Russia: St Petersburg (Arrival)
Finally, going to Russia! I had been looking forward to this since coming to Sweden & after Texiang told me abt his bagpacking adventure in Russia. So here I was, on this Russia road trip organized by a Finnish travel agency. There were 120 particpants in all, mostly exchange students studying in various parts of Sweden.
It cost 60€ for me to get a Russia visa. Yes, everyone needs to get a visa to just enter the country. The visa prices vary noticeably with nationalities. And you can easily gauge the relationship b/w Russia and that country according to the visa prices eg Visa for Americans cost 75€ but only 10€ for Polish
We took Viking Line overnight to Turku, Finland and from there we took a 14-hours drive to St Petersburg.
It was a drowsy, long bus ride whereby all of us drifted hazily in & out of sleep. Fortunately, there were a number of stops along the way. At one of the stops, 2 strangers got up the bus offering to trade Russian roubles for euros with the exchange rates written on his palm.
At another, parked vans opened up to sell liquor and cigarettes. Apparently, these were all illegal but who cares, especially when they offer very decent rates.
At first sight, Russia doesn't seem that much different from other European countries. There were big ads displayed, including Coca-cola. But all the words were Russian Cyrillic alphabets eg. laterally inverted N and R. Upon arrival in St Petersburg, one thing that hits u immediately upon getting off the bus is how foul the air smell. It's not a problem pertaining to only St Petersburg but to all major Russian cities. Thick smoke from heavy industries, exhausts from automobiles and blatant disregard for the environment has made the air so foul-smelling that the air pollution is "ten times the accepted safety levels".
After dumping our luggage at Hotel Sovetskaya, we(Josef, Cecilia, Hsien, Rashid and I) then explored St Petersburg on foot. A mixture of rain and light snow fell from the sky. Josef our Swedish bus group leader commented that the buildings look really nice. I replied that they probably looked nicer at night than in the day cos it seems that the Russians sure know how to use lighting effect to enhance the appearance of the facade of the buildings.
Around 2am, We managed to catch the raising of bridge across the Neva river(main river in city). At the last moments there were still cars trying to zoom across the bridge but were turned away by the Russian police.
It cost 60€ for me to get a Russia visa. Yes, everyone needs to get a visa to just enter the country. The visa prices vary noticeably with nationalities. And you can easily gauge the relationship b/w Russia and that country according to the visa prices eg Visa for Americans cost 75€ but only 10€ for Polish
We took Viking Line overnight to Turku, Finland and from there we took a 14-hours drive to St Petersburg.
It was a drowsy, long bus ride whereby all of us drifted hazily in & out of sleep. Fortunately, there were a number of stops along the way. At one of the stops, 2 strangers got up the bus offering to trade Russian roubles for euros with the exchange rates written on his palm.
At another, parked vans opened up to sell liquor and cigarettes. Apparently, these were all illegal but who cares, especially when they offer very decent rates.
At first sight, Russia doesn't seem that much different from other European countries. There were big ads displayed, including Coca-cola. But all the words were Russian Cyrillic alphabets eg. laterally inverted N and R. Upon arrival in St Petersburg, one thing that hits u immediately upon getting off the bus is how foul the air smell. It's not a problem pertaining to only St Petersburg but to all major Russian cities. Thick smoke from heavy industries, exhausts from automobiles and blatant disregard for the environment has made the air so foul-smelling that the air pollution is "ten times the accepted safety levels".
After dumping our luggage at Hotel Sovetskaya, we(Josef, Cecilia, Hsien, Rashid and I) then explored St Petersburg on foot. A mixture of rain and light snow fell from the sky. Josef our Swedish bus group leader commented that the buildings look really nice. I replied that they probably looked nicer at night than in the day cos it seems that the Russians sure know how to use lighting effect to enhance the appearance of the facade of the buildings.
Around 2am, We managed to catch the raising of bridge across the Neva river(main river in city). At the last moments there were still cars trying to zoom across the bridge but were turned away by the Russian police.
posted by Kaiz at 4:29 PM
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