Hey guys and girls,

Ok, we've just arrived in moscow after spending the night on a sleeper train from St.Petersburg. It took about 10 hours but we did have a cabin with beds in so all managed to get a pretty good night sleep!

But going back to finland, we left For turku on the 21st, but found it to be quite wet, dull and grey, with not much to do there! It was the old capitla of finland, but not much seemed to be happening there, but im sure the weather didnt help our outlook on the place! luckily we only had one night there so were up and off out the next day to Jyaskyla. This is a smaller town, but is home to Alvar Alto, a world famous Finnish Architect. We saw loads of his buildings there and also went into the Alto Museum. which was cool. (pictures to follow soon)

The following day we headed back early to Helsinki as we had an early afternoon train to catch to St.Petersburg. This was more of a travelling day, as we had long distances to travel between each cities.

The train into Russia was something a bit different. A guard stood by each carriage welcoming you on, (if you could understand russian that is) and we were served a free beer and snacks on board. It arrived quite late into St.Pete's, and buy the time we have negotiated the Metro System we ended up looking for our hostel well gone midnight. Although it was on a main road, there was know signs and the directions were a little be grey in some areas. eventually we spoke to some locals who spoke "small" english, but they phoned the hostel and liturally walked us to the door! (and who thought all russians werent friendly!) The hostel looked very shady from the outside and even the enterance hall to the third floor left a lot to be desired! But upon opening the hostel door it turned out to be quite nice inside. Even had to take our shoes off before we got inside, although that does seem like a common thing in russia! We were all tired so headed straight to bed!

St.pete's in the morning seemed like a compleetly differnt place. Not so scarey as it was viewing it the night before, so we headed into the main centre to find all the tourist spots. All the catherdrals and church's have gold spires and domes, and the grandure of all most all the buildings are amazing! Walking towards the main centre though, we encountered probably no less than 20 fully dressed officals, be it army, police or KGB who knows, but there are loads of them here!!! Even the Metro system has police and many other state workers that patrol, clean and generally supervise the whole system. The metro is quite ornate though and everyones seems to use it as its so cheap. (it cost us around 3 quid for 10 journeys)

Above ground I (karl) found St.petersburg a really nice city. The biggest we have been to so far but the scale of the buildings we fantastic and the amount of gold on buildings were incrediable. Dont think clem was impressed that much of St.petes, but russia is starting to warm on her. Sam like me also enjoyed st.pete.

We also brought some gifts in a local market, where they did speak some english, but was our first experince of haggling! sam manged to somehow get a cheap koscak hat from me bartering for one that i wanted! i didnt end up getting one although sam get his! every time i wanted to lower my price, he took money off sams! can you believe it! Fingers crossed i will pick one up in moscow or somewhere along the trans-siberian route! But they are really nice and warm, real fur too (sorry to all those eco-warriers out there)

After trying very hard to get a ticket to moscow we managed to enlist some help from a local russian in the Q. It ment leaving a night early from St.petes but got us in at a good time to Mosco, we also got our money back from the hostel for cancelling a nite which was a bonus!

We meet a Kiwi couple doing a similar route as us but in reverse! so they gave us some good tips for the long train journe, like take loads of vodka because thats what you do on the long train journeys when you meet random russian people!

Eventually boarded the 00.20 from St.petersburg and got into Moscow this morning at around 09.20! Again found it quite difficult to find the hostel as the directions and signage leaves a little to be desired! So we eneded up strolling around with 2 other chaps (from hong kong and singapore) trying to find this hostel!

Thats about it for now! having a rest day today, just catching up on blogs, emails and lots of washing in preperation for 3 weeks through siberia!

Its cold in russia but nothing to bad. About 5/6 degrees now, so no snow yet, but the Kiwi's said it had just started to snow siberia so cold times ahead! aparently as low as -25!!

Generally we have found Russia is a lot different to Scandinavia mainly because of the langauge barrier in terms of travelling, but you can start to see the merge in eastern and western cultures!

Looking forward to a few days sightseeing in moscow mainly being red square, Lenin Museoleum and the Kremlin to name a few!

Think thats all for now! picture will follow

All thats left to say is

From Russia with Love

xxxx