Everyone to the map page quick!

It is now current, as of today. Click on the tabs. Learn a little something about how the trip went or just see a small part of the world through our eyes. Whatever, just check it out and sate the cartographic demon inside.

….URGENT UPDATE….

We have finally broke free of China and shaken off the cruel censoring which saw you, my loyal readership, unfairly punished and left in the dark regarding this adventure I find myself on.

Rest assured I have much to tell you, show you and inform you of and so I’ll be working night and day to catch up. The irony is that had I been allowed to log on and blog while in China I could have only wrote of how amazing the country and the people are. Warm and friendly with a deep and diverse cultural heritage all seem very willing to share. As it is,  my main gripe with Mao’s great nation is that the tales of its selective memory and censorship are well founded – yours truly was a victim!

Again sorry for the lack of information, I tried all I could, it was out of my hands.

….NORMAL SERVICE IS RESUMED….  

Swapping StP for MCW

OUTLINE

• Check out of Sabrina before 12, got our first smile out of our hostess. She must be happy to see the back of the English. Our bags were packed and waiting – I guess we really wanted to leave
• March to the train station (without getting lost this time) head down, record time. Still found time for a few pictures!
• Used the locker room beneath the station to store our bags for the day. The place could have been a KGB safe room. Bet experience in St.Petersburg yet
• Sightseeing can begin now the mornings work was complete. On to the Church of the spilt blood. That’s the one everyone recognises from the postcards
• Everyone splits up and I get a bit moody. I blame the Lemsip. James and I wander the streets in a really nice part of town talking and exploring
• Finally look behind the main street facades. They hide a mess of broken pipes and Ladas and frosty smashed windows. Also link ways through the massive city blocks and crumbling inner city housing projects. Kind of looks like an exciting place now, a bit dangerous though. We take a couple of snaps and keep moving
• We pluck up the courage to walk out on to a frozen pond
• Due to meet Jay and Sarah at the station we walk in the opposite direction in to a very rich looking part of town and an open area enclosed by a huge icey palace and some grand looking law courts. A great city space – finally. We bolt back down the 6 lane highway towards our sleeper train to Moscow.
• unlocking the bags from the KGB lockers is easy and so is locating our train.
• No sleep on the freezing sleeper
• Picked up by a long haired, short armed Russian taxi driver with a small beige Mercedes cab. He’s not happy to see the size of our bags
• Godzilla’s Hostel looks top. There’s a party going on when we arrive involving all the staff. The taxi driver uses a special phrase to get us into the small green door “WOMAN, PLEASE!”
• Finally get some sleep after the drunk staff force feed us beer then decide to leave us alone

Musical showers are rubbish – loads of buttons but not much water.

Bright sunshine and a new city ahead leave smiles on every ones faces.

James’ camera has battery issues.

A frozen looking couple pose for photos on a pretty little bridge covered with pad locks. It’s definitely an Eastern tradition.

The biggest snow flakes fall in great blinding sheets on our way to the train. Makes me feel like St.Petersburg wants us to stay after all. I’ve had ups and downs here and it’s not as beautiful as I had heard but it is interesting and there is lots to discover under the harsh exterior. I’m definitely glad I visited.

This sleeper, not a private train like our Vilnius beaut, had a brisk, thin Russian lady working it – she was not nice. The water was brown and dirty, the lights were never turned on and the heating was not used. One final dig for StP.

Getting picked up right off the train is a great thing especially at 3am in a big strange city. But it does cost allot.

Drunk Russian jokes aren’t so funny when all you want to do is sleep.

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Saint Petersburg’s good side?

OUTLINE

• Sightseeing starts late after a terrible breakfast at the hostel
• We walk to Moskava train station but my fever has broken my map reading skills and I get us lost. We see more of the dirty side of the city
• Book train tickets to Moscow via a non English speaking moody Russian woman who speaks English and takes commission
• We take the metro from the train station to Nevsky Prospect. 20 Rubles, about 50p – bargain. The tube is nuts, with no visible trains and loads of stirring communist imagery. Also each station is styled differently
• Sightseeing s cut short by a lack of sights and a cold biting wind
• Tea in a small backstreet cafe comes with a free drunk asking for vodka from the tourists. Eric was a pretty scary bloke – George Harrison DEAD.
• Jazz club expedition failed – too late. Quick drink at a mad bar a little closer to home instead
• Our decision to leave St. Petersburg early for Moscow is a good one. Everything here is against us; the weather, the people, the architecture, my health and my bank. Not a great intro to Russia

James downloads a virus. Internet Attack. Computer compromised.

