Russia 2003-2004

Yes. It is BLUE Sprite. Today we had some free time in the mornind to wander the streets of Tallinn. Kristin and myself did just that for some time, discovering a number of interesting shops and nooks including an open market, some art shops, etc. We found these places by more or less following a cat that kept just out of our reach while running down back alleys and such. It was giving us the grand tour.

We then met up with the larger group to get on a ferry to cross the broder into Finland. The ferry was lush, quite enjoyable, but rather non-descript. We had a small party in the bar at the end of the ride, thanking our two hosts and just enjoying the company. As for Finland at this point as nobody cared to tour. We were all also very tired. Tomorrow we wake at 4:30 to head to the airport for our final journey home where this story comes to an end.

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In the morning, I followed Matt to try and find an apartment that a friend of his owned who wanted us to photograph it. We think we were sucessful, but still aren't sure. We then visited the museum of the occupation, which described the various periods of occupation that Tallinn had gone through in it's history. The wording was extremely interesting and truly demonstrated Tallinn's nationalism. We found it to be a very hands on museum, demonstrated by allen driving a car around.

We then had a few hours for lunch in the city before meeting up in the city center. A few locals noticed Americans taking group photos and generally acting goofy. They decided to do the same thing and thus danced the chicken dance in front of us. A few other groups then joined in by dancing in a circle around the large christmas tree in the center. It was a memorable experience for sure.

That evening, we went on a torchlight tour of a catholic monastery (something difficult to find in Russia proper). The torch part was great, but honestly there wasn't much to tour.

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We took a bus tour of Tallin. The sites were less historical for a minor player in the history of Russia, but it was interesting to see how the city had gone into a period of rapid modernization as it headed toward joining the European Union. We visited the olympic stadium, where the ass sliding commenced and the coast of the city where the photo moments involved jumping on mini-icebergs.

Our tour continued in the city center on foot, which was the coldest tour of the trip in my opinion. These reporters agreed that the weather was simply bad. We discovered that it is illegal to trip people with your purse and we found a place on the road where there was a house on sled crossing. On the way there, we spotted a man carrying a pigeon, eating snow from the air. I assume the pigeon was next. We returned early to the hostel due to the insanely cold weather. Later we went out to get some food and eventually went a bit drunk to a strip club, which Tallinn is rather famous for. A new experience for many of us, including myself.

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An entertaining note in the hostel about the pickpocketing in the city.

Today was filled mainly with driving. We bussed across the Russia-Estonia border, stopping at a small town just inside estonia. We then toured a castle once occupied by the tutonic knights, a brutal religious order. Inside the courtyard was the last remaining statue of Lenin in estonia, probably soon to no longer exist. Once Dan unlocked the door to the tower for us and we climbed up... The views from the top were amazing due to some wonderful scenery. That night, we arrived in Tallinn and went out for food and drinking. The hostel we stayed at was the nicest place we had yet inhabited, but unfortunately a little distant from the city. However, the trolley bus appeared free - nobody checked at least.

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Five of us headed down Neyvski Prospect, the main road through the center of the city. Our first encounter was the CD Shop mentioned before named '505'. I ended up buying:

• A CD of Macromedia's best software


• 3DS Max with character studio and Autocad 2004


• All the major image design software such as corel draw and adobe photoshop.


• Windows XP


• 2 CDs of Russian Rock music


• Master of the Sea DVD


• Gone in 60 seconds DVD


• Bourne Identity DVD

All of the above for a total of 1,050r or about $35. The software alone is probably worth a few thousand dollars.

3 of us then caught a taxi to the armoury museum. Taxis are interesting in that you tell the driver a destination, and he makes an offer on price (generally very high like $10). You then haggle until you either find the next taxi or come to a decent price. The armoury museum was fairly interesting, but unfortunately nothing was labelled in english so we couldnt really understand what most things were. We walked out of the museum and down the road a bit. Cristin spotted a white mountain goat in a cage nearby right before we hailed a cab.

The next stop was the vodka museum where the larger part of our group was meeting up. Here we were given the history of vodka from the distillery to the political questions and history, right into sampling some vodka itself in conjunction with some traditional russian h'ordirves. I filled up on the caviar most people didn't care to eat. Returning, some of us visited the banya (russian bathhouse) wherein they bathed in the nude in a suana like room then went diving into a pool of freezing water. Personally, I skipped on the opportunity.

