In and out of Moscow in 24 hours

3 years ago, I set foot into Moscow and was reasonably wowed by how everything are so gigantic. 3 years later, I still get this same feeling. This time round I got a taste of the train stations after arriving from a packed overnight train from St Petersburg with 3 other blokes in my cabin - glad it was a peaceful sleep through the night. Will be a short stopover this time round as I am catching the night train out of the city, and only had few things in mind to see. The former KGB building off Lubyanskaya Pl, which was slightly disappointing since it hardly look any sinister to what the guidebook mentioned; St Basil Cathedral - still fascinated by this "funky" looking cathedral which stands out from the many others that I have seen around Europe; and a first hand experience in a public banya, or traditional Russian steam bath. It is very similar to the hammam that I had in Istanbul, with the main difference been the men (I think there are different sections for women as well) going into a ridiculous hot steam room, armed with birch branches, which they will use to hit against their bodies, legs, arms, etc to improve the blood circulation. As usual, my high tolerance to heat means that I struggle to sweat initially and had to shower myself and go in and out of the steam room few times to get the glands going. Have to admit that I underestimated how hot it can get as I almost fainted at one point after it got so hot from the constant steam generated by the caretaker who was splashing bobs of water into the heater. To make it even more exciting, you are supposed to dip yourself into freezing water outside the steam room to cool yourself off. You repeat this to the point that you think you finally have enough! I have to admit that sitting in the steam room, flanked by huge naked russian men, with the smell coming from the birch leaves, was quite a weird one, but it left me feeling so refreshed, especially after been on the roads for 2 over days and warmed me up considerably under freezing Moscow weather. I stopped short of letting the Russians do a body scrub - not without any towels!

Took a short detour to see the world's biggest Mcdonalds, which opened in 1990, to queues of crowd lining round the square in front of Pushkinskaya Metro station - there were probably 20 or more counters and seats 700 people! Elsewhere, one will only be surprised by the number of luxury cars on the roads, and the number of new luxury stores that keep popping up along the streets...I guess this is true Capitalism, especially when you see how many beggers are around the streets as well.

Had another bad encounter with Russians whilst collecting my rucksack from the luggage room, where the old man handling the bags as I misplaced the token that was given to me in exchange for the bag. He obviously knew which bag I was carrying as he was on the verge of handing it over before I struggled to return him the token, and started shouting and cursing at me, even though I offered to pay for the "loss". After 10 minutes of "begging" him to return my bag, the token finally "reappeared" in one of my zipped compartments which he then finally literally threw the bag back at me. I apologised and knew I was in the wrong but he doesn't seem to take in anything I said and continued to shout at me...he's probably had a long day, wife made him sleep on the sofa the night before, and did not have enough to drink for the day, but still, there is no reason for me to be on the receiving end of such service.

Can't wait to get on the 23:25 train to Yekaterinburg and leave 2 forgetable cities behind me...not the best start to the journey, hope the worse has ended here...

St Petersburg - corrupted, overhyped?

Crossing into my 3rd time zone since leaving the English capital. My body is adapting fine but the poor bus journey was not making this any easy. The bus dropped in at some station other than the one I was expecting. Luckily there was a Metro station beside it although it took me few minutes to figure out exactly what station it was. First stop was the Intourist office several stations away, made slightly challenging with an interchange to another line. The Metro system is an unusually deep underground, taking one easily 2 minutes to get to the platform from the surface, assuming the reason behind was that it doubled up as bomb shelters during the 900 day siege by the Germans during WWII.

English is next to useless in this part of the world, and people are strangely very unfriendly. I am not sure been Oriental played a part to this but even the security guards at the reception of the building of the travel agency were refusing to allow me to get to the office, and kept speaking to me in Russian when it was obvious that I understood nothing of it. After much efforts and waiting for 30min, I finally got my tickets I came for and left for Moskovsky Vokzal station to deposit my bag. If you get a chance to use the luggage deposit, make sure you remember the following sequence to save yourself more unnecessary time and sign language with the involved.

1. Pay the amount (R72.10) at the counter; where the lady will then hand over a token to you.
2. Find an empty locker.
3. Stuff in your bag and everything else you want.
4. On the inside of the locker door, there are 4 dials; the first is a Cyrillic character and the next 3 are numbers; select the combination you want and remember them by hard.
5. Close the locker door and insert the token from earlier and you should hear a "click" of the locker successfully closed and locked. Otherwise you might have to find another locker that is working. Remember to scramble the lock combination at the front before you leave.

