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January 4 - 7
Waking up after no sleep again, the nerves had set in a little bit more. Jamie and Emma made us breakfast of bacon and eggy bread and took us to the station it was a sad farewell. as they were the last of our friends to say goodbye to.
We gave them both a big hug, our front back packs getting in the way and we set off on our way. We caught a plane from Gatwick to St Petersburg with a stop over in Leningrad for a few hours. When we landed it was so cold that the plane skidded on the runway.
It took us ages to get through customs, about half an hour each, I really thought they weren't going to let us in and I think they thought Adam had a weapon on him because he was accosted for a very long time.
In the airport we learnt our first and most important word, biva, which means beer. Yum.
We are arrived in St Petersburg at 2.20am and were picked up by our hostel. We spent a few hours kipping in the hostel and then had to check out at 11am. We got a cab to our organised hostel, Na Sadovoy Hostel. It looked like a half way house, it was full of miserable Russain men shuffling about in flip flops, but it did the trick.
We had three beds between Adam and I and a television. We dropped our stuff off and went to find a currency exchange place. We walked for about an hour before we found one. I could'nt feel my legs and bum, it was cold. We walked back to the hostel as quickly as we could and crawled into bed to warm up.
We arose at 4.45pm and headed upstairs to meet our fellow travellers for the next few weeks on the vodkatrain. I hoped desperately that they would be a good laugh.
Our group consisted of Rolf, a Dutch banker on a six month sebatical, John, an Aussie, Nichola, who had just quit her job as a successful graphic designer, and two soon to be students, Adam and Hugh. I was quite insipred by Hugh and Adam partaking in the trip, at their age there was no way on earth I would be prepared for such a trip.
Everyone seemed really nice if not a bit awkward at first. We spent our days in St Petersburg experiencing the Russian culture, food and drink of course with the help of our honcho, Marsha. A honcho being a young local who helps the group find the grip of the city. She was really nice and we were free to do what ever we wanted, which was good for some couple time occasionally.
St Petersburg was really cold, reaching temperatures of -20 at some points. It is a really small city with a population of four million. The buildings were very European , but the weather made everything look so bleak. It went dark at 4pm, I liked it though.
The men went about in demins and track suits and the women in huge boots and real fur coats. It was really surreal. They all looked so miserable all the time, but if you took you time out to try and connect with them in their language a whole different person came through.
We didn't see all the sights I would have liked to because they were too far out, but we did get to see the State Hermitage Museum, which houses half of Catherine the Great's art collection. It is one of the biggest museums in the world. The collection was incredible, but the building was more impressive. It used to be the Royal families Winter Palace.
We also checked out the cinema and an ice hockey game. We watched St Petersburg versus Minsk. It was ok, but I have seen better matches.
We left St Petersburg at 11pm on the overnight train to Moscow. I had been looking forward to the train the most, it gave us the opportunity to get to know our group a bit better. We shared four birth train with Nichola and John. It looked liked quite a sueeze at first with all our luggage, but it was ok once we had got settled.
There was a crazy Russian man who came round with a buxket selling crisps and beer and kept trying to fob vodka off on us. I still can't believe we have'nt had any yet!
We watched the trees covered with snow go past for a few hours and then fell asleep at 4.30am. We were rudely awakened at 6am by the train conductor as we were pulling into the suburbs of Moscow...
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