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Today we toured Baltika, a major beer brewery. We were not allowed to take any photos inside the brewery itself, but it was an exciting tour nonetheless. The brewing tanks are gigantic, probably 4 stories tall. There were dozens of these tanks inside the brewery. We decided that theis may indeed be the largest single brewery in the world. At the brewery itself, only 5 people staffed the entire process from a computer control room. The rest of the factory, bottling/distribution, was even more amazing and still highly automated although there were more people working in this area. As a parting gift, we were each presented with a mug and a can of coffee beer.

We all had dinner at a russian-style restaurant where I had salmon in nuts with some local beer. I also sampled some georgian wine for dessert if you will. Both the food and drinks were very flavorful and good. In fact, the salmon may have been the best I had the entire trip - and I had salmon almost every other day. After dinner, a few of us visited the Petersburg Philharmonic choir by some good Rockmaninoff music. That night I went to the local club "Moloko"(translated directly: Milk) again for some even better music.

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(Beuatiful Image at Hermitage - 2MB) Today we visited the world renowned hermitage musem of art. Previously a palace, this is an awesome place. We saw architecture, crystal peacocks, mosaic floorings, ornate stautes, decorated tables, vases made of semi-precious stone, etc. Not to mention famous paintings by Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, and others. After spending the better part of the day here and only seeing a small fraction of the exhibits, we went back to the restaurant inside a palace courtyard that we tried to eat at the day before. This time we were sucessful. Af 5 we saw a follow up service at the cathedral that we had also missed the day before. The cathedral itself was spectacular, although the servie was difficult to see and the words were definitely not english. After returning, a few of us walked down Neyvski Prospect to explore and take some night phototography. We went inside a few shops/stores, including a pirate CD/DVD shop with music, movies, and software. We returned and ate out with a few other people. I stayed up until 5am chatting with a few people, and we noticed some unimpressive northern lights as red cloud looking blobs out the window that changed slowly over time.

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We arrived by train in St. Petersburg and met Cari on the bus. Cari was a tour guide who had met us initially in Finland and would be our guide for the rest of the trip. We hit the ground running by heading to a cafe inside the stroganoff palace(pink) this morning. Unfortunately, it was closed, and we had pastries/juice at a nearby underground cafe with some of the coolest painted walls. It was here that we also found our first bug of the entire trip.For failed attempt number 2, we tried to visit the St. Petersburg cathedral, the 4th largest cathedral in the world, for Christmas morning service. The guard however would not let us in.

After this, we visited the river Neva. At one location there is a monument resembling that of Peter the Great's monument that we saw the day before. There was also a place where it was simple to walk down upon the river that had been frozen over, so I did. I walked out a good distance on the river and saw people ice fishing. Cari then took us to a souveneir shop which served us a shot of liquor for free, but the prices were in euros and were ridiculously high. Nyusya believed it may have been a money laundering facility. Finally, we went on a bus tour of the city before settling into the hostel.

Nyusya, myself, and a few others had dinner down the street at a nice Ukranian place. We found a sign at the bar incorrectly translated to read "We dont sell alcohol if you're 21 years old". After dinner and some cleaning/resting, we walked to a local club with some live music and enjoyed the music as well as a few Baltica's (beer).

Today we woke to visit a russian grave used in soviet times to bury great russians. Ornately decorated graves scattered randomly displayed the resting places of artists, military leaders, politicians, etc. We saw the graves of Chekov and Kruschev among others. The place was great, but the weather was excruciatingly cold. As such, most of us were excited to return to the bus. Boyer then led an expedition to visit various monuments throughout the city. We saw Peter the Great's ugly statue, a statue of Yuri Gargarin, Lenin(of course), and Pushkin (in Pushkin Square where we watched Scary movie the night before). We are a LATE lunch at the boarhouse as before, where dan ordered a "bazooka" - 3 liters of beer on a private tap. After some rest, that afternoon we had to pack up to get on a train headed for St. Petersburg. This night ended up uneventful - no borders were crossed and we arrived around 8am, so it was a sleeping ride for most.

