Day 8

Sabrina where are you?

OUTLINE

• 8.30am arrive in Saint Petersburg. We leave our comfy sleeper for a noisy, cold, dirty, smokey city
• Discuss methods to reach our hostel – decide to march
• Arrive sweaty and tired at the small crumbling doorway entrance to hostel Sabrina
• Enjoy tea and jammy swiss roll while awaiting an English speaking taxi driver to take us to another Sabrina hostel. This one has a singing shower (?)
• 45 sleepy minutes later the crease faced, leather cap wearing crazy taxi driver shows up and we weave through busy traffic to our real hostel
• No visa registration, it’s a 10 day Russian holiday

• Explore the city to shake our dark first impressions of the district around the train station. We walk and walk but nothing really changes

Tonnes of Lemsip and a frantic march with a huge pack will do wonders for a cold.

Bums in train stations are the same the world over but in Russia the police are meaner.

Jay can’t map read.

Russian people are either stern and a bit rude or crazy and really nice but mos of the time they are all drunk.

St. Petersburg – Venice it ain’t.

Heating inside Russian homes is always on Max, this explains the huge stripey, puffing chimneys which dominate the skyline.

Sarah’s Russian is ace.

Russian tv looks 40 years old and is really over the top.

Driving is total madness and crossing the road is a leap of faith.

St. Petersburg is busy.

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Logistic Support Analysis

I had a little bit of a maths attack

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I finally got around to working out exactly what the dates on the three visas I currently hold actually mean for our travel plans and relative boarder crossings. The image above shows when we may enter and when we must leave each of the three countries we need permission to travel across. Let’s start from the top;

Russia is rigid. The government allocate you dates after which you may enter and a date where you have to get out by and this is based on the particular dates you apply for on the visa forms submitted to the embassy and the constraints of the visa you may be applying for.

Mongolia is flexible. On the visa is an enter before date. Apparently you would be eligible for entry anytime after the visa is applied until 30 days after the enter before date expires. The official rules state a maximum 30 day period within a 90 day window based upon the dates on the visa application.

China is in between. They use the same 90 day window / 30 day period basis as Mongolia but the window starts from the day the visa is first issued and runs until the enter before date (both dates are printed on the visa). I was made aware, when applying for my Chinese visa, that an additional 30 day period after the enter before date is sometimes available but this arrangement must be agreed before entering the country.

So there you are all the facts and rules laid out, hopefully, in concise and understandable language. If anyone is reading this and it helps or if they think my experience of applying for these visas would help them you can leave a comment or question on the post page.

The graph shows the most efficient way to use the visas and probably won’t be the final dates where we will be crossing any boarders. It shows the block of 30 days in Russia as stationary, as is dictated by the visa, with the 30 day window in China being pushed as far back as reasonably possible (8th Feb – 10th March 2009). My Mongolian window sits between these two time periods (22nd Jan – 21st Feb 2009 ). These two later windows can be compressed together to speed my transit across the globe or stretched, slowing the trip down and allowing me to maximise the value of each visa. Getting closer to the 30 days each one affords me.

…and all through the house, not a creature was stirring. Not even a mouse.

“Donner, Titzen and Rick!”

So Christmas is done, the turkey all has been gobbled and all the lovingly wrapped presents lay scattered about the house in many various bits and pieces but I’m awake typing out my merry memories and travel plans just for you.

This house which has seemed so large and empty every day for the past month is now bursting at the seems. All the beds have been taken and I am relegated to the sofa in the front room with the opened toy boxes and discarded sweet wrappers, where I have no chance of any sleep. I wouldn’t want it any other way. My nan (mothers side), Louise, Rob and Lewis (who provided the quote above over dinner when reciting Santa’s reindeer helpers in song - just one of many times he would reduce all of us to tears of laughter during the day) joing me, mum and dad for a great day taking in all of the festive traditions. We ate our weights tore open all manor of gifts, took loads of pictures, played games, shared great old stories, got a wee bit drunk, watched loads of telly and even followed a pirate treasure hunt around the house to find a buried/locked chest. One of the best.

I took the chance to update the Map page with our full projected route, taking in not only our travel plans across mainland Europe Eastward into Russia but also now the Trans Siberian train route leaving Moscow towards Ulan-Udewhere we jump track and switch onto the Trans Mongolian trains which take us all the way to Beijing. Here the plans go a little fuzzy. I’d love to head North to take in Harbin but realise time is short and with such a large expanse of country still to explore before our thirty day single entry tourist visas expire, I probably should plan to head South, exploring the busy coastal regions, eventually jumping the boarder to head for Thailand and work (James may be able to secure jobs teaching in China which will change all this. We wait on confirmation).

