I need to update more often!
I’m sitting in a hostel in Prague, Czech Republic, at the moment, while Thad and Beccie have gone on a pilgrimage to Plzen, home of Pilsner beers and Claire is upstairs in the shower.
The past 3 weeks or so have been pretty crazy. We left Vilnius on a train to St Petersburg, which was incredibly fun. We ate too many lollies and got really hyper and giggled the whole journey, much to the dismay of the other train passengers who were trying to sleep. We hit the Russian border at 11:30 but, because of the time difference we were pushed to 12:30am - Thad’s birthday! After heaps of border control coming through we left again and went to sleep.
We woke up in