saturday night scene at the train station. We had never seen so many people with open containers in a major transportation hub -- security guards gently strolling by.




The next day we hit the major sights of the wall, the reischtag, brandenburg gate and inner city. The rest of our time was filled with being paraded past (thanks to henryk) some of the most fascinating, inspiring design and street art spaces/galleries of the trip.

Had a minor blow though when the tour group for russia said that mongolia doesn´t give visas at the border. nice. ´´hmmm, let´s waste more time handling this at the embassy here, we thought, and miss more of this amazing city. ´´ we said we would handle it on our next stop, and had made sure there was a consulate in copenhagen. images of that prick official in prague came back to andy....-- now that i think about it, he looked a lot like ´mao tse tung.´ -- a horrible image that was difficult to shake.

spent some great time with henryk as well but we had to leave on thursday if we were to get to copenhagen, then stockholm, then helsinki without driving ourselves insane. -- i.e. it didn´t look like we were going to get much ´out-of-city´time as well! Geez, who´s idea was it to do this stupid ´overland´ thing...

got up thursday 5:30 am to catch the bus. Sarah got us seats in the 2nd level in the front of the bus -- kind of like our own chauffered bubble. alternated between sleep and rain until we found out the ferry taking us across to danish waters at rostock, germany was 3 hours late. nice.

we thought we´d make the most of it, ´hey, we´re traveling, right?´we´d say, then at the end we were kind of hating life and needing showers.

Luckily Nan Na Hvass, who doing design in copenhagen (and will be in brooklyn this summer) was our contact here. She and her flatmates welcomed us with fish soup, which went down nicely as we were feeling the day.

The next day we said screw it, we´ll do anything to get that stupid mongolian visa here, so andy went out to the suburb which is where the only consulate we could find -- it was in a sea of cookie-cutter houses, the only thing giving it away was a small plaque on the wall. After 3 rings and a series of knocks, the only one home was a dog. Andy went back to the city (there were no pay phones for miles out here) and called Sarah only to find out that the Visa woman had called back.-- you can leave everything in the mailbox and for an extra fee, process it tonight! Hmmm, take a passport with two priceless visas (one chinese and one russian) and about 200 dollars cash into a seemingly annonymous mailbox? Sure! We picked them up that night no problem. When asked about the czech official. she said, ´´no that doesn´t sound right. The only countries i can´t give a visa to are a few from the Middle East.´´ Mystery solved!

Copenhagen is surreally flat and has a ton of bike lines so we rented bikes the next day. Andy got a flat at 5:15 pm. The bike shop was 30 mins walk away and they closed at 6. he tried to get bike shops nearby to fix it, but they said the earliest they could get to it would be wednesday. this was FRIDAY. apparently there was another long-weekend holiday happening-- where´s the info woman when you need her? -- So andy put as much air in the tire as he could and rode it as fast and furious as he could (before the air ran out again and he was riding on rim) back to the bike shop to exchange for another bike. he filled it up again halfway, luckily, it turns out there´s a bike shop it seems like on every corner, the only problem is that none would repair a flat at any price. in order to get back in a timely fashion, he had to forgo the ´nice-i-ties´ of danish cycling and pull total New York City moves on everyone-- going fast, cutting across lanes, riding the against traffic, etc.. This, they did not like, but it had to be done. And yes, it was fun. There was no time to even stop and watch a protest with police fighting and arresting demonstrators. Made it back with, like 3 minutes to spare.

Copenhagen was a unique beautiful city, but we had to start making our way to Sweden (specifically stockholm). Only two more weeks in Sweden then Finland until we cross into the (relatively for us anyway) unknown of russia then asia.

At 9pm we boarded the overnight bus to Stockholm (no one seemed to really know about the bus station here either) -- into the perpetual bright orange sunset that seems to last til midnight -- and are supposed to arrive at 6am.


Thanks: Deepest thanks to Henryk for hosting us in grand style and showing us his art and the real Berlin. And many thanks to Nan Na for hosting us in Copenhagen and for showing us our first asian food in 3 months!