It’s been a busy old holiday. I’ve also had my stitches out although of the five sewn in, only two remained. I didn’t even notice them beingtorn from my rippling neck. Superman! I took the opportunity, while visiting the health centre to visit my nurse one last time to review my inoculation record pre-travels. A clean bill of health and a good luck hand shake where issued. I re-packed my mega bag choosing to jettison a pair of shorts, my belt, one of the two towels and three socks (a pair and one of my Liverpool football club socks for our Champions league winning season – the one with the hole. I’m usingthe other as external hard drive protection. I just had to keep it on board somehow). Now my boots fit inside my bag and the whole mess feels alot more manageable. I also started on reading Catch-22, which I am completely enjoying. A minority opinion I share with but one person I have questioned regarding the work. I plough on undeterred. I also took in a great movie I was saving for a special occasion ‘Soylent Green’. I really can’t speak highly enough of this dark distopian vision. Heaston leads a fine cast who all turn in worthy and believable performances. The future vision is not too distant as to be over fantastical (Startrek) but still with farsighted gloomy signposts of societies disturbing trends (furniture girls). A beautiful flick which has dated like a fine wine, truly a test of the sci-figenre and testament to the strength of the inevitable plodding story. Good soundtrack too. I am a geek for this kind of thing though.

Amongst all this good stuff was a real stinking sprout of a phone call for one – Mr. Shortball. It seems I won’t be able to squeeze my load onto his back seat. I was going to hitch a ride down south with his mother but now it looks as if I’ll be hauling ass in cargo class on the mega bus. This does have the benefit of giving me two extra days at home, relaxing the last minute rush I’ve had my self in seemingly for the past four weeks. But on the downside I’ll be traveling on the day of the Eurostar connection thus removing any safety net time and also costing me a whole £15. Worst of all I won’t get to relax with my budski’s before the away and do all the last night big idea-ing, having the best kind of pie-in-the-ski-what-might-be kind of dreams. Never mind, we’ve got months for all of that bunkum and claptrap.

Also as a little aside, I have sliptinto a very strange sleep pattern. A two day off, one day on kind of shift thing which allows me to go for long periods with out feeling as though I require any sleep at all ultimately paid for with a swift and very definite return to earth and beyond. I party hard in the land of Nod. I don’t go often but when I go, I go big time – mad, vivid dreams et al.

Sorry if this is too flowery and wordy I’ll try and return to a sharper prose style and nice easy thumbnails asap – there started already.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

The Postman’s my friend

 I got some real cool mail the other day.

Russian Visa

Mongolian Visa

Chinese Visa

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So check me out and my pretty little Visas. Amazing, right? These little bits of paper full of strange symbols will totally control my movements across the world for the near future. Someone in an office thousands of miles away has said ‘yeah, go on then!’ and decide to let me sample a whole other world. It really blows me away. This is gonna change my life and for that person it may have only been one more stamp on a huge pile of application forms that they had to churn through before they left their desk for home. I hope it was a little more romantic than that but my cynical mind won’t let move too far from the idea of a temp. mindlessly plodding through their 8 hours.

I’m sorry I have had to censor them but the internet is full of undesirables you know, the news tells me so! 

I may be thinking about them a little too much because I have been trying to chart all the possible dates for boarder crossings and my brain has tied its self into all kinds of knots. What’s possible, what’s not possible, fastest crossings and the slowest. When I figure it all out I’ll be sure to post my findings. Either way seeing that silver plastic royal mail recorded delivery envelope land on the mat was a real rush. I knew just what it was instantly and the trip was made real for the first time. I’ve paid for things like train tickets and hostels and even special cold weather clothes but my mind catorgorized these things as mere shopping. Most was done over the web which served to add another layer of removal form the reality of preparing myself for a huge global adventure. The whole process of filling in the application forms, contemplating the implications of the many different dates and the ramifications of any inaccuracies was intense and sobering to say the least. The formality of the procedure and of course the price (£285 all told) lends the visas themselves a real weight. All of which bore down on me the second that delicate package thudded onto my parents hall way floor last Tuesday afternoon. I told you I had thought way too much about these things. Still I can’t wait to get them officially stamped as well ro across the boarders one by one ever the Eastward.