The wonderful world of open Wifi

Wednesday 22nd September
Yipee!! I have managed to blag free wifi from someone close to our home stay so I can finally take some time to update this thing properly.

It has been nothing short of strange over the past week, we have seen loads and met some of the nicest / strangest people Russia has to offer.

To take it from the beginning we landed in St Petersberg on Monday 13th and were promptly met be Sergei at the airport, he was to be our tour guide for the following day and had dubious hygeine standards. First stop was our Home Stay, a phrase that up until then had meant absolutely nothing to me but basically meant that we would be couch surfing with random people. Sounds exciting?

Wrong, its down right scary, we were shown a room by Margaret a woman who's approach to learning English seems to have been the same as her approach to interior decorating, bascally why bother? We did have some interesting conversations with her though, mostly one sided in fairness but somehow we managed to glean enough information for us to get out of there as quickly as possible, drink as much as possible and find our way back there again with a new inhebriated language that seemed to offer us more success with our host.

We all kept one eye open throughout the night just in case we were in the company of an axe murderer and were startled to be woken by Margaret, knife in hand, announcing that breakfast was ready. She could have also been saying a variety of other phrases but when some large Russian with a knife is pointing towards the kitchen you tend not to ask too many questions.

Sergei picked us up at 10:00 and provided a very thorough tour of the city, he went into great detail about everything and we promptly absorbed next to nothing that was said due to lack of sleep and a desire at that stage to be anywhere else. To the casual passer by it must have looked as though the janitor from the mental health institution was ferrying three mental patients around town for their last look at freedom.

St Petersberg itself is absolutely beautiful though, the sun was shining, there seemed to be an endless supply of tourist attractions and we instantly felt a little more relaxed once the tour had finished. We continued on foot to some of the major sites and by this stage Tyler had adopted the persona of David Bailey, finding creative ways of taking photos everywhere we went, his masterpiece though must have been his ability to stand at the top step of St Isaac's cathedral and take a close up of the bottom step without moving. Yep, he dropped the camera down 20 flights of stairs and after 1 days use ended his photography career in a single flash.

Before we left him Sergei offered us tickets to a "real Russian culture show" so we snapped at the chance.
We managed to find our way there with minimal difficulty and had our first taste of vodka (yum) and caviar (yuck), quickly followed by copious amounts of coke to remove the lingering taste from our mouths. The show itself was pretty impressive, lots of singing dancing etc, unfortunately one of the ladies dragged me up on stage and proceeded to prance me around like a fat english tourist, much to the delight of the rest of the audience. the finale of the show was a man wearing a costume of two eskimo wrestlers who pounced onto the crowd with wreckless abandon and seemed to have a fond effection for Tyler (who will be emotionally scarred for the rest of his life).

In the morning we got our tickets to Moscow and headed to the station, expecting a beaten up old diesel locomotive we were quite shocked to be presented with one of their new bullet trains. It flew into Moscow in no time at all and we were met by some random guy who didnt speak English, didnt want to be there and didnt care if we made it to our homestay or not.

In hindsight that may have been a bonus as none of us slept over the next three days, I still cant put my finger on exactly why but it had that sort of crack den come crime scene sort of feel to it. The hosts were very nice and one spoke a little english which enabled us to at least get the address of the apartment and exit routes should we need them in a hurry! They even gave us our own set of keys so we could come and go as we pleased, and go we did, in fact we went pretty much as soon as we woke and returned when we needed somewhere to lie down!

Moscow was fun, we had a walking tour organised and Kate our guide was really friendly and happy to accomodate our stupid questions, namely how do you say thank you, whats that building, how do you say thank you, etc. We have the worst memory for languages so despite being told anything 100 times it went in one ear and out the other, however by utlising the good old point and shout technique that we had adopted early on we managed to get through without issue.

Once again the weather was fantastic and we spent the majority of our time around red square, watching infinate brides prance around in their wedding dresses getting their 6 hour photo shoots. It seems it is pretty traditional to get married early and then spend the entire day with a photographer getting you to pose in very weird settings, I guess after which they quickly set off to the nearest Russian boozer to get shitface on cheap vodka.

Actually Moscow seems to be really into their wedding traditions, we passed a bridge that had locks up and down the entire stretch of wrought iron with the names of the brides and grooms emblazooned on them.
In the center of the the red square is a plaque( the true center of Moscow), it is considered lucky to stand on this and throw coins over your shoulder whilst making a wish. Funnier still were the old ladies who scramble to pick up the thrown coins (free money) most amsuing to watch, these ladies I nicknamed Bingo buddies (they looked like little old ladies who would go to bingo)

Back on the metro (which is very cheap you only pay once for any journey about 29r) we make our way onto the trans-mongolian train, backpacks seamed heavy at this stage, could we find the platform, no we walked around for what seamed like hours and shoved our tickets at the faces of random people in the vain hope that they could point us in the correct direction. Finally we get their, drop our bags on the platform and turn to find an english couple standing right next to us. They too have just stared there gap year and unbelievably we find out the they live in Aspley Guise just 5mins from us, finnally someone we can talk to.
Darren has put his back out luckily he can rest for 24 hours

The train compartments are comfortable and we were lucky enough on this leg not to have to share. Bedding is provided for us and we are so glad that we dumped the expensive sleeping bags in cranfield. Everyone on the train seams friendly including the nosiy 3 year old who seems to have taken to Tyler much more than he would like (he has decided that he dosen't want a younger brother, especially a Russian one).

The carriage itself is clean and there is far more room than we expected especially for storage. This particular train has toilets but no showers but by now we are getting used to looking rough. Each train carrage is joined by a piece of metal on the floor which Tyler loved and made a game of jumping from carriage to carriage. The buffet car was only 2 carriages down so not too far to walk. No one speaks English so to order Tyler food I just pointed to the menu and prayed, luck was on our side it was beef and fries, feel like I have cracked the Russian language,not!

Well the train rattled and groaned all night so none of us got much sleep, it wasnt until the next day that we remembered that we all had ear plugs in our bags so we will definately be using these next time.

We arrived in Perm to be met yet again by a randon Russian man and pointed to a car that took us to the next home stay. Catalina was the most enthusiatic out of all our hosts, her English was great but we yet again felt uncomfortable, the front door was locked and this time we had no key to open it, bloody health and saftey. Our host insisted on cooking our tea ( at extra cost) which consisted of a lovely chicken caserol and salad, there was however an item we did'nt reconise which turned out to be fish pie (which is just wrong), so we left it.

Perm is an industrial town, during the war they made all the weapons for Russia so to keep the location secret the Russians remade all the maps so that Perm did not exsist, then after the war it was put back on the map. Perm also supplies 35% of the world with salt. we went on a day trip to Perm 36 this is a very interesting Gulag (Russia prisoner of war camp).

We are now on our way back onto the train for 3 days, we have bought food supplies in case we are not brave enough to use the buffet car.

Take care all!

Darren & Pauline