The train station is a big pink blamonge but it has a great modernist departure hall.

Nationwide still giving me the swerve.

The tube is nicer than the streets with less people, better weather and lighting. The escalators to get to the stations are really steep too – also a good thing right?

The snow in St. Petersburg is horizontal and gets right into your face.

I load up on more Lemsip and pills. At this rate I’ll be doped up all through Russia.

The grand public spaces aren’t grand enough and are confused. The building are all painted rubbish gaudy colours, the recommended sights are dull and the only stunning thing about this city is the orange dusk light on the riverbank, oh and there are some pretty nice golden domes dotted around.

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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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Vilnius to Saint Petersburg

The train stood a clear 9ft tall and a million miles long as we climbed from the subterranean locker room to the platform at Vilnius station. This was the train I had been waiting for. Well, I mean, we’d waited for plenty of trains up till now but for me this was the kind of train which would make this whole experience. Making a carriage your home for however long you have to is a real skill on the transiberian. This relatively short stint, approximately 14 hours, would decide if I could enjoy this kind of ordeal or if we would wilt under the pressure of close confinement.

The silver and red colours made the train look like a sleak 50’s American relic. The roof of all the cars, stretching far off into the Lithuanian night as far as the eye could see, were snow capped and the walls plastered thick with ice. Each wagons chimney belching thick black soot into the purple evening sky as the deep roar of the diesel engines echoed around the empty station.

Each carriage has it’s own attendant and ours was a large cosy looking woman. She beckoned us forward and asked each of us our nationality in turn. She quickly scanned the tickets and passports and showed us aboard. Our backpacks barely fitted through the tiny train corridors as we brushed past the business end of the coach and fairly ran towards the seats assigned us for the night. After some initial excited wrong turns we found our places were the very first births as we entered the train.

On the left a four birth open cabin shared space with a slim corridor and two extra bunks aligned with the small passage way. We were lying in the corridor beds.

All the blankets for the wagon (grey and red heavy wool items ideal for the subzero climate) were piled on my bed. The upper bunk of the two corridor births. We had to wait for the other travelers to collect them before we could fully move in. Me and James sat hunched beneath the expertly engineered platform of my bed and slowly acclimatised our selves with our much anticipated surroundings.

The four birth cabin opposite housed a Lithuanian couple with enough luggage to fill a shop, we concluded they were either emigrating or off on an extended holiday in Russia. The boarder guards would enjoy quizzing them. Also here was a middle aged woman who seemed intent on sleeping the entire journey. We moved all the blankets obstructing our bunks onto the upper bed on the sleepy woman’s side of the four birth, and made up our beds. Crisp linen folded carefully over firm but fair benches and the luxurious wool blankets made for a very inviting bed.

Behind us the wagons offices and toilet were expertly nestled in the smallest possible spaces, allowing only a small private sleeping cabin for the original attendant. She never seemed to use this room, instead preferring to march the length of the carriage serving tea and coffee. In there was also a younger Russian version who would tend to  these duties beyond the boarder. She would display a very different, very Russian style of service, all scorn and annoyance.

Me and James walked the train, as we tend to do now once we get settled. We marvelled at everything; the WC’s at either end of our wagon, the smoking areas beyond both and the open link way at the very ends of each coach, with their noise and growing frost and disturbing view down to the speeding rails below. Our journey took us from our 2nd class cabin through the seated class and into first. The carriage housing the restaurant was small and filled with tables and chairs all and conversation. The whole train was buzzing with communication between strangers and it felt warm and homely. First class was quiet and sterile and we attracted some strange looks on our way back to our beds.

I watched the very nice and kind woman in the next compartment answer her grand daughters questions about the foreigners sleeping in the beds next door and was rocked to sleep by the motion of the train.

