To Russia!

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Tuesday 24th June

The taxi-van had picked us up and dropped us at the bus stop when Owen realised his camera-bag was missing. I had done the "last check" of our rooms at the hotel and hadn't spotted it. We convinced the driver to take Owen back to check, but they returned empty-handed. On reflection, Owen thought he had left it at the Olde Hansa on a bench alongside our table (in the dark). We couldn't contact the restaurant as it didn't open till 12 (we were leaving Tallinn at 10.15) and the lady from the Esperance Travel (not Maal, but a lady from the office, not a guide) didn't seem too keen on following it up for us.

(Later, while we were in St Petersburg, Owen rang the hotel in Estonia, to check if anyone at Olde Hansa had handed the camera and bag in (we did it via the hotel as at least all the receptionists spoke at least some English). Nobody did. Unfortunately, due to having 2GB cards, Owen had not downloaded images from his camera since Stirling; which should explain why there is a slight paucity of photos in the last few blogs. We reflected that it could've been worse as up until we returned the car in Edinburgh, the NavMan had been carried in his commodious camera bag, but the Navman was now safely stowed in one of the large bags.)

Back to the bus... The bus was not a luxury coach, such as we had had on the Highland trip, but nor was it an old bone-rattler. Outwardly it looked very much like a luxury tour coach but the inside furnishings were not quite of the same standard although they were still very comfortable. We stored almost all of our luggage in the compartment under the bus and hopped onboard. At the front of the bus, just above the driver's seat was an LED display which displayed the time (11.15, it was set to St. Petersburg time) and then a minute later showed the temperature in the bus (26o) and kept cycling through this sequence.

Outside, alongside the bus there seemed to be a rather volatile discussion between three passengers and the two bus drivers. The bus drivers kept waving sheets of paper at the passengers who responded with various degrees of anger and frustration. The passengers got on and turned out to be three Aussies cycling around Europe, the Baltic States, and now, Russia. Although they had disassembled their bikes, the bus drivers were not keen on taking them and were demanding a surcharge of 2€ per bike. They were not interested in larger amounts of Eeks (Eesti Kroon, the local coinage) nor Roubles (Russian monetary unit) but were only interested in "hard" currency, Euros.

It was still spitting rain outside (maybe that's the only sort of weather they have?) but was nothing like yesterday's downpour. The skies were grey and dark and there were sprinkles of rain early but it fined up later in the day.

We had a short chat with the Australians (Marion loaned them a Euro as they only had a 5 and much larger denominations), but the bus generally was fairly quiet. One unusual feature of the bus was that if you wanted to use the loo (which was alongside the side entrance), you had to parade down the bus and ask the relief driver to switch the light inside on.

Not far outside of Tallinn we saw "The Giant Water Buffalo". I have no idea why it was there or whether it was advertising something but there was this huge statue on a hill we passed.

The bus headed more or less due east paralleling the Gulf of Finland (which wasn't visible from the coach) but made a couple of detours inland to connect with other towns to pick up and drop off passengers.

At about the second stop a German couple who had bikes also wanted to board the bus for St. Petersburg. Again a lot of arguing and bus driver's shaking forms ensued. Two of the Aussies bike-riders alighted to try to help sort things out as they recognised the newcomers as a couple they had meant earlier on their tour. More loud explanations ensued along with even more violent form-waving. One of the Aussies got back on the bus and said that the drivers had upped the surcharge to 5€ a bike; claiming that they had made an error earlier. The Aussies chatted amongst themselves, worried that we might pick-up some more cyclists along the way and, that each time, the cost would increase!

Although the roads were of a very good quality, the Estonian countryside was fairly depressing. There were a lot less cultivated fields than we had seen throughout Europe, with about half the fields lying fallow. Much of the countryside was also covered by large copses of pines dotted about. The farmsteads we saw were quite small and appeared old and somewhat run down, although most of them were well away from the road so it was difficult to tell.

There was no doubt about the apartment blocks, however. They were 5 plus stories tall and, although you could see the bright colours they had been painted, the paint was peeling and the buildings generally run down. There were very few cars on the road (and very few in parking lots around the apartments as well), and what cars we did see were very small sedans. Estonian flags were very popular, perhaps due to the public holidays) and hung from many of the flagpoles that jutted out of the side of the buildings.