To take the Metro, you also need to buy tokens off the counter costing R20 each, which you can use to take to any stop. Headed to Nevsky Pr and walked towards the Neva River for the State Hermitage Museum, where at one time, I was so sleepy and struggled to stay awake even though in front of me were probably some of the most impressive art display in the world - I guess I wasn't into the cultural mood at that moment. A pair of elderly American ladies asked me for directions as they too struggled with getting any information from the locals.

The number one thing to remember in Russia that is different from rest of Europe - almost everything seems further than what they look like on the map! Everything here is SUPERSIZED - roads, buildings, rivers, etc. Unless you really prefer to walk, it would be a better option to take the Metro where possible as the roads are especially dusty and you can spent a long time to get to your destination, although most of the sights are centered around Nevsky Pr, which is a very long road linking Moskovsky station (all trains to and from Moscow ends here) to the Neva River before it joins the Gulf of Finland. At this time of the year, one will see loads of broken ice sheets following down the river, where it is famed to become a mosquito breeding ground during the summer.

I heard about winter swimming and was lucky to see one brave soul doing a 30 seconds swim from the island of Peter and Paul fortress. Really cannot imagine how cold that is but learnt from the locals that it is supposed to be very healthy activity as your blood rushes through your arteries and veins after that to continue to keep your body warm, provided you do not die of a heart seizure.

As my train was way past midnight, I spent my remaining hours at the train station where I ran into the my first encounter of the corruption in the country. As I was earlier "chased" out of the food court after sitting and reading for 3 hours, I went back this time to buy a small bowl of Stroganov soup, paid and sat down to enjoy the football match that just started. Within a few minutes, the same policeman walked over and handed me a paper with "R78" written on it, and pointed me to the cashier. As I argued to say that I have paid, he continued to point at the paper and spoke in Russian. After, he left and came back with another older policeman and both started to demand me to do the same. I realised it was a lost cause, not speaking a word of Russian and no one to help even though I tried to get the guy who paid after me to confirm that I have indeed paid for my soup. Annoyed, I went to the cashier with the 2 police and handed the money as requested and specifically asked for a receipt this time round. If you are in Russia, make sure you ask for the receipt for everything you buy, you never know who or what might come after you. I guess I made the mistake to not take the receipt and they took the opportunity to get something out of me, even though it was such a small amount. But that was enough to annoy me that I just left immediately and stood outside for the remaining 2 hours to wait for the train instead. Maybe I was one of the unlucky ones, but at that time, this was the only impression in my mind, far from good and I can't wait to take the train out immediately. Frankly I can't see the attraction that so many regard of this city. Besides the Hermitage, it's just another one them - rude, dirty, corrupted and overrated, but I will leave it to you to decide from your own experience.

Crossing from Estonia into Russia

Almost missed my 23:59 bus to St. Petersburg as I was looking out for a Eurolines bus which I booked, which was no where to be seen. Instead, a dodgy looking old double deck bus came along and I literally had to run to catch the bus from leaving. As usual, it was a bus load of Russians with curious eyes on the one and only oriental, wondering if I had taken the wrong way.

At 3:15, the bus arrived at the Estonia border after an extremely bumpy ride; or was it the bus? A border guard came up to collect everybody's passports and left. It was a nervous wait especially since I knew neither Estonian or Russian, and probably no one knows the language that I speak too. 10 minutes later, the same guard came back and distributed the passports back to individuals and the bus drove on across the bridge separating the 2 countries, with a raging river below.

On the Russian side, everyone were asked to carry all their luggage, with the immigration forms filled up for the border checks. As expected, the woman behind the counter looked at me with suspicion, called out to her superior and they both started to talk in Russian for a good 10 minutes. The superior scrutinized every page of my passport to the degree that I was worried that it might fall apart anytime. I suspect they are wondering why would anyone have such thick passports? (I get this asked many times on my travels) After another minutes of scanning under the UV light, going through all the pages again and again, she finally put a stamp on my visa and handed back my passport.

It took a good hour before the entire bus got through the border, mainly waiting for me to get through to be exact. Has been a nervy experience, not helped by the fact of the language problem and not knowing exactly what they might decide to do. I guess this is the type of "unusual" encounters that attracts travellers to continue to come into this crazy country despite all the hassle and efforts to get here. Alas, all is well and we loaded back onto the bus at 04:30 and continued the journey to St Petersburg...amidst a worse road...

