Estonia and Russia !!!!!

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January 19, 2008

I only have the computer for a minute so this will be very short. We are well and in
St. Petersburg, Russia!!!!! The city is so beautiful I can’t believe it! We are going to the Hermitage which is only a 5 minute walk from our Hosetl located on Nevsky Street. Just wanted to let you all know we are good, healthy, and doing well. Will write more later when I have time. Ned

January 20, 2008

Just another quick note - we are very busy.

I am in the Hermitage now and they have computers so I figured I’d get this out while I can.
While there were Internet Cafes with computers everywhere in England, Norway and Estonia they are very scarce in St. Petersburg.

We are headed to Moscow tonight on the overnight train and then departing on the trans Siberian on Tuesday at midnight!!!!! We will travel on the train for 7 days all the way to the Pacific coast and Vladivostok, then back towards Tuva and Lake Baikal, then on into Mongolia.

So much has happened since leaving Norway. As you know this is not a preplanned trip, at least not down to the final detail, so sometimes places we intend to go we will not get to in the end. We decided that going to Sweden and the Ice Hotel would take us way out of our way and the primary purpose of this trip which is to travel across Russia on the Trans Siberian Railway. So we took a ferry from Oslo to Tallinn, Estonia.

Estonia was great, a beautiful bustling city, very vibrant with amazing medieval sections of the city still intact. We spent a few days there walking around the medieval city, easting the local food and visiting the local night life. Estonia is so alive and as I was told by a waitress I met over the holidays who was from Estonia, everyone wanted to practice their English on us!! Tallinn is a great city to visit, very compact old city and easy to walk almost anywhere you want to go.

We then took a rather sketchy overnight bus to Russia. We hit the border around 2 am and all filed out into this drab building where we were sent thru customs and immigration. We have seen very few to no other travelers/tourists....good and bad, it is finally harder to communicate, people still speak English here and there, but not like the other countries we have been to. When we were buying the ticket to Moscow it was a real challenge. No more English signs or instructions at all. Luckily a very nice Russian lady helped us thru the process otherwise it would have been really hard!!!! Even with her help it was not easy , but it will make a good story, as will all of our experiences so far.

Oops - Gotta go, there is a 20 minute time limit on the computers here and we have lots to see here in the Hermitage before it closes. Hopefully we will have internet at our hostel in Moscow so I can write more and hopefully send some more pictures.

Ned

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