Police raid nightclub, detain dozens, no reasons given.
September 18th, 2008Welcome to Russia and awesome newspaper headlines. The title of this entry was just below the fold on the free English paper that you find around town. Others beauties include Police Bust Estonian Vodka Pipeline Gang, an article I initially ignored thinking it was merely a euphemism for some smuggling ring blah blah boring; but no it was an actual 2km pipeline from some illegal stills in Russia across the border to Estonia where, as a result of joining the EU, vodka prices have skyrocketed making the product a prime target for mafia types. The best part is that it’s not the first one they’ve found, quite how you secretly lay a 2km pipeline across a border I’m not sure. The main headline was Condeleeza Rice embarrassing herself calling Russia irrelevant, you’d think with all those Russian experts they still have knocking around over there they’d be able to come up with some accurate analysis. Read the rest of this entry »
Cultural grind
September 17th, 2008All I can recall of Tuesday through to mid afternoon is lying of my top bunk wishing the world would stop trying to force its way into my head in quite so insistent a manner. With a pressing list of cultural sights to be seen in a city that was already making a very strong case to be included in a favourites list this was no occasion to sit at home and feel sorry for myself. So when Rdoc and Arny had returned from lunch we ventured out into the, hopefully unseasonably, cold. Read the rest of this entry »
Fine(d) in St Petersburg
September 15th, 2008Less than an hour in Russia proper and I have already been fined by a very severe looking railway official. The crime was taking a photo of an, on reflection kind of average, wall mosaic of Lenin. The site Finland Station where the great leader had arrived back to from his exile, gave a speech on a tank and proceeded on to do some stuff that you can read about elsewhere. The punishment 100 roubles, a sixth of the money that we had just changed upon arrival. The sequence of events was as simple as get off train from Helsinki, drag others outside to take photo of statue of Lenin on spot of aforementioned speech, change money, line up for subway tokens, pull out camera, get pulled by the scruff of the neck into a booth filled with unidentifiably uniformed officials, have piece of paper shoved under nose explaining offense and amount of fine, try and explain that personally I have no money on me a situation that’s not covered by my phrasebook, get shouted at, eventually wave over others who thankfully post my bail. Read the rest of this entry »
Come have a sow-na
September 14th, 2008This is a lesson in how to forget a city. With Russia dominating the planning and preparation, the regionalism of the Baltic being the first stop, the only thought that had gone into Helsinki was that there is a ferry there from Tallinn and a train out to St Petersburg. So ignorant was I that it was a surprise to find that Finland uses the Euro.
The RoRo ferry over was pretty rough and not that fun, just like the Interislander a route which this boat will probably be used for in the near future, apart from the last bit as you come into the harbour and pass these cool little islands with cute wee houses on them.
One of these islands is apparently a big tourist destination but it is called Suomenlinna which sounds a lot like semolina which is a dessert I detested as a kid and we knew nothing about it so chances of a visit were not good. We were about the only ones not walking off with the maximum allowance of duty free, apparently people make this trip return just to buy booze as even with the price of the ferry it’s still cheaper than the local bottlie. No need for us though as the bounty of Russia was on the horizon. Read the rest of this entry »
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