St Petersburge

Day 39 9th November 2009
Location: Train. St petersburge to Moscow
Status: Hung over
Lesson: It is not essential that you 'finish the vodka off, there is
only this last bit left'
Author: Simon

We are currently on the train from St Petersburg to Moscow. An easy 7
hours during the day. The train is full but not crowded, this route is
very popular and tickets sell out even in low season like now. We are
the only tourists that I can see, at least the only English speakers
in our carriage, mostly we are surrounded by middle aged Russians. It's
eerily quiet, both the train and the people, it's obviously the driver
is in no hurray allowing us plenty of time to soak up the scenery.
Scenery that is exactly in every detail to what I imagined it would
be. It's neither mountainous nor flat, I guess hilly with quite allot of pine
forests interspersed with lakes, small collection of houses and some
times just nothing. Most important in my pre-arrival self-created
imagery is the light undisturbed dusting of snow on everything. All the
small wooden houses with the tall, pointy roofs have a column of smoke
flowing out of their chimneys. The lakes are partly frozen over and
currently there is no factories or industry to corrupt this beautiful
image.
It's 4pm, 3 hours in to our journey, so just light but there is
no sun. There has been no sun other than on the first afternoon. I
imagine that a long, cold, sunless Russian winter would be taxing.

Russia and the Trans-Mongolian has always been the centre of our trip,
most of research and reading was directed here and the first half of
the trip was dictated by ensuring we get to Russia at the right time.
We deliberately chose to come at the beginning of winter, we wanted to
see Russia and Mongolia in the snow.

We flew into St Petersburg from Warsaw which is a slight break in the
plan to get the train from Turkey to Hong Kong. But the only train on
offer was a 28 hour journey in 3rd class, which means seated in a open
plan carriage, very little chance of sleep all for £93. So we got a
two hour plane for £120. Little more for allot more.
I don't know what I thought St Petersburg would look like, maybe a
little scary, like a communist state should look- thinking 1984.
I looked out as we descended and i was very relived to
find it looked kinda normal. There were a large number of ugly, cheap
and efficient buildings that looked like Lego bricks stacked to
varying heights. The airport was like every other airport with signs in
the local tongue and in English.

I was warned about the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russia. It was suggested that I memorised it before arriving.
I did download it but of course looked at it for no more than 2 minuets. And what I have learned from this is ignorance is bliss.
So far most country's we have passed through use an alphabet like ours and often words are very similar or at least easy to pick up a few of the necessary. But with the Cyrillic alphabet its a whole nother language, all the letters are crazy and nothing is the same as English, what were they thinking?!
So when I look around I see no sign I can read or even guess at so I ignore them. This makes dealing with language very easy.

Getting into Russia is not easy. You have to go the extra mile, put
the effort in. The visa is expensive, £150 for 30 day tourist, and
time consuming. The Russian embassy had our passports for 8 days. It's
not convenient, it can not be issued more that 90days before you travel
and requires a letter if invitation, list of hotels you are
stopping in for every night and registration at post office every time you
stay in one place longer that 72 hours. All this red tape and
bureaucracy makes it hard work thus only attracting dedicated travelers.
On a little aside, Argentina passport holders do not require visas,
how random?!
You are also required to carry at least a copy of you passport and
paperwork at all times and if you are checked and this is missing or
incorrect you get a £100 fine.
All this made me a little concerned and nervous particular at passport
control, but after a little typing I was allowed in.

We stayed in a nice but over crowded hostel very close to the centre.
The owner looks 18 but I assume she is older and a traveler her self, so knows what makes a great hostel.
Really well equipped kitchen, lockers in the rooms with built in power sockets and a nice social area with large tv and limited DVD collection.
It seams everyone at the hostel is on the same agenda as us, Trans- Mongolia to China, but planned very different ways.
We were concerned about this part of the trip so prebooked all train tickets and visas, this we paid for.
There were many people buying ticket's as they went along, off season this is the cheapest option but not sure it would be wise in the summer.

Oh and there is snow on the ground here!