Three days into my trip and I’m still breathing while the adrenaline is flowing thru every single vain of my body. Right now I’m on a night-train heading to Moscow- a train without any separate rooms, just bunk beds and an aisle separating them. In other words, crowded and hot!
After a bumpy start – to say the least – I’ve spent two magical days in St. Petersburg. The city is beautiful and filled with architecture that stretches from pre 1800 to 2060 (roughly estimated). You can actually move from 1860 to 2060 by just walking thru a door, from the street into a high tech, futuristic mall. How did I end up there? Well, at the ground floor you find a Starbucks copycat (read: wannabe), but I’ll give them kudos for good coffee and a need-to-have mug (not a good start for a backpacker with no room in her backpack for a really nice mug). The most amazing sight in St. Petersburg is beyond any doubt the Hermitage (the winter palace). If you ever have a couple of hours in St. Petersburg then they should be spent wandering around this stunning building. I’m going to do my best the entire journey to try to find a word fitting and worthy of describing how breathtaking and AMAZING it is. The building itself from the outside is a quite sight, and it’s just a soft warm-up to what’s waiting inside. There’s an enormous art-collection like nothing I’ve ever seen before (and I’m not that attentive towards art), and the building inside is even more beautiful. The ceiling and the floor is a piece of art itself, and wherever you turned your head a breathtaking sight will meet the eye. Also, the very thought of walking in the same steps as the grand tsar makes a chill go down your spine. By best tip is to make sure to get a map (speaking from experience since I did not) because the building is huge and has a at least two connecting hallways for every room you enter.
I also had the pleasure and excitement of going to a soccer game in the Russian Premier League between St. Petersburg Zenit – FK Tom’ Tomsk which ended 2-0. The game had it all: great play, two fine goals, a correctly annulled goal, two red cards, a stop in the game due to the reason that the entire stadium was covered in white smoke after the supporters had lit some fireworks. The stadium was packed (50 000 ppl) and the supporters were chanting non-stop. The experience of an entire stadium singing the Russian national anthem was quite something, and after a couple of marvelous days in St. Petersburg it was a moving moment. Previous that day we went to the memorial sight of the Second World War, located only 9 km from where the front line in Leningrad actually was. The monument was massive with a 48 meter high stone pole in the background of two soldiers. Behind the pole was a 40 m round circle with several eternal burning flames and in the middle an incredibly emotionally moving statue of the sufferings the war caused. It was gripping, and the most breathtaking factor was the music playing. The square is located in the middle of a densely trafficated area, but it all turned quiet due to the atmosphere the monument created. We later found out that the music being played was the only sound one heard on the radio during the entire war. Needless to say, it strengthened the impression further. It makes one feel somewhat small, eternally grateful and proud in an unexplainable way. To see a country honoring the fallen and the victims of the war in such a subtle and respectable way will make you look at the world in a different perspective, at least for a minute or two.
As I’ve tried to express, St. Petersburg was great. Although, getting to St. Petersburg was not as great… I left Kristiansand on Thursday morning at 0620 on the plane to Copenhagen. From there on I was suppose to get the plane to St. Petersburg which left at 0935. Knowing there was a Starbucks at the airport, I went to the directory to locate the love of my life: Starbucks. I got my Starbucks and I felt right at home; the world was finally in sync again. From there on I strolled towards my flight and sat down to wait to board. We got into the waiting area, and it didn’t take me long to realize that this plane was not going anywhere. There were people running around, some on-loading and some off-loading the bags, people shaking their heads and the captain and its crew getting shipped off in a mini-van when arrived. My diagnosis was right; there was a technical error with the plane and they didn’t have the spare part. So now what? Re-book. The result was a fully booked plane jogging towards the service desk where we all managed to get booked onto another flight leaving just an hour later thru Moscow. By the time I got re-booked the plane was already suppose to have left, but they had held it back so that we all would make it if we ran like crazy towards the gate, which of course was at the other side of the airport (I’m almost convinced they do that just for their own amusement). I got to the plane all sweaty, but I made it (and of course it didn’t leave for another 30 minutes). The flight to Moscow went by smoothly as I ended up next to another Norwegian who also was suppose to already be on his way to St. Petersburg. So we got to Moscow and we all had gotten quite mixed messages from SAS when we re-booked. Some were told that we had to check in again, others were told that our bags would be transferred directly to St. Petersburg, while some weren’t given any information. Since standard procedure is that you have to pick up your bags when you enter the country where you’re final destination is located, go thru customs and check them back in again. This, of course, also turned out to be the way to go about it. We get to the baggage claim area, patiently waiting for our bags which didn’t turn up. Not only did we not get our bags, but we didn’t know what time our next plane left either or which air carrier it was. It turned out that we were about 15 people who originally were on the St. Petersburg flight who didn’t get our bags, which was both comforting and disturbing at the same time. We turned to the lost and found helpdesk with a fools hope that the lady would be able to help us. She, like all Russians it seems, did not speak English. Luckily one of my fellow passengers spoke both Russian and English which automatically made her the translator. The lady started checking where our bags were in the system, and it turned out they weren’t in the system at all! At that point I started getting chills and I could almost see my travel plans fly away with our plane to St. Petersburg, which we obviously didn’t catch. After arguing back and forth with the lady at lost and found, one of the passengers suddenly found his bag amongst the bags coming from the Vienna flight (!?). A small joyous chaos broke out, and I personally let out a heartfelt little squeak when I saw my bag at the end of the baggage belt. After about an hour of stress our bags turned up, but we still had to hope for another plane leaving for St. Petersburg later that evening. We figured out who our air carrier was – we were a small horde of upset, relieved and tired passengers by now – and went to rebook once again. Thankfully there was a plane leaving in a couple of hours (1915 to be exact). It goes without saying that we were all a bit anxious when checking in our bags, not certain if they’d end up in St. Petersburg or Minsk for that matter. The plane came, picked us up and left, more or less according to schedule, and I fell asleep before we left the ground and woke up as we took of banging my head against the window. We finally got to St. Petersburg and despite our worries, our bags turned up one by one. Now the last leg was how to get to the hotel. The last thing I felt like doing at that point was start to figure out the St. Petersburg metro written in Cyrillic letters. The Norwegian, Lars Erik, I had travelled with all the way from Copenhagen thru despair, frustration, joy and relief, was on a business trip and had a driver picking him up. He was kind enough to offer to have the driver drop me of at the hotel, even thou it wasn’t on their way. What a lifesaver! So at the end, I got to the hotel despite all the unpleasant hinders along the way, thou 8 hours later than planned.
To my surprise someone had left a note for me at the hotel (a fellow traveler on the Trans-Siberian) who wondered if I wanted to grab dinner with him when I arrived. As soon as I got into the room I gave him a call, pretty much saying: “hey, are you still up for dinner or a drink? I need to get out of the hotel!” Amazingly enough he didn’t consider me a complete lunatic regarding the phone call, so of we went to an Irish bar close by where we had good beer and great fun. The rest, so far, is history.
My conclusion of the 16 hour long travel from Kristiansand to St. Petersburg is that things can only be looking up from now on. I’ve had my share of bad luck for a while and I’m more likely to not lose my calm if something like this is to happen again.
Thank goodness thou I’m not flying again before I get to India ;)
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