Саинт Петерсбург (Saint Petersburg)

If Tom Cruise ever taught me anything, it’s that “sometimes you just gotta say ‘what the fuck’”.

My time in Estonia had given me a brief look into the eastern European culture and in particular the times of Soviet reign. This, coupled with meeting Ben, had swayed my decision about Russia and even though my tour was cancelled I decided to head there anyway – I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity that I might never have again. So upon leaving Estonia, I headed back to Helsinki for a few more days to rest up, sort out some visa issues, and most importantly board the train to St. Petersburg.

My train from Helsinki was at 7:30am and I was staying half an hour from the main train station so I decided to take the 6:05am bus in. Unfortunately it was some sort of public holiday and all the timetables were different, the bus never came, I started mildly stressing, but luckily a woman who was late to work helped me navigate several busses which deposited me at the central train station with about ten minutes to spare. Then off I was.

The change was not so subtle. Looking out the window, I noticed that all the signs surrounding the train line had changed from the latin to cyrillic alphabet. Next, a message came over the intercom system saying that the train was now entering the ‘border control zone’. I wasn’t too sure what that meant would happen untill about 10 guards jumped on the train and removed everyone’s passports from them. This worried me slightly as I didn’t want to lose my passport while staying in Russia on a visa which was gained from an invitation which was no longer valid. I didn’t even know the last name of the girl I was staying with so wrote the defunct tour’s name on the immigration forms and hoped for the best.

Half an hour passed with nothing, and then finally… I WAS IN! I had legally arrived in Russia!

The train arrived at Finland Station in St. Petersburg at two o’clock. I wasn’t to meet my CouchSurfing host, Ira, until seven, so after figuring out how the metro system worked in a place with very little English writing and speakers, I dumped my bags in the locker room at Vosstaniya Station (where I would meet Ira later on) and went for a wander. I headed down the main street, Nevskiy Prospekt, and what I saw was wonder. The buildings were amazing; colourful, magestic and grand. The writing everywhere was different, the cars were different, the people were different, it was all very much more different from anything I had ever seen, even Tallinn. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the central city area, checking out the amazing buildings, churches, the seaside, oh and it was freezing!

At around seven I met Ira and we headed back to her apartment. This is when I began to understand what people mean when they say that the binary of wealth distribution in this country is expansive. Everything about the innercity was beautiful, and almost everything about the outskirts was the opposite. Ira was living about half an hour out of the central city by metro, the area was bland, dirty, the people seemed like they were barely making it through the day and the soviet architected apartment blocks stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction. In this country you either have money or you don’t, there is no middle ground. The poor people can’t afford the good stuff, but they can afford to indulge. In one supermarket I saw half a litre of vodka for $6.50NZD and a pack of cigarettes for around $1.10.

Ira had, that night, invited a bunch of her friends around to her flat for some drinks. So I spent the night drinking with Ira, Vlad, Pascha, Sascha, Stas, Nadya and a few more people who’s names I can’t rememeber. It was cool, their english wasn’t the best, but they were heaps of fun to party with and so it happened, the more they drank, the better their English got. My Russian on the other hand failed to improve in anyway.

Russian Beer

The next three days (Sunday, Monday and Tuesday) were Russian public holidays so Ira had some time to spend showing me around the sights. I had told Ira that I was interested in searching out some old Soviet Lomo cameras as I heard the authentic products could be picked up very cheap if you knew where to go. So off we went to a local flea market. This place was very intense. It sold everything that most people don’t need. Old computer parts, hats, badges, cell phones, memory cards, power tools, rusty bolts, old clothes, and happily, the camera. I was able to pick one up from a more ‘reputable’ camera dealer for 100 rubles which is around $6.5NZD. Pretty good find I must say. We spent a little while rummaging around the markets and then headed into town to meet up with Ira’s friends again. We ended up at a ludicriously expensive shisha bar where for some reason they gave us a pipe with no water. It was horrible! After this was pretty late so we all decided to call it a night, but not after I was invited to a poker night the following evening.

On the Monday Ira decided that she might show me some of the sights of the city. So after eating a breakfast of blini (russian stuffed pancakes), we set out into the centre of town. First stop was the local huge cathedral, St. Isaac’s. This building was huge, so big in fact that you had to cross a road and half a small park to even include the entire building in a photo.

St. Isaacs Cathedral

Next we headed over to the famous statue of the Bronze Horseman.