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Back on the Metro! Armed with our newly found knowledge of the Metro, Allen and myself struck out in search of the legendary chicken schwarma (sp?), a 40rb meat sandwich of gooey goodness. Starting in Arbat with the group, we found the ice muncher, a machine designed to scoop up snow onto a conveyor belt and into a dump truck to be carried away. Salt just doesn't cut it in this weather.

Allen and I then jumped aboard the Metro. We first stopped at kievskaya for some more stunning photos. We walked across the now freezing river inside a covered bridge of sorts. Later that afternoon, after many stops, we finally found the elusive, yet delicious, schwarma in a stand outside the subway. Ordering with the skill only an american could exhibit (can we say cherades?), we pointed and grunted our way to edible utopia.

Running to catch the bus before it was too late, we visited the Russian circus, a wizard of Oz story with circus acts. While entertaining, it was a bit disappointing, and some people got plain upset by some of the animal abuse we saw. We returned to the dorm around 8. After chatting with some of the other students, we decided to see Lord of the Rings in a russian theater. We found a beautiful theater, and I was to order tickets being the only russian speaker. When they said "22", I thought they meant 10pm (military), but in fact the movie didn't come out in russia until January 22nd. This minor blunder caused some difficulty, but the theater ended up putting us in to watch Scary Movie 3, which was fun nonetheless. We returned late, had a little to drink, and slept even later.

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Not too many photos for today folks. Our tour guide failed to show up in the morning, so our fearless leader decided that it was a free day. Not a bad day for it as the sun was just peeking out for the first time, perhaps during the whole trip. This particular fact made for some stunning photos. I took a few photos around red square(I think I'm getting better at them).

Allen had a family friend by the name of Willy in Moscow. He is a professor at one of Moscow's universities and has been here for 6 months. After talking with him, I learned that I know more russian than he does. Nonetheless, he knew his way around the city. He took us through GUM, a gigantic mall to the metro. Previously we had been unintroduced to this thing of beauty, the Metro. This shot shows a statue in one of the metro stations and gives you an idea of the quality of the facility. Another stop on the metro was decorated with stained glass instead, and from this vantage point, you can see the fact that the entire metro is made of marble. Every stop was decorated differently, in it's own style, but always in solid marble.

The cheapest ticket you can buy for the metro (not the best value) was 50 rubles. It would give you 10 trips anywhere in the city, as far as you wanted to go. 5 rubles, the cost of 1 trip, is $0.15. The trains stop at every station in every direction every 120 seconds on the dot. You only have a handful of seconds to get on, and then it is off again. The metro is one of the most impressive parts of Moscow.

We took one of the stops on the Metro next to Doug and Marty's Boarhouse, an ex-patriot bar. Cristin and myself split both a pizza(background) and a banana split. Not much happened that evening that is worth documenting. Beer was found for a very reasonable price, and that advantage was well leveraged.

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This morning the group went together on a bus tour of Moscow, seeing all the sites. Dan and Dr. Boyer tried to figure out what some of the signs meant. A stop outside one of moscow's universities (a castle in the clouds) also revealed this amazing sky jump where nearby locals were out enjoying the snow.

As we got off the bus from the tour, I took a shot of these pipes. In Moscow, hardly anyone has hot water heaters in their homes. Hot water is centrally distributed through a series of pipes running all over the city, many above ground. It seems like a vastly inefficient mechanism for delivering water, but on the other hand it is nice to not run out of hot water when showering.

After returning, we found a good Japanese restaurant in which to eat lunch. Interestingly, there were microsoft ads at the table, which was a twist to me. The lunch was late in the day, and shortly after we ate there was a trip to see a ballet in the world renowned Bolshoy theater. All I can say was that it was stunning, but unfortunately from my seat, I could see only about half of the stage, even when leaning forward onto the balcony rail.

After the show, the entire group wandered around looking for a place to eat. They settled on the japanese place we ate at for lunch. Cristin and myself instead went to check out a nearby restaurant whose name I don't recall. They spoked no english and I not enough russian, so it at first appeared to be a botched attempt. Eventually enough conversation on my part got us through ordering - although i wasnt sure what I ordered. The food was honestly excellent, probably some of my favorite on the trip. Cristin and I ordered separate meals, but apparently they came 1 at a time, so we shared them both.