A boarder patrol guard woke me with a grab of my leg and asked for my passport. I handed it over and fell back to sleep. I had sat through long boarder crossings before and knew there was nothing to be done but enjoy the time in my warm bunk. I was woke again to receive my documents back and then again inside Russia where a guard would search all the baggage storage bins for stowaways using an ancient military lamp as a guide. The crossing wasn’t half as distressing as we had read it could be.

I love this train, the warmth, the sense of belonging, the smells and the adventure, the water boiler and the attendants (even the moody ones hvae their good points). 2nd sleeper class is defiantly a first class way to travel.

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When did I get sick?

OUTLINE

• Lack of sleep, lack of food and negative temperatures combine in an irresistible tri-fector to give me a crazy Lithuanian illness
• If I was at home I would definitely stay in bed but today that is not an option. Check out at 12. Feeling groggy and sweaty and weak
• We trek our bag up to the train station and explore the futuristic electric lockers.
• Still loaning cash of Jay, I grab allot of medication and score some pizza ’studente’ for breakfast.
• The drugs kick in and we spend the rest of the day taking snaps of Vilnius.
• Sleeper train to St. Petersburg. The exotic train journeys begin.

Fancy Pod hostels should turn the heating on at night.

Vilnius is a pretty, pretty place in the snow especially when your full of flu meds.

I found a nice souvenier of the city with cool retro cred!

Attaching pad locks to a bridge means ‘I love you’ in Lithuanian

Our first Sleeper train demands extra special treatment. Information to follow…..

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Chargers Win, Chargers Win

OUTLINE

• Everyone is up in plenty of time for our train but we still end up running late and only just making it to the platform in time
• Everyone sleeps on the train but me
• TopTrumps – I win
• We are asked to move carriages because we are sat at the wrong end of the train. This end stops at the Poland – Lithuanian boarder. The other end carries on to Vilnius. Thanks to Mr. Conductor
• We change at Sestokai by crossing the platform and boarding a Lithuanian ‘First Northwestern’ train to Vilnius
• Our hostel booking is wrong but the city is quiet and we get another easily, quickly and only a short walk away
• We drop our bags and head out for some food. Nationwide is not working again!
• Food is cheap in Vilnius, we order a three course meal at midnight. The first meal of the day
• Euros pay for my bed and I get to sleep for the first time in 48 hours

I.S.C. sweet Polish train station buns. Apple filling, score -1!!!

Sarah does not understand TopTrumps.

Polish – Lithuanian boarder is a white hut housing a small suited man and a green ping pong paddle.

Vilnius is small and beautiful especially in the snow.

Our fashionable pod style hostel is disorientating but a bed is a bed when you’ve been watching NFL all night.

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The Turkish Incident

OUTLINE

• Jay and Sarah arrive back from a night out in Warsaw
• Our new friend Cem comes back next
• James arrives home shortly after
• Cem tries to get in every ones bed and stalks the room for the rest of the night with his phone torch on
• You don’t sleep well when your worried you might get an unwanted guest
• Morning comes, everyone is hungover and Cem claims his antics were only a drunken mistake
• Cem invites himself around Warsaw with us today. He sticks very closely to James’ side. Things are getting weird
• Cem finally leaves after our tour of Warsaw, he tries his best to kiss James. Definitely awkward
• Dinner at the Sphinx steakhouse trying to calm James down
• San Diego Chargers Post Season Wild Card Playoff game 2am – 5am. I love free Wi-Fi
• Train to Vilnius at 6.30am

Sharing a hostel room with a crazy dude is all part of travelling the world but from now on I’ll be holding out for a four birth.

Old town Warsaw is Euro inspired. Down town Warsaw is Bladerunner inspired.

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Another day, another train & another hostel & another currency & another language & another & another & another ….

OUTLINE

• Check out of Berlin hostel.
• Train to Warsaw
  
• Change money to Zlotis
• Book tickets for train to Vilnuis, Lithuania. Nice one Marta.

I went ‘free breakfast’ loco filling  up for a long day of sitting.

My luck is turning. I got out of paying for the hostel. 70 Euros in the bank.

An A.T.M. accepts my Nationwide card and gives me some cash. It seems the building society only exaggerated.

Traveling to Poland from Germany is like moving backwards in time, and the train station is totally confusing.

Warsaw looks amazing on first glance – deeper snow & the start of Eastern block architecture.

Oki-Doki hostel is the best, simple as.

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