There were interesting sights along the way. We saw many wind turbines, which we had seen in every country we had visited. Australia has a long way to catch up when it comes to wind power; yellow-bellied parrot not withstanding. There were also a number of beehive shaped buildings which I took to be old-fashioned (almost medieval) smelters. I was also able to spot a stork's nest, complete with adult stork, alongside the road. I am happy to report that he/she didn't have a human baby dangling in a sling tied around his beak. We ran alongside a lake for a while, but, although it was to our south, I think we were too far north and it wasn't big enough to be Lake Peipus.

Around 1 o'clock we arrived at the border crossing at Narva. On the Estonian side is the Narva castle which stares across the river Narva at the Russian Ivangorod fortress on the other side. The immigration checkpoint is alongside the grounds of the Narva castle which is visible through the cyclone fencing. They looked like bland, almost wild, grassland.

An Estonian Official came onto the bus and collected our passports and entry forms. (You need a special visa to enter Russia which we had to obtain prior to leaving on the trip). Marion needed to have her Orkney jewellery inspected so that she could claim the VAT back. The official asked Marion to alight from the bus and come into the office with him. One of the Aussies said, "Oh well, we won't see her again; they'll keep her as a hostage."

He was wrong, however, as Marion reappeared about 10 minutes later. The interior of the coach was becoming somewhat unpleasant as the air-conditioning only functioned while the bus was moving and the windows didn't open; the temperature slowly rose to an uncomfortable 28o. Fifteen minutes more and the Estonian Official boarded the bus, returned our passports and the coach moved on. We drove over the river and downhill about 200m arriving at the Russian border checkpost. The bus pulled to a halt, a Russian soldier got on, gave us the greasy eyeball from the coach steps for about 5 seconds, and alighted; indicating that the door was to be shut.

We watched as a trickle of cars pulled up and were given a thorough search (usually involving emptying the boot), a walk by the occupants to one of the small processing offices and then continuing on. Sixty minutes later we were still sitting in a sealed coach at the same spot, although by then interior of the bus was getting quite sticky and stuffy at a very warm 31o. I guessed that this was par for the course as the two Russian drivers chatted unworriedly.

A different Russian soldier banged on the door and gave some curt orders to the drivers who told us to bring everything from the bus with us. Toting all our carry-on baggage we queued up to retrieve the luggage which had been stored under the coach; for some of the other passengers this included disassembled bicycles.

Weighed down with luggage all the passengers queued up inside a pretty drab building. One at a time we went to a small glassed-in window where a stern looking woman looked suspiciously at our pictures, on the Russian visa supplement that had been stapled into our passport in Australia, then looked suspiciously at us, and then, since the two seemed to match, grudgingly stamped our passport. About half-way through this procedure, the Russians decided it could be speeded up by opening a second window to process the coach passengers.

Owen, the last passenger to be processed, walked over to this second window, where his passport was taken and looked at by the uniformed official, who then let off a string of Russian at him. Owen was stunned for a moment, before replying "I'm sorry, I don't speak Russian." To this, the official, with a completely straight face asked "Why not?" As Owen searched for a reply, the man laughed, and waved him through the gate.

I am still bamboozled as to why we needed to remove all our belongings from the bus. In my instance only the large suitcase I was pulling was put through an x-ray machine. The rest of my luggage, as well as myself, was left unchecked; not even a metal detector to walk through. Owen, who was the last passenger processed, was waved through without anything being examined in anyway.

The bus had motored its way down to the far end of the building, so we replaced our bags in the luggage compartment and filed back onboard.

At this point the second driver took over piloting the coach. (Maybe one driver had an Estonian licence and the other a Russian one!). The only discernable difference between the Estonian side of the border and the Russian was the state of the roads. The Russian roads were narrower and full of potholes, otherwise the countryside was similar.

The other noticeable difference was the size of the cars. All around Europe (although less so in the UK) we had become accustomed to the fact that the majority of people drove small, often 2-door, cars. Indeed, one of Marion's difficulties in Europe was manoeuvring the station wagon along lanes and alleys that had been designed for smaller cars with tighter turning circles. But in Russia, almost at once, we began seeing much larger cars including Mercedes and BMWs.

The coach ride was monotonous and not very interesting until we got to the outskirts of St Petersburg. Here we began seeing "real" apartment buildings, 15 to 20 stories high. The "upwardly" mobile residents were obvious as their balconies were glassed in with windows which could be folded back, whereas the less fortunate just had bare concrete permanently open to the elements.

