European Russia: Part 1

I was woken from a deep sleep by an officious, uniformed woman. I'm not always quick at becoming alert in the morning but on this occasion I instantly realised that this was a Russian border official and that she was holding my passport in her hand. Good news, all is ok and I can proceed on my train journey into Russia. It is a little after 04:00 and the border process with Latvia had only taken 4 hours.

After a couple more hours on the train I arrived at Vitebskii station in St Petersburg. I'm collected at the station by a driver and taken to the Apple Hostel where I'm told that I cannot get my room until 13:00 but that I'm welcome to take a shower while I wait. I get talking to an Australian woman who's been here a couple of days and accompany her on an errand to the Mariinsky Theatre to orient myself a little in the city.

When I return I'm told that they actually do not have a room for me and that they've booked me a room in the Retro Hostel and handed over 3600RUB refund. I  am  not  happy! I'd pre-booked a walking tour of the city with the same people who booked me the room here and I was due to meet them here at 14:00 so waited. When the guide came she was appalled at what had happened and spoke for a long time with the hostel to no avail. She then spoke to her boss to book me a room elsewhere and in the meantime walked with me to the Retro Hostel where I dumped my bag before taking the tour. By the end of the tour they had not succeeded in finding me another room that night but did get me a nice one for the night after.

The Retro was good value for money at only 500RUB but by 03:00 there were 12 people in the 10 person dorm. I was not sad to leave.

From Trans-Russia 2013

I included St Petersburg in this trip since we'd considered it as a honeymoon location, but went elsewhere, and in all the years since had never got around to visiting. Some people I know who have visited speak well of the city so I decided it would just be a small extension to my trip. At first the city lived up to my expectations. Since the city was planned to be a European style city much of the architecture was familiar, the only real exception being The Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, built very much in a Russian Style. I've been told that the church is unpopular with some local people for this very reason.

By the end of my time in St Petersburg I had come to dislike this planned, European style. While whole streets of the building look very grand, Nevsky Prospect being the prime example, behind the façade there is often a run down tatty reality. All three places I visited for accommodation fell into this category. Once through the façade there were worn, crumbling dark staircases leading to individual residences that could be delightful behind yet more steel doors. The planned uniformity also gives the city a one dimensional feeling, most cities are an interesting blend of architectural styles, not so with St Petersburg.

Hermitage	From Trans-Russia 2013

This is not to say that St Petersburg is not worth visiting or that there are no attractive features. I took the opportunity to visit the Hermitage Museum and while for me it didn't meet my admittedly high expectations it was indeed an impressive museum. Unfortunately, the one section closed off for renovation included the one and only piece that I specifically wanted to see!

It was a lively time in St Petersburg with University Graduations taking place, part of the reason finding a room was difficult, and public concerts celebrating the longest day.

St Petersburg is built on a number of islands in the delta of the River Neva which should have warned my about the likelihood of insects. On my last night in the city it was hot and humid and my bedroom window was open… and in the morning I was covered in hundreds of mosquito bites!

I leave from the St Petersburg Moskovsky railway station headed for Moscow on the night train Tr #29…

Home to Russia: Part 5 and retrospective

The last leg in this journey is by far the shortest but the end point is also where I am most likely to encounter a serious problem, i.e. a problem with my Russian Visa.

I'm getting ahead of myself, so back to Riga where I am scheduled to catch train 038P. So that I am not surprised by anything on the day I pop into the station the day before to see what would happen. I enter the station and then walk down the tunnel that leads to all the platforms. Platforms and tracks here are synonymous (unlike Poland) and come in pairs 1;2, 3;4, 5;6, 7;8. ... the end, where is platform 11? I go back to the station and eventually find that platforms 10;11;12 are reached from platform 1, obvious?

This kind of wrinkle is why I recce'd the day before. The train was at the platform half an hour before departure allowing plenty of time to go through the checks at the carriage and board. Looking good.

From Trans-Europe 2013

On the day I head straight to the platform and down to carriage 13 to board, I've an electronic ticket so no paper just my ID (passport). No luck, my ID is not on the list. To be on the safe side I'd printed Russian and English versions of the ticket but still no joy, if your name is not on the list you do not get on. Tension is rising...

I call my agent in London who booked the tickets and they confirm that there is indeed an electronic ticket and I hand over the Russian speaking agent to the ticket clerk, still no joy. I'm not on their list so I do not get on. Time passes, tension continues to rise...

I'm told I need to go to a ticket desk and get a paper ticket, so off I rush. When I get to the counter I'm fortunate to find three Russians in the same state that I am and the counter staff do something and tell us all to go. 5 minutes to get back to train, running up steps and along to platform with 20kg rucksack warms me up a little. When I get back to carriage 13 I wait 2 minutes and a new list appears and I'm on it! I climb aboard find my bed and before I can sit down we're off. That was close.

One of my fellow travelers in the compartment was one of those like me not on the list. His name was Alex and he speaks English. The other occupant of the compartment was a Russian that didn't speak English.

We have six hours travel ahead before we reach Karsava and the border, we should arrive a little after midnight. The shaky start to our trip gives plenty of reason to engage in conversation. Alex works for a Russian telecoms company and has traveled extensively in Europe and North America as well as to Ukraine and Belarus. As student he worked in the UK on a farm for several months. Our fellow traveler was a retired member of the Russian Navy. While he now lives near the Latvian border he served in the Arctic and out of Vladivostok. The rain had internet connectivity and we did some sharing of photos of places we had each visited. Alex had lots of photos of his time in UK and still keeps in touch with the farmer he worked for. They were keen to see my photos of Central Asia and Iran, places they knew little of.

Conversation could sometimes be slow with Alex acting as interpreter but it was a pleasant evening and the time went quickly. We arrived at the Latvian border and formalities for me were quick and painless, they were little more onerous for the Russians. We then traveled through no mans land for several minutes before arriving at the Russian border post. Things were not so simple here, procedures took another 3 hours before reaching their conclusion...

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Retrospective

When planning this journey I only had one fixed point, the start. I had a choice of endpoints, St Petersburg or Moscow and eventually came to the decision that if I was going to visit Russia I might as well visit St Petersburg as I'm unlikely to do it at a later date. With fixed start and end points I could start on a route. The route as far as Warsaw was straightforward but then there were choices to be made. There were three "countries" to consider along the way that I have never visited, Lithuania, Latvia and the Russian enclave of Kalingrad. Train travel in this area is not straightforward and the added complication of needing a double entry Russian visa I decided on a route from Warsaw via Vilnius (Lithuania) and Riga (Latvia) to St Petersburg. In retrospect I think it would skip Vilnius and go for Kalingrad.

The journey east was a journey from the familiar to the increasingly unfamiliar. From Cologne onward the terrain changed very little, mostly flat with occasional undulating areas either cultivated with cereal crops of covered in forest. The trains themselves and the track that they run on seemed more like a journey back in time starting with the Eurostar and ICE trains that run at up to 300kph, through slower electric trains that might manage 200kph and finally tired old beasts that rarely exceeded 100kph and averaged much less.

The languages, unsurprisingly, changed from French which I can speak reasonably to German which I can also get by with through to the eastern European languages which I do not speak but at least use the Latin writing system. It will get harder as I continue my journey and have to contend with Russian and the change to the Cyrillic script.

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