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Today we left Suzdal early on the bus of death. We stopped for a few hours to do a bus tour of parts of the city Vladimir. As with suzdal, we were mainly touring monasteries. The first monastery we entered had a strict no camera rule. I intended to shoot a shot from the waist unseen to all. Unfortunately, I didn't realize the flash was on, and it was a very dark monastery! After that embarassment, I didn't take any more unallowed photos for the rest of the day.

When we returned late to home sweet Moscow around 10pm, a number of the students decided to make a run on the local McDonalds where we could enjoy a familiar meal. Interestingly, the McDonalds in moscow has a walk-thru order window. On the way back, a few of us hit up the Cafe Max, a well priced and well placed internet cafe. Between the meal and the computer, I was feeling right at home.

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I convinced Allen to run to a monastery to hear some morning bells that our guide books claimed would be a sound to hear. After paying our 15r to get in and walk around, there were no morning bells. It was inexpensive though and we got to take daylight photos of the monastery which turned out fairly well. We also found some of the ornate window frames along the road fairly interesting in themselves.

Fortunately, that night and morning we had some of our first live snow for the trip. The students were excited, as were the locals. We found a great hill that was being used for the right purpose. In the last photo, you can see a couple kids sledding down the hill in a car hood! Some of our group chose to go down head first with no sled.

For the large portion of the day, we were either shopping or touring. We visited a number of monasteries, some of which had gift shops. The monasteries had magnificent frescoes painted throughout. Many of the photos came out blurry to due poor light, but they are really worth looking at. That evening, we took a troika ride to dinner as part of the tradition.

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Today was a much less eventful day than the others in terms of actual touring, etc. The reason for this was new years. Some of today's events were rather personal and have been left out intentionally.

Allen and myself woke up with cup-o-cereal, happy to find that russia had gotten milk right. We then met up with the rest of the group to get in the bus for Suzdal, a small historic town outside Moscow. On the ride, various students exchanged bits of locally found food so we were each able to sample a variety of foods - crackers, meats, cheeses, desserts. Most people slept on and off for the ride.

Arriving in suzdal, we entered the walls of an ancient monastery and were greeted by two young locals who sang, inviting us into ther hotel and town. The offered us mead and salted bread before escorting us to our various rooms. That afternoon we had a traditional russian lunch of some type of chicken salad, a delicious fish/cheese soup, cabbage soup, chicken, some vegtables, and for dessert - crepes with fruit. The only course I didn't especially enjoy was the cabbage and I stil found it edible enough to finish most of it. Other students werent so lucky.

After some shopping for souveneirs and a good nap, the group visited a nearby restaurant/club where we were fed with ordirves and each of us had a shot of vodka with every toast. Most all of the students made a toast, so that was alot of alcohol. By midnight we were all fairly wasted and having a good time when listening to President Putin's speech on the TV. By 2am, most of us were heading towards bed.

Only 3 photos today

Getting off the train in moscow was a small shock. My first observation was that the city was fairly dirty in a number of ways. You get used to it fast, but the streets are muddy, there is a good deal of trash in various places, and the air is smoggy. Nothing you wont find in the US, but it was on the bad end. The dirt wouldn't make good photos, so I have none.

We got to Moscow University for the Humanities by bus and checked into reasonably well furninshed rooms. It is a very old building and many things are in need of repair, but there is helpful staff and a friendly environment. We grabbed lunch at what appeared to be a lunch-by-day, club-by-night place, which was a little meat, potatos, bread, meat broth soup, and fruit juice for 80r, or roughly $3. We also went to a crowded grocery store and bought bread, cereal, milk, 5L of bottled water, cookies, cheese, tons of juice, a soft drink, mentos, etc for only $10 US. We learned a few lessons here:
-In the right places, stuff is relatively inexpensive.
-Shoving is normal custom when you want to get somewhere.

The rest of the night was a tour of the kremlin. Much of it was seeing the towers of the kremlin walls. Each tower was once topped with a double headed eagle. These eagles were the symbol of the byzantine empire, which russia believed to be the successor to. The towers are now topped with 3-4m wide ruby stars that are on ball bearings so that they sway in the wind like weather vanes.