The Bronze Horseman

Afterwards we walked over to Spit of Vasilyevskiy Island to have a look around. Here we saw a russian wedding with the bride and groom throwing glasses of champagne over their shoulders into the sea, only both missed, one smashing on the ground, the other hitting a statue behind the groom’s head, projecting broken glass towards the bride! She fell to the ground covered in blood as a huge shared severed her jugular. To be honest, she was fine. Next we walked back towards the Winter Palace or Hermitage.

Winter Palace on the Sea

Past the Winter Palace was the Palace Square.

Palace Square

And just through the arches was a man with a monkey!

Monkey!

After checking out these main sights, Ira wanted to show me an interesting apartment block which contained a huge amount of crazy mosaics everywhere. Almost all of the walls were covered and the public sitting areas were made completely of mosaiced concrete.

Mosaic Apartments

Soon it was dark and time to head to Nadya’s place for the poker game which I didn’t do very well in at all. A nice Russian pork dinner was cooked by Nadya and then it was time to head home for sleep.

The following day, Pascha, Ira and I went to Pushkin which is a huge park south of the city. Inside this park is an enormous palace which was built for Catherine the Great. Unfortunately it was off-season so we could not go inside and none of the fountains were working, but it was still amazing to see.

Catherine the Great's Palace

In the summer this park splits into two parts. The part which the palace is inside becomes a tolled park, so you have to pay to hang out in there. The other part is free and increasingly more desheveled. Even though it was winter you could easily tell the difference between the two parts, the free part muddy and dirty and unkempt while the paid part was tidy and manicured.

Inside the free part we also found some interesting ruins.

Ruins at Pushkin

That night we decided to haev a quiet one and Ira and I watched an interesting Terry Gilliam film starring Robin Williams as a crazy homeless man.

The next day was Wednesday, my last day and time to head back to work for Ira. I decided to check out the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Peter and Paul Fortress

This place is an island in the middle of the harbour which is shaped in a star-like manner. It was built in the 18thC and up until the 1917 was used as a political prison. Even Dostoyevsky was housed here. The fortess even contains a beach were some crazy guy was swimming in Speedos. The water can’t have been more than 1 or 2 degrees! Inside the fortress was the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Peter and Paul Cathedral

From the fortress I walked past some sort of military weapons museum full of tanks and rocket launchers and more, and towards a frigate which I was advised to look at. On the way I walked past a pretty cool pirate-type ship as well. I walked on and on, the mission to get to another bridge to pass back onto the main land. Evening slowly fell with a beautiful sunset, my last day was almost over.

Saint Petersburg Sunset

That night it was time to leave. I was on the 1:20am night train to Moscow which I boarded after a few language barriers about passports and the like. The cabin was small and old, the train wobbled around a lot, but soon I fell asleep and woke up in Moscow.

P.S: Some how I forgot to mention the Saviour on the Blood church, but this place was amazing! We saw this after the monkey.

Saviour on the Blood

Forests, Fun; Finland!

The ferry pulled up to the Helsinki Tallink terminal at 10am on Sunday in the pouring rain. For about 10 minutes I wandered around outside in the rain, looking for my next host, Sampsa, and soon found him before I was soaked. Twenty-five minutes later we arrived at his apartment where I had my own room, a first in a long time.

It was a wet Sunday afternoon, but we decided that we should probably do something as Sampsa had to work 6am-5pm everyday and would not really have that much time for me so we headed out to the local forest. Sampsa had a plan for us to do a ten kilometer round hike through the forest so we left the road and headed into the wilderness. This place was beautiful, even in the autumn with the baring trees.

Lead the way, Sampsa

We walked through the mud and passed the first of many lakes which we would see. What caught my attention, though, were these crazy-huge lumps at the base of many of the trees. Sampsa enlightened me, they were anthills, huge ones at that. He explained that they were always built on the south side of a tree so when you were hiking, all you had to do was look for one of these and you would always know where south is.

Anthill

We ventured further and further into the forest but soon it started to rain. We figure, though, that we would keep going because it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately but the time we got about a third of the way through, the rain was getting thick and heavy, so we turned back. I fell down a bank and soiled myself, but it only took about half the time to return to the car.

That night, Annika, Sapmsa’s girlfriend, made a delicious fish soup. Later, I found a message on my Couchsurfing account from a girl who I had requested a host with in Helsinki but who could not take me in. Instead, she suggested that we meet up and that she show me around the town.

And so the following day I met up with Meri at the Kaampi shopping centre in the Helsinki CBD. We decided that we would go and check out a local art gallery but unfortunately she had forgotten that all museums and gallerys were closed on Mondays. Lost for ideas, we walked around a bit and decided to check out the Tumio Church.

