Shushed

Woke up to the 2nd highest TV tower in the world (next to Toronto's CN Tower) as the Russian capital emerged from the distance. Were met by our guide and briefly hit major spots-- the Orthodox Church of Our Savior, which at one point was demolished to build a freakish city capitol/monument with a giant statue of Lenin, complete with with a heliopad in the palm of his hand. The entire plan was mysteriously scrapped and the church was painstakingly recreated as the symbolic center of the city. The view from Sparrow Hill was a nice (if smoggy) overview. The aesthetically controversial giant statue of Peter the Great at a ship's wheel (head much smaller proportionately than the body). Then there was the Metro -- absoutely unrivaled as a work of art in itself and must be seen to be believed. Here, you are allowed to take photographs, but still not without that Russian-y feeling that you're doing something wrong and that even if you're not, they will find something wrong and a "fine" or threatened trip to the police station will be forthcoming. Andy took a chance on taking video and was told by a group of scary policemen to stop. In St. Petersburg, you were fined about $4 USD for taking ANY pictures in the Metro. A fine which Andy happily paid after being caught there.

The next few days saw all the greatest hits -- St. Basil's Cathedral, The Kremlin/Armory, Red Square and even a creepy visit to see the preserved body of Lenin enshrined in a dark, cold masoleum with lines of russian military and police in sets of 5 surprising you around each corner eerily standing in silence looking at you as provokingly, challengingly, and antagonizingly as humanly possible without words after every turn. They even shushed Sarah as she wondered out loud why she couldn't see the steps in front of her.


We also tried to get closer to hear Pink Floyd playing a concert in Red Square, but it looked like the going price of around 200 Rubles to the police for access to another barricade might not be so great so we were content to hear 'Dark Side of the Moon' trilling from behind three sets of barricades instead of two.

Moscow turned out to be a wonderful though, seemingly more cosmopolitan (and even more "relaxed"!) than St. Petersburg. The food was another story, but as long as you could get bilinis, you were ok.

We did make it to the Sundoyevsky Baths, though. Which would be our introduction to the unforgettable and unmissable Russian experience of the "Banya:" a series of trips back and forth from withering hot saunas to bracingly cold tubs, and yes, the proverbial wooden bucket. Not to mention the healing (read: exfoliating) power of being flogged with soggy juniper branches.

It was a appropriate preparation before boarding the world's longest train route, the "Trans-Siberian" which stretches from Moscow to Vladivostok -- the length of the world's largest country, or about a fourth of the planet. At Irkutsk, we would change to the "Trans-Mongolian" line which turns South through Mongolia and finally ending in Beijing China. Total time with two or three day stopovers in three places along the way: about 15 days and 10,000 kilometers.


We board at 11pm for the first leg: a solid 4-day stint going through European Russia crossing the Ural Mountains into Central Asia (and thus Siberia) to Irkutsk and the world's deepest and oldest lake, Lake Baikal. We also heard there might be a shower aboard.

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.