Told me not to drink the water and not to touch the food, all they have is Pepsi cola and you know that won't hold ya

N 59 55.398 E 30 18.607 - 17 September 2008 - Wednesday evening.

A few days into Russia now, our third night in St Petersburg. I think I'm just starting to get a handle on Cyrillic letters, a slight glimmer. Once I've realized that a C is actually an S and H is an N and 3 is actually a Z, well, ok it is still a very foreign language but at least I can match up some of the street names and start to figure out other written things. All the street signs have been taunting me before, now they are looking a bit fuzzy, just concentrate hard enough and maybe I can make them out. But I feel like a little kid just learning to read. Look, that one that says CTON, it is actually STOP. And that one there, it says...

So where was I last, Estonia, I think I mostly finished that one. And Finland was a bit of a whirlwind. Porvoo was nice but quick. Helsinki, I don't really feel like I engaged so much with it there. Nothing really caught me so much about it. It would have been better to have gone to the countryside, or, sigh, to Lapland, but instead it was a few days in the city. There was some warming up to Russia there though. Once at lunch, we forgot the small backpack and didn't realize for about 30 minutes and rushed back. It was there still, but it was a gentle reminder that it probably wouldn't have been once we got to Russia. Well, maybe it would have been but if you believe what everybody has told us so far.

The train ride from Helsinki to St Petersburg, it seems like we crawled along for quite a long time around the border. The Finnish conductors did all their checks before the last Finnish stations, making sure we had our migration cards and they were filled out correctly, that we had our visas and all that. There were only two of them for the whole train. The landscape was pretty at times, lakes and cute houses. Then we crossed over the border, a pretty serious border, you knew when you crossed it. There were fences, barbed wire, gates and all that there. Then about 8 stern looking officials started collecting passports and cards and then we sat at the first station across the border for about 30 minutes while they were off somewhere doing things. Eventually they brought them back and all seemed in order and we headed on. So, that was a relief, first test out of the way now.

And speaking of tests, that whole train ride we used as a bit of a crash course to get ready. It seemed unlikely that we would have so many people (as we did in Norway and Sweden and Finland) who spoke English so well, so it was time to quickly study Russian and see how much would stick before we got there. I guess that fear was well placed too. It would maybe be possible to function on a very simple level with just the phrase book (should have bought a bigger dictionary though) but it does make it a lot less bewildering and scary if you have a vague idea of what is going on. I guess too if you just stuck to the very narrow strip, basically never leave Nevskiy Prospect and the few other intensely touristy areas, you could get by without trying all that hard, but then who would want to do that? I'm feeling a little better as I start to get more of a clue about it all.

But on the train ride, once we passed over the border, it was pretty immediately recognizable that we had passed over some sort of border. The buildings changed quite a bit. We had gotten used to the ones in Finland, how the farm houses looked, the commercial buildings, and all that, but they changed quite a bit just over the border. I tried hard to take a good picture of some of the houses, but as I generally find with pictures from a train window, I pretty much miss what I wanted, or it is blurry or whatever. Just one good picture would have been great though since it was all the same house the whole way, two story wooden house, very weathered, paint peeling, same style, etc.

We met a few people on the train, got a bit of last minute advice, pep talk about what do to and how to do it, especially from two Finnish guys on the way to a computer conference. They walked with us to the Metro station and set us on our way. We didn't have time to stop and reflect on the station, Finland Railway Station, apparently where Lenin arrived from exile, gave a famous speech and all that. We were more worried about figuring out how to get around.

Coming from lands where queueing is a polite activity, well, this has been a bit of an education too. It is a lot more physical here. It doesn't seem to be frowned upon to stand at the window next to somebody while somebody else is doing their transaction. Like lines are not straight like a string like in the UK, more blobby like a crushed tomato dropped off a roof, with the fat part of the blob being right at the ticket window where all the action is happening. Even old ladies engage in this sort of activity, well, they seem to be the best at it.

St Petersburg is interesting. Maybe not in the way people say it is usually. Almost everything is painted the same shade of yellow. We asked if there was a reason why and were told that why isn't really a relavant question in Russia. The whole city is almost so completely uniform. The big grand buildings are all the same style, yellow or green, big grand things, impressive but also a bit bland, very classical but it just doesn't seem graceful or on a human scale. The apartment blocks are similar, big facades, some of them with ornate looking stonework on them, but still feel bland and a bit lifeless. Inside of them, going through the gates and into the inner courtyards, there is a whole world in there, but still those are yellow. So far, what Russia seems to be is the land of the most gigantic drain pipes ever. I imagine you could run a whole river down those things. I would hate to see what walking on the pavement is like when those things are flowing.

Speaking of flowing, or not flowing, I don't know what it used to be like, but the traffic is pretty fearful. I maybe caught a hint of that in Finland, where pedestrian crossings were pretty uniformly ignored, but at least here so far, it seems to be the land of boy racers in trashed out Ladas or gignormous black SUVs (and then an assortment of other cars all struggling to get through really busy crowded streets. Pedestrians seem to be a major annoyance to them and pedestrian crossings are a bit of a joke. Even at the ones with a green man, you still have to fight the turning traffic.

We have seen some cathedrals, we were completely overstimulated after most of a day at the Hermitage, we took a really nice walking tour (Peter's Tour, really interesting and a nice 4-5 hours), have seen loads of gigantic yellow palaces/government buildings/etc, took a somewhat quick boat tour of the canals/river (ok, but just didn't measure up to the walking tour), and I can't quite remember what else now. Tomorrow (Thursday) we catch the overnight train to Moscow for a few days there. I expect that city should be even a little more full on than St Petersburg. Maybe I need to get back to studying a bit more Russian now. I wonder if Moscow has the same warnings about not drinking the tap water, catching weird bacteria and all that.