Toumio Church

Afterwards, Meri wanted to show me some of the more intersting shops in the design district of Helsinki, and we took a tour of some interesting clothing shops, I bought an illustrated story book in an independent book store and we fouraged through a second-hand market. We also had lunch at a Thai restaurant, which was very nice, and checked out what appeared to be the only open art gallery (of which I can’t remember the name), which was showing an Icelandic photography exhibition of images contrasting nature with people who have intellectual handicaps.

I had told Meri that at some stage during my stay I wanted to vist the Helsinki island fort of Soumenlinna, and she suggested that we go that afternoon as it was supposed to rain over the next few days. So we hopped onto the ferry and headed over the sea to Soumenlinna, the fort which has protected Helsinki through numerous battles.

On the way to Soumenlinna

When we got there, the wind was blowing but we still explored our way around the fading buildings in which a few thousand people still live.

Soumenlinna Clock Tower

Soon the sun started to set and we decided to head to the seaside to see the sunset, which was rather subdued as the storm clouds were closing in fast. The wind was strong and blowing a freezing gale but we spent a short time there and ran back just in time to get the ferry back to the mainland.

Fort Walls

Meri and I and the Sea

Back at the mainland, we went out separate ways but not after arranging to meet again the following day so we could actaully visit some art galleries.

At 2:30pm the next day I met Meri at the Atenium gallery. They were showing an exhibition which displayed the works of five friends of Finnish author Mika Waltari, author of a famous Finnish book called The Egyptian. The paintings had nothing to do with the book and some were more interesting than others, but there was an actual mummy in a glass case which was pretty cool! There were also galleries of posters for the book and film, another of Japanese post-WWII photography and lastly one showing Japanese landscapes and scenescapes from over 200 years ago (watercolour).

After this we left and went to find lunch. We walked through What is known as Plague Park, a historic burial place of plague victims which has been converted into a park but continues to be littered with graves.

Plague Park

We went to the supermarket to look for a cheap lunch, and ended up with the Finnish specialty of Carelian pies, mashed vegetables in a crusty open pie. Actually very similar to the meat version eaten by the Lebonese (which I can’t remember the name of, sorry Sarah’s grandmother!). After this, we headed to the Helsinki modern art gallery, Kiasma, only to find that it had closed at 5pm (yes, a pretty late lunch) was closed. Meri had suggested earlier that I come over for dinner, so after a little bit of shopping we headed back to her place on the train.

That night Meri cooked a very nice salmon (yeah, I know), and we drank a New Zealand wine which she was adement to try. We talked about al sorts of things, listened to music, and at some stage, Meri the art student decided to sketch me. I don’t think it was too bad for a 5 minute job either!

Meri's Sketch of Me

The following day the weather was nice again, and Annika suggested that we go to Porvoo. Unfortunately it was too late because Meri still wanted me to see Kiasma and I had to be in town at 5:30pm. Instead Annika and I went for a wander around the forest and lake which was so close to her apartment.

Forest and Lake

We walked for about an hour through the forest which proved to be  some sort of squirrel breeding ground, they were everywhere! I’m going to miss these little guys when I get back to New Zealand.

Tree Squirrel

I made it into town with about five minutes to spare, but had forgotten where the gallery was, and after asking about three or four different people, I finally found it, only ten minutes late. Ridiculous seeing as I had been there only the day before. And now came the third time that I was to miss out on Kiasma. Meri had jsut recieved some bad news about a family member and didn’t really feel like visiting the gallery as the building is a very intense place to be in. We decided instead to do something spontaneous and walked down to the metro where she asked me “east or west?”. I figured at home, west is best, so we went west and ended up at a disused cable factory, Kaapeli, which now housed twelve galleries and a number of small theaters and other places.

Kaapeli

At Kaapeli we found only one gallery open. This was showing the works of what made itself out to be a prestigious art group called the Finnish Artist Group. Unfortunately for anyone who wants to be proud of artistic expression in Finland, this art was terrible. Both Meri and I spent the time in the gallery laughing at how unoriginal and prententious it was. Soon it was time to leave as Meri had TaeKwanDoe that night, so we took on last photo and headed back to the centre on the subway.

Meri, Me and Streetart

The following day it was time to leave Helsinki. My ferrry was at 10:30am and was headed across the gulf, the course set for Tallinn, Estonia. Goodbye Scandinavia!

Tromsø: Above the Arctic Circle

I landed in Tromsø at around 9 o’clock at night. Ula (the girl I was staying with) had given me pretty good instructions as to how to get to her place, so I decided not to follow them and got off at the wrong bus stop. This seems to be becomming a common theme of this trip. So, after wondering where in the world I was supposed to go, wandering around looking lost, I found my self in a psychiatric hospital – asking for directions. I was only 100m away!