Closing a Baltic chapter

Finally a day when I am not rushing around catching a bus or train, lazing around in bed till 9 in the morning. Chatted with the friendly Irish gal in charge of Viru Backpackers as she was telling me about her Trans-Siberian trip last February, where she then stayed on 2 months in China and made her way down to Laos, Cambodia before ending up in Thailand. Managed to pick up a few useful tips on Do's and Dont's for myself on my way back home. She even passed me her "Southeast Asia on a shoestring" book! My bag is not getting any lighter...

Tallinn is quite small, especially if you only consider the interesting old town, but very medieval. What's good about this town is that you can enjoy most of the sights as much without a handbook as there is a useful acrylic plaque on the wall of the building of interest describing it's history in Estonian and English. Many probably remember this city/country made famous by Kazaa or Skype, a city that is perpetually enveloped by free WiFi completely - which obviously is useful for travellers like myself. Cafes are also very common amongst the locals and you can always find a little cosy looking one around the corner of the streets somehow. It's probably quite a refreshing change to walk on cobbled streets again after a week of fjords, snow and mountains. To be honest, one really just need a day to cover this city and probably best to move on or head out for day trips. Will be ideal to combine it with other Baltic states as well since it is so easy to get around. For me, it's really to close out the "unfinished business"from my last trip, where I started off in Latvia before heading down south.

Whilst here, remember to try out the pancakes (serves both sweet and savoury) at Kompressor, and coffee at Kehrwieder, which will be my recommendations. Also head over to the Museum of Occupation if you are interested to learn more about the years before Independence, where it was subjected to USSR, then Germany, and again USSR's control before it finally got it's independence in 1991 together with the other Baltic states. The city seem to be pretty big on Jazz and music festivals too, and I think there are plenty coming up over Spring and Summer. Did not take many pictures, but as usual, you can find a few on my Flickr.

Heading off to the bus station to catch the overnight Eurolines coach to St Petersburg, but first I have to find a pub to catch the big match. Might be mission impossible, but never say never...

Through the length of Finland and across to Estonia

Had one of my best sleep for in a week, completely knocked out on a sturdy bed in a room all by myself. No need to sneak around in the dark worried about waking others up, no need to wake up early for limited toilets, and best not having to endure painful snores. Breakfast was a refreshing change, considering that I have not have any proper meals for the last 18 hours, surviving on a tube of Pringles crisps which I finished all. The morning sun was barely visible, blocked by a thick layer of fog, as I strolled in the direction of the bus station. I was encouraged as a small group started to form for the bus that is due to arrive at 10.05am. The 30km journey to Kemi took about half an hour and the train station is just a short walk across the other side of the road.

Started to chat to a couple who took the same bus as well at the station - husband was Thai who married a Finn and are living in Helsinki after 5 years working together in Bangkok; a modern day love story of fate bringing 2 people from such extremes together. Glad to have some locals to chat to on the way down south. Had my first Finnish food - meat balls with mash potato on the train - hang on, I thought that was Swedish? Anyway, it tasted rather good as it was nicely made hot before serving although it was a pricey €9.40. Was rather embarrassed to find out that Finland has been using Euros for almost 10 years now instead of Finnish Marks.

Managed to catch a few video podcasts under the series "Magnum in Motion", highlighting the best photographers in the world and their creations. I find it interesting as it doesn't necessarily just discuss about photography but also about the society and environment in the creation of those pictures.

Due to the delay from yesterday, I was unable to stop by Tampere today. Had wanted to visit it to see how the city is like since it brands itself as the first Fairtrade city in Finland. Instead, I have been sitting on the train for the past 9 hours, staring at countless laptops in front of me as they attempt to pass time by watching movies. Arrived in very windy Helsinki and spent an hour getting to the correct ferry terminal (after I went to the wrong one the first time round and had to track across the city center). The ship is quite luxurious and even have free WiFi onboard as it crosses the Gulf of Finland, although it is so painfully slow that you give up after 10min. If you feel posh, you can choose to take a helicopter and arrive in Tallinn in 18min instead of the usual 2 hours.

Checked into Vru Backpackers, can't wait to check out this town in the morning. Sorry, no photos in today's post, need to catch up on some sleep before leaving for Russia later tonight.