Lee and Clare, The road home

Estonia to St Petersburg - by train

24^th September 2003

Hello there all!

Well we made it into Russia after a bit of a trial of a night. We are pretty wasted now. Maybe the night train wasn't the best idea! First it was very noisy and jolty and hot hot hot, second we seemed to be woken every few minutes by knocks on the door with people wanting to see passports and fill out forms. First it was just the conductor lady, then we got Estonian customs control, then their passport control, then not long after it was the Russians. We were a bit nervous because of all the stories we heard plus we were half asleep. We had our passports scrutinised and stamped and we had to declare all the money and travellers cheques we had (nosey bastards). Then just when we thought it was all over we had another knock on the door:

"Hoow many baaaags too youuu havv?"
"Do you have enzy objeects of aaart?"
"Do you have enzy guuns?"
"Do youu have enzyy naaarcoticz?"

These were the only English phrases he knew we think and he wanted to use them on us. He really glared at us while he was saying them. Quite strange in the middle of the night to have this Russian dude firing questions at you!!

So after all this was over it was not much time to sleep until we pulled in at St Petersburg station. So we were pretty stuffed when we arrived. We had instructions written down of how to get to our hostel on the metro. Did this without too much hassle. The escalator down under ground was sooooo long, at least twice as long as the longest London one.

The hostel is a bit dodgy, the beds are sooo hard and we can't use the kitchen as it's very gross. Showers and that are okay though apart from the funny coloured and smelling stuff that comes out of them. Have to shower with your mouth clenched shut, don't want any of that in there!

We had to have a sleep for a couple of hours to be alive enough to venture out. It's pretty hot here today suprisingly. We've found Nevsky Prospect and had a bit of a walk and visited the Information Centre and so have an idea of what to do here now - which is lots. We're thinking we might stay here about 4 days and go to see the Russian Ballet do Swan Lake on our last evening before we head off for Moscow.

We are being very security alert, we even have most of our cash in our shoes and all our bags have padlocks on. Aint no thieves gonna get us!!

That's all for now apart from the bit when I make the entire Jossevel family feel extremely guilty for not e- mailing me once in the last week. I'm off to eat some worms. Well it probably will be worms if what we've heard about Russian food is right!!

Clare and Lee