» Russia

Well, we finally made it to Russia, if you can believe it. After everything I wasn’t sure if we were going to get in. As usual (trouble seems to be following me lately doesn’t it?), there were a few problems getting in, but more on that in a minute.

Istanbul was wonderful, by far my favorite place this trip so far. The city was beautiful, the people were very friendly and eager to talk to travelers and share their culture. Turkey is a Muslim country, but they are respectful and accepting of everyone else’s ideas as well.

Michael and I spent a whole night trying to figure out what it was about Istanbul that was so attractive. We finally decided it was that their indigenous culture is still very much intact, albeit probably not for a whole lot longer. Most of Europe was westernized starting several decades ago. Turkey is becoming westernized today. I saw only two McDonalds and one Burger King in Istanbul (and one was in the airport). Sometimes you would see a whole family together where the mother and father were in traditional dress and their teenage kids were wearing Nikes and Levis.

Amsterdam and Helsinki were a blur. Spending only two nights in each gave me barely enough time to run through the downtown areas once or twice. I caught the flu and ate some bad pizza in Helsinki (on the same day!) so I spent one whole day in bed. Still recovering from the flu, much sleep is indicated.

We booked a seven-hour night bus from Helsinki to St. Petersburg last Sunday night. Easy enough, sleep on the bus, arrive in Russia with nearly a whole day extra. That would have been great, had I been able to sleep on the bus. We thought we booked an express bus (the ticket said express!). To me that means no stops (ok, maybe one or two). We stopped in every little town on the way, a la Greyhound. Every time I dosed off, we seem to be pulling into another town, and I was woken up so un-nicely by the driver turning on the interior lights. The one time I did get some sleep turned out to create many more problems.

The driver comes on in Finnish saying something, of which I only caught ‘passport’. Everyone is getting off the bus with their bags. I turn to look at Michael behind me, and he has his sweater over his head so the lights don’t bother him (smart I think). I wake him up and we get off to test out our oh so expensive and caused us much trouble, Russian Visas!

Border crossings always make me a little nervous. I know being from Texas I should be used to guns, but this is Russia. Two lines later, a little nervous chatter with passport control guys and whump! He stamps it and hands it back. I guess the friendly girl at the Russian Consulate in Athens didn’t put any disparaging remarks in the comments section of the visa. Michael and I had joked about it several times, but I secretly was a little worried.

Now off to customs to declare our US greenbacks. Evidently Russians are very sticky about the amount of US money you bring in. Anything over $50 has to be declared, or if they stop you on exit, they can confiscate it. Customs lady starts speaking to us in some foreign language (obviously, this is not the States). Michael pulls out our information documents from the Russian travel agency that arranged this whole Russian detour. He starts pointing to Russian words that mean, customs declaration form. She becomes agitated and starts speaking very fast in this foreign language, Russian we are assuming. I become agitated, as everything I have read says in big bold letters that this form is very important and can only be done by customs upon entry. Michael points some more, and tries his freshly-learned-from-audio-cassette Russian. This only enrages her more. Finally, in perfect lightly accented English, she says, “This is not Russia! This is Finland!”

That would make a great punchline if that was the end of the story, but it’s not unfortunately.

I try to apologize. Michael tries to explain we have been asleep and didn’t realize we were at Finnish exit passport control, but she won’t hear any of it. She says again, “This is not Russia, this has never been Russia.” Oh no! I’m getting irritated, it’s three in the morning, I’ve just had a crash course in Finnish history (back in Helsinki) and as you know, my brain and my mouth are sometimes disjointed. I corrected her!

“Actually, this was Russia up until 1917, when you guys basically seceded and declared yourselves independent. Don’t you know your own history?” As soon as I said it, I remembered the guys with guns and the locks on the doors and all the movies you see with the guy running to the safety of a border only steps away. She stands up and starts to let me have it, and Michael hastily apologizes for me and drags me out the door three feet away. Good thing we had already been through passport control and the door was only steps away and no one was in between!

That whole incident made the actual border crossing into Russia, two miles down the road, anti-climatic. No problems, stamped our passports, asked no questions, filled out the Russian customs declaration paper and we were back on the bus in ten minutes.

If that weren’t enough for one trip, we found out the hard way that St. Petersburg doesn’t have one bus terminal. Each bus line basically has an office where the bus drops some people off at (I found this out later obviously), and the rest get dropped off around town as the bus passes through, depending on where they are going. I did see the first stop at the bus line office, but was still waiting for the big bus station like we departed from. After eight or ten drop offs at different places in town, the bus finally pulls up to a large hotel parking lot and the driver gets on the loudspeaker in Russian (I assumed) and says something and turns the bus off.

To our credit, there was also a woman from New Zealand on board still as well. As the driver comes back checking the seats as he goes, he starts shooing us off. Through broken English and much hand signals, we deduce that this is it. The bus goes no further for several hours, and even then, it starts back to Helsinki. Oh no again! But this isn’t our hotel, it’s 30 degrees outside, 6 am and we’re at a hotel somewhere on the edge of St. Petersburg (but it was a very nice hotel).

We get our bags and get off looking at each other wondering what to do. He goes outside the hotel lobby and parks his bags and is content to wait to see if the driver who was to pick us up at the bus station is about to show up here. I don’t buy that one. This is a hotel in the middle of nowhere, how would they know we were here. I go park my bags in the warmth of the lobby. What are they going to do throw me out? Worse has happened in the last several hours.

No rubles (Russian $) and no phone card, what to do? I go to the desk and with my best ‘I’m staying here look’ ask to borrow the phone. He kindly does, and even calls me sir and wishes me good morning, like I said this was a nice hotel. Long story short, I called our St. Petersburg contact and told her where we were and she had the driver come pick us up there to take us to our hotel on the other side of town. It was 8am when we got there; so of course we couldn’t check in yet, wait till noon. I was too tired and not too sure of my karma after all the recent happenings, so we stayed in the lobby all morning, snacking on coffee and toast sandwiches made out of salmon until we could check in.

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