St. Petersburg – Day 1

Hello my friends, as you can see, I’m back from Russia. I will write one blog entry for each day of the trip, because if i put everything in one entry, it will be just too much to read at once.

Day 1:

The departure of the bus was planned for 10:30 at the university. I stood up at 8 o’clock to have no stress in the morning. I packed my stuff already on the evening before, so there should have been enough time to take a relaxing shower and so on. As you maybe can already imagine, things sometimes come other then they are planned.

I went to the shower in my shorts, no T-shirt needed. So I close the door of my room and in the same second, oooh shit, I forgot my key again (!) in my room so I was locked out for the third time in this semester. I had only my shorts and no T-shirt. Gladly I had my jacket, so I put my jacket on and walked in my shorts to the elders flat. (Because my phone was also in the room)

I rang the doorbell for about 10 minutes, nobody answered. I went to Bonczek and Martin’s place to ask for a phone to call the house elder, but he wasn’t reachable. Slowly I became a bit nervous. The next thing I tried is to call the LOAS office. Fortunately they already were at work. The woman sent me the key service. Normally you pay 4€ to the house elder if he opens the door and 15€ for the key service. After opening my door I asked the worker how much it is and he answered “nothing, it is service”, wooow, great, thanks a lot.

After that I finished my things and left with the car to the university. Roman wasn’t on that trip because he met with some friends in London. The bus trip started about 1040, because Andresz was a bit late. We shared our bus with some students from Jyväskylä university.

Until the border there was nothing special happening, we got some introduction for the border and for some other useful stuff. The Finnish border was quite fast. As you maybe already guessed, the Russian border wasn’t fast at all. You have to pass the first checkpoint, where they enter the bus and check the passports and the visa in it. After that you come to the real border. There you have to leave the bus and enter the building, where they again check the passport and the immigration paper. (Yes, you have to fill out an extra immigration paper) This check took a bit longer. After that we were ready to leave for St. Petersburg, but of course not before we passed another checkpoint where again somebody entered the bus and checked the passports and stamps again.

We arrived at the hotel about 17 o’clock and we checked in for our rooms. My roommate was Hannes, and our room had a real good view to the backyard of the hotel *g*, nevertheless the room itself was nice.

In the evening the first optional event took place, the “Russian evening” with some traditional food and of course a lot of vodka. After some introduction in “How to drink vodka” we ate a really good soup and some other stuff which I don’t remember the names. After a lot of vodka there was some live music and interaction with the guests (dancing, aso..), it was quite funny, but the last 15 minutes was just getting boring, maybe not enough vodka at all.

Everyone was quite tired, so we decided not to go to the nightclubs in the first night. I went to the hotel bar to drink a beer with James and his friend. After some talking I wanted to go to my room. On the way there I heard some noise out of one room. Some familiar voices, so I knocked on the door. It was the Polish party were I would have been invited earlier, but I didn’t know where it took place, lucky boy. I joined this party, where some of my friends from Joensuu also were guests. At about 3 in the morning I went to bed.

The first day was over, and a lot more to come.