Rubles in Russia

It was an early start this morning, as we headed to Helsinki's central train station, to get the 0620 train to St Petersberg. And just like that, two hours after leaving Helsinki, we we had left the EU, and arrived in Russia. Our first stop in Russia, was Wyborg, where we picked up a small army of Russian customs, immigration, and police, for the hour or so train in to St Petersberg.

The Russia staff that boarded did their best to maintain the stereotype of the archetypal Russian government representative. They were curt, they were officious, and apart from demanding Courtney looked at them, they processed us with no issue. Other people on the train though were not so lucky.

After passing through the gaze of Sauron's eye, that is Russian border control, we arrived in St Petersberg. The train station used for travel to and from Finland, can best be described as older, and underdeveloped, but this is understandable to some extent, given that it is not the main train station for the city.

It was then time for a trek, via the St Petersberg Metro system, to our hotel. After a lot of time faffing around to get cash out of an ATM, and train tickets out of a machine, it was time to make our way down into the subway. Having sampled the wares of many cities around the world now, when it comes to underground public transportation, we can safely say that the St Petersberg Metro, is spacious, well lit, and very well decorated. A very stark contrast to the Tube in London, and certainly a win for communism over capitalism. We are realiably informed that the Moscow Metro systems is even nicer, but we can safely say that St Petersberg is many orders of magnitude better than the Tube. Teemu got a little bit frightened when we got on the escalator to the street exit and realised we were about 300m underground (maybe a slight exaggeration).

After dumping our bags at the hotel, it was then time for a walk through the streets. On the way we wandered passed, just a few of the magnificent buildings in the city. Every corner you turn down at in the central city, seems to reveal yet another beautiful and magnificent building. The photos attached show but a few of the things that we saw, like the green-ish WInter Palace, which now houses the State Hermitage Museum, which we viewed from Palace Square. It turns out though that Wednesday is like Sunday in Russia though, with a number of key attractions shut down for the day.

We also made a stop at the Yusupov Palace. Why is the famous I hear you ask? Well - this the palace where Rasputin was poisoned, then shot, then escaped from, then was recaptured, and shot again, and then hauled away from to be dumped into the flowing waters around St Petersberg. Incidentally, Rasputin was dumped into the water just along from our hotel. So much history within walking distance, and this all happened before the Bolshevik Revolution, which added quite a few more stories to the streets of St Petersberg. The interior photos attached are from the Yusupov Palace.

We also had a good look at many, many cathedrals. St Petersberg, it would appear, is a very religious city. There are wonderful cathedrals everywhere, and they are used by the general populace, even during the middle of the day on a typical Wednesday. Many people would just pop in to say hello to their god, which felt quite weird to the atheist heathens just as ourselves. The big blue photo of the church, and its onion-shaped domes is the Nicholas-Epiphany Naval Cathedral.

At the end of the day, we headed out to a local bar, where a band was setting up for a evening gig. Their style could be described as rock, in the same vein as Joe Cocker, or perhaps Bruce Springsteen, but Russian. We only really got to see the sound-check, and first few warm-up songs, before heading on to get some dinner. The mojitos, were very good though. Courtney enjoyed them so much, she had a couple. Price check: 400 rubles for one Mojito which roughly equates to £5 or about $9NZD.

And with the consumption of dinner, the day was over. Both being tired, after an early start, it was time to repair to bed.

Distance travelled from Helsinki: 390km
Total distance travelled so far: 1,750km
Distance to Auckland, NZ: 16,411km
Phone update: Courtney's phone has arrived in the UK!Read more