A cannon shown on display was of a somewhat unknown history, but weighed in at 14 tons. There was also a bell on display that weighed over 200 tons. It was cracked, missing an 11 ton shard. This bell put the american liberty bell to shame. Deeper into the kremlin were various religious/political buildings including the Cathedral of the Assumption (shot #2). You can see a short mpeg movie of the center square panned right here. No photos were allowed inside this ornately decorated cathedral. On the way out, I had Jeremy(I think) take a nice photo of myself in front of the main tower.

We then waited outside the armory to get inside to tour. Once inside, the armory seemed to be Russia's answer to the British crown jewel. Filled with wonderful exhibits of clothing, weapons, thrones, carriages, china, etc., this may indeed turn out to be the highlight of moscow. Unfortunately, the lighting in these museums was almost nonexistant, flash was impossible due to glass, and the long exposures yielded mainly blurry images. One throne had two seats with a hidden chamber behind them. Apparently, at the time, two ten year old children ruled the throne at the time and were assisted by a hidden tutor in answering foriegners questions.

As we left the armory, we went along red square quickly toward our bus, seeing GUM with large "Happy New Year" signs out front, as well as St. Basil's Cathedral which I plan on exploring further. Lastly, I shot a favorite time lapse photo from the edge of red square.

For dinner a few students and myself ate at "Ruby Tuesdays". One student ordered a Hot Chocolate from the american menu. The staff apparently didn't know how to make it and they delivered a coffee mug with just a melted chocolate bar. Both entertaining and interesting.

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Since both Allen and myself had gotten to sleep early, we ended up waking and leaving the room at about 4am. Jetlag was still having it's undesired effect. After looking at guide books for a half hour, we met with Matt and went to do a night tour of the city on foot. In the senate square we found a set of small lit candles surrounding paper hearts. The light was poor, so this long exposure shot shows alot of blur. The meaning of these candles was never discovered.

The city was deserted as would be expected at this hour, but there was some interesting photos at such an early hour. Failing to find an open pub anywhere in the city, we headed back to the hostel, ate breakfast, and chilled until about 10am.

Once the posse had awakened, we left for some daylight touring. At a distance, I could see the changing of the guards in front of some government building, but the photos were shaky with such zoom. Nearby, atop a large pile of snow and ice, a small child was claiming a nice vantage point. We found an indoor market with all types of food, and some of the group ate more reindeer.

We then grabbed a ferry ride to the ancient island fortess (of kalkazaar!) for 3 euros. The island had been turned into some residences along with the fortess remains. An ornate lighthouse stood in the center. The weather was getting nasty, so we grabbed the ferry back and had some beer and relaxation at a local pub for a while until our train left around 4pm. The train ride was 14 hours and was a new experience for myself. Customs checked our passports twice on the trip, we sampled(heavily) vodka in the dining car, and I actually managed about 4 hours of sleep in my cabin. Many people got none at all.

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Today I start my story in the airport. We arrived briefly in copenhagen, although we never left the airport. Our final leg of the flight put us squarely into helsinki, finland airport with plenty of jetlag.

Hurriedly, we checked into the hostel and then toured the city on the bus before our light dissappeared at an early hour. The first stop was a visit to an Eastern Orthodox church on a hill, ornately decorated. Some great views of the city could be seen from outside.

We then stopped in the city sqaure where there was a statue of czar Alexander II and a nearby church. On the bus, we drove by a shipyard where a carnival cruiser was being built. Unfortunately, the bus was moving when I took this shot, so it is pretty blurry.

We also stopped in a church built into the side of a rock hill. The walls were pretty stylish as you could see the rock itself. This shot had to be taken with a long exposure, so there are a couple ghost looking apparitions that are really just moving people. Near the water, we found an interesting pipe scuplture and I took an extra shot from underneath it.

For dinner I sampled some of finland's local wildlife - the reindeer. Rudolph was his name. I also had a dark chek beer with a long name that I don't recall. The reindeer tasted similar to roast beef with a lighter color and slightly improved flavor. "Just like chicken".

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