Helsinki - St Petersburg

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So after a night of pure bliss I awoke at 7:00am to have some breakfast and salvage my kit from the three lockers that I had benn forced to use by my new flatmates. From the ferry I walked into the centre in around half an hour and headed for the rail terminal. Ideally I wanted to cross into St.Petersburg for the early morning but I was told that the lunchtime train would arrive at 10:30 local time - which left it a bit late but I was keen to push on and so took the opportunity to leave early. This left me enough time to quickly visit some of the treasures of Helsinki - particularly Finlandia Hall and the Church of the Light. Unfortunately this time I would not be able to get out to the university campus where there are a number of great spaces to see - but nevermind - once again the sun was following me and I had not seen rain since London. After touring I made my way back to the station and with distinct visions of ending up face down on a platform with an AK47 pointing at me I tried to remember how to count to ten in Russian so that I could at least ask for a headstart! The beautiful landscape of Finland with the uniform farm buidings all in matching red rolled past the window for many hours. The train was russian though and the attendant also russian but an english speaker which helped. After an hour a young girl pushing a trolley growled something at me in russian - I have no idea what she said but I understood instantly that she would and could disable me at any time that she choose to - so I smiled politely and started to really think about getting off the train. In the end the border crossing turned out to be a non-event, everything was very calm and a lady who looked like the lead actress in From Russia with Love collected my passport along with all the other travellers before heading for a conference at the back of the train. In the meantime a few heavies appeared and monitored us - in case we decided to use the fruit crumble yougurt as a chemical weapon or something - and I got some particularly cold stares from a guy who seriously had a scar from his forehead to his chin that crossed his eye! I quickly disarmed the fruit crumble in case it was this type of product that had caused the injury and he quickly calmed down. After a while my passport was returned and we were on our way. The only noticeable thing was the break of the uniform Helsinki farmhouse into a much more diverse range of shacks and some well maintained farm houses. The landscape was steadily forest with breaks for farms and along the way I saw my first signs of snow which had me reaching for the woolly tights but again the sun has kept on chasing me. Finally we rocked into St Petersburg right on cue, but there was no grand station building just a long walk down a dark platform with many strange looking individuals before finally reaching a station building at the bottom of the platform and a main hall. Stepping out of the station it became clear that Trains in Russia are not located in the center of town - but rather in the middle of nowhere. So I lumped my kit across town again looking for the signs of dangerous ice falling from the roofs and apparently killing seven people a year in St.Petersburg to find no sign of snow at all.

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Photos

Me!
Still not mastered the art of diy photography

Finalndia Hall
The slight cupping on the marble is not intentional but a result of the reaction to freezing weather - I know because a finnish architect told me!

A striking building in the sun!
Another bright sunny day!!!

Church of the Light
Partial exterior

Outside Helsinki Train Station
Next stop Russia