From Rags to Riches

The first impression from a train window was not particularly encouraging when we crossed the border to Russia: in the middle of the forest I saw a shabby little blue house with tree Ladas in different stages of decomposition on the yard. Great! But that was the countryside, we were off to the metropolis.

Among the first things that you notice in St. Petersburg are traffic, cyrillic alphabet, and women's heels that remind you of radio masts.



The alphabet is actually not that hard to grasp, and luckily we had a quick look at the differences on our way. Which was good, because otherwise the metro, street names and the rest are just plain incomprehensible. Russians don't seem to be too bothered about tourists in general, and very few places use western alphabet, not to mention any language other than Russian. But that's all part of the fun!

The traffic is something quite different from what we're used to back home. There are all kinds of cars on the streets from stretched Hummer limousines to rusty old Volgas. The one thing common to all cars is speed. Everyone drives like mad, and pedestrians who expect a car to stop at a zebra crossing are soon going to be ex-pedestrians.



We also managed to experience Banya (Russian sauna), which wasn't too different from a Finnish smoke sauna. The place itself was quite interesting, from the outside the only indication that this place was a sauna was a little piece of paper stuck on the door. Inside they had a pool room (and by this I mean billiards), a couple of massage beds, and the banya area with saunas and pools (with water).

We have also been introduced to Russian vodka. I guess you can't really avoid it. There doesn't seem to be any strict etiquette to drinking vodka, as long as there is plenty of it.

Last night we cought a train from St. Petersburg to Moscow. We shared a compartment with a Russian guy who was on his way to an exhibition of precious stones in Moscow. He gave us tickets for the exhibition, so I guess we'll have to go and take a look...



One thing that we still have to take care of is visa registration. This is some incomprehensible remain of Soviet days that only exists to finance the bureaucracy. How it works in theory is that you have to register your visa every time you stay in a town for three working days or more. How it works in practise may be a different thing altogether. We'll see...