But what really struck us was the massive traffic jam that the bus was suddenly embroiled in. It is very hard to explain just what traffic jams are like in St Petersburg. First up, even though the road was multi-laned there were no lane markings, cars just nosed in wherever they felt like it. There were no lights at the massive intersections where a number of roads converged, so everyone just nosed their vehicles forward until they blocked cars coming in other directions and so could join the stream of cars (but since it was barely moving perhaps it should be called a queue). It was basically a giant game of "chicken" (which the bus was very good at due to its bulk).

We crawled through the backwaters of St Petersburg for around 2 hours, well behind our ETA. The parts of the town we were going through were dirty and rundown, but my main memory of arriving in St Petersburg is creeping along in the seemingly endless traffic jam.

St Petersburg has a tramway system and the other Aussies (some of whom obviously hailed from Melbourne) were amazed at the tram tracks; in a number of places they were contorted, and one would think unnavigable by a tram, while in other spots the two rails didn't meet, but there was a crease in the road for two or three metres joining the two sections together. This raised questions about the tramway system which would be answered later on.

Our bus was to terminate at St. Petersburg's main train station, but it was over an hour late. While the bus inched along we could hear a gentleman at the front of the bus becoming more and more agitated. Eventually he obtained a mobile phone (whether it was his own or another passenger's I couldn't tell) and began yelling into it at the top of his voice (obviously on the theory that even if the phone doesn't work, then the person at the other end might hear him anyway). The conversation was all in Russian so I don't know what was said, but he continued getting more and more heated under the collar until he eventually snapped the mobile shut. The train station was visible about 150m away down a small side road that the bus couldn't navigate. With a curt word or two to the driver the animated passenger was out the door and sprinting down the alley toward the train station, bag rolling slung over his shoulder. The bus crept slowly along to the road junction ahead.

We eventually got to the station about 15 mins of traffic jam later. We were about one hour late but our guide Olga had waited to meet us along with our driver Sergei. Olga was about 160cm (5' 2") tall, a little overweight, blond, with a longish face and a propensity for wearing sunglasses in all weathers. She spoke quite good, grammatically correct English with a slight Russian accent. Sergei was dark, of average height and build and spoke no English at all.

Rather than dodging busses and cars in the massive parking area in front of the station we were guided to a pedestrian underpass to get to the far side of the square where our van awaited us. It was a white, Chrysler people-mover van. He drove us to the Pushka Inn where we were staying during our time in St. Petersburg.

The Inn had the smallest lift I have ever seen. I doubt that Marion and I could've both fitted in (breathing in or not); so we were forced to send our luggage up in stages. The building was only three stories high, but we were on the 2nd (top) floor. The lift was also the slowest I have used on any occasion (Normally, Marion took the lift up and Owen and I would reach the top before the lift, without even trying); so getting the luggage upstairs took quite a while. This process was sped up as the porter, Owen and I carried some of the smaller bags up the stairs manually.

More worrying was the fact that although smoking was banned in the rooms each floor had a smoking area, near the lift and stairs, so you had to brave the polluted atmosphere to get to your room. Smoking was also allowed in the attached restaurant.

Our room was unusual in that it had a sloping roof and only one very small window up very high, but it did have three rather large skylights which adequately lit the room. The room also featured a full sized fridge, small stovetop, microwave, sink and coffee-making facilities. Unfortunately, we were unable to take full advantage of these facilities during our stay as super-markets in St Petersburg were not easy to find.

After settling in we used the Inn's restaurant downstairs and managed to find a table that was remote from the few smoking patrons. Owen was happy as they served his favourite Russian dish; pelmeni, Russian dumplings filled with beef and pork. When we have eaten the dish at Poff's (our favourite restaurant serving Russian/International meals- sadly now closed) it is normally served with sour cream and soy sauce (plus a touch of chilli for those who like hot food), whereas here it was served with sour cream and Thousand Islands Sauce.

Owen proclaimed the local pelmeni inferior to Poff's.

We retired to bed fairly early, tired from a couple of long days travelling.

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Photos

The Big Buffalo
Quite why there is a statue of a Buffalo on a hill in Estonia, we are not quite sure...

Landscape
Much of the Estonian landscape we passed was similar to this - fields of grass, waiting for crops.

Apartment blocks
Though brightly coloured, the apartment blocks we passed look very delapidated.