I soon found my way up to the 5th floor of the Tromsø University student house where Ula lived. She was a Polish masters student of English Literature. I would spend two nights with her, and then I was to spend the following two nights in the room of her neighbour, Phil, who was a biology masters student, spending his time in a greenhouse germinating seeds taken from Svalbard. That night I also met a couple more students plus Phil’s friend Doris from Vienna. We all stayed up pretty late and Doris and I decided that the next day we would climb the local mountain which during the correct season is usually accessed by cable car.

The next morning I awoke and went out onto the deck. This was the view.

View from Ula's Deck

The weather was not so nice, but it wasn’t raining, so Doris and I set out for the mountain.
As we got close to the harbour, the mountain became visable. It dosen’t look so big, but I gaurantee you that it is definitely steep.

Climbable?

We crossed the massive bridge which links Tromsø to the mainland,

Bridge and Harbour

Passed the modern-style church,

Triangle Church

And headed up into the forest. The path was pretty crazy, it spent about and hour going along the bottom of the mountain and we figured that at this rate it was going to take forever to get to the top, zig-zagging across the mountain. After passing a good number of streams, we finally got to a more intesnse part which, more or less, went directly up.

Mountain Stream

It took about another hour of ascention to reach a point where we decided to go no further. It was freezing, windy and starting to rain. But the view was amazing.

View From Mountain

Me and the View

Soon it was starting to get dark so we began to make out decent. On the way down the sunset, though cloudy, was very amazing. Here is my favourite picture of it:

Mountain Sunset

That night Ula made a very nice Polish-style tomato soup and her and I and Doris and Phil all ate together and talked into the night. The following day Doris was going back to Oslo (where she studies German literature), so we made morning plans and then we all headed off to bed.

The next morning I awoke to this:

Morning View

The weather was amazing! Doris and I went walking again and had to stop and take pictures of the Tromsø Island lake on the way to town.

Central Lake

We got to town and decided that we wanted to walk to the very south end of the island. So we set off, passing some pretty cool street art,

Street Art

and Mack’s brewery, the world’s northern most beer brewery.

Macks Brewery

We never made it to the south tip of the island. We walked for so long but in the end it seemed as though Doris might miss her flight if we kept going. So we left the town goodbye and headed back to the student accommodation. Doris left for Oslo and I moved into Phil’s place. I then pitched the idea of tramping out into the darkness to Phil to try and see if the northern lights were going to show. He agreed, and after a nice dinner of vegetables and rice we bussed back into town, over the bridge, and walked up on of the cross-country skiing trails into the valley and beyond town’s visable light. We walked for hours and hours and the northen lights decided they were not going to show. I was not too happy about this, but cheered up after we did some interesting photography.

Phil and I

We had missed the last bus back but it was getting late and cold so we decided to make out way back home. When we reached the point where we could see the lights of Tromsø, we decided to take a few photos, the first looking like this:

Subtle Lights

We had to double take at the picture because there was definitely some green in there. The sky was almost blank but the photo showed up green. So we waited for a while. And sure enough, the northern lights appeared to us, albiet very subtly. I would have loved it to be amazing and bright and full of different colours, but I guess that it was a bit too early in the season. We watched the subtle green colours dance across the sky for around 20 minutes before they disappeared and then headed off home. We had been (mildly) victorious.

Subtle Lights

It was a long walk back with no bus to catch, but Phil and I got on so well that we never had nothing to say to each other, and we were home before we knew it. It was also very fun to throw rocks onto a frozen lake and listen to them bounce off emmitting a laser-gun like sound.

The following day I slept in. It was well deserved after all the time I have spent getting up early and walking around cities, etc. What happened that day was not a lot. But in the night Phil and I decided that we would do another night hike. So once again it was up the mountain for me. We got layered up in warm clothing, brandished head-lamps, and then set off along the forest trail. It seemed very different at night and we went much slower than I has previously gone with Doris. But soon we had made it as far as we thought we should go – this time we were not going to miss the last bus.

The view was very cool, and it was amazing how much orange from the city was reflected off of the clouds.

Orange City

The next morning it was time for me to head off, I had a lot of travelling ahead of me: A flight to Bodø, a night train to Trondheim, a day train to Oslo, one night in oslo, then a plane to Stockholm at 8am the next day, followed by a train to Borlänge where I was to stay with my childhood au pair, Marie.