Chapter II: Great Siberia and Silk Road

-St. Petersburg

It was before 6:00 when we boarded the express train, Allegro, at Helsinki bound for east. The train slides out of the station soundlessly, and we start to feel the need for a morning nap when customs officer came around to check our passports. The Finnish officer check our status with a smile on his face and a gun on his waist, and seeing this certainly woke us up, but the newly stamped chop indicated that our departure procedure was completed.

We sit back and soon an announcement tells us that we are at Vyborg, the final Finland station on the border. Thetrains pulls out and as soon as it is at the top speed 5-6 officers in different uniform, with no smile walks into our car, one of them reaches the hand towards us and quietly but demandingly said, "passport". I guess this is the entry procedure. After thoroughly comparing our passports, visas, and our faces (well...especially mine) over and over again, we were officially admitted to Russia. 

Three and a half hour passed the departure, we arrived St. Petersburg, the cultural and historical capital of geographically largest nation. As we always do, we located lockers to leave our backpacks during the day, but with no English instruction. We asked a few people but no one spoke English. And so our actual journey begins. The 4th largest by population, the city loved by and inspired Russia's great artists, writers, and composers such as Dostoevsky and Chaikovsky. My first impression; European-style architecture surrounding open squares with large fountains, appeared to be a common atmosphere here.

We decided to first situate ourselves, but being illiterate, we looked for a cafe with a picture of a coffee cup. Hmm...КАФЕ...is this it? It took us some time and a whole lot of imagination to see РЕСТОРАН and be able to read restaurant out of it, but we decoded their alphabet by finding words we are familiar with. For example, we saw МАРКЕТ and it appeared to be a market, so Р is R. ВАНК is bank, so H is N, and so on. It is possible to guess some things but i would never know how ЕШИОКА ЕШИТО can be my name. 

We walked around all day, which was the best way to see the city, but since it was our first day to experience summer weather of over 30  degrees, or 85F, we were comfortably tired NY the end of the day. At night, we were invited by a local girl whom we met in Iceland, for more walk. The city appeared differently at this hour with building lit, especially temples which had majestic atmosphere. The main reason she brought us out at this hour is the opening of **** bridges over rivers and canals all over the city. At first, I was questioning what might be so special about it, but I was amazed by the number of people out by canalside, guys drinking and girls striking bizzare pose to take portraits. We ended up walking around for 3 hours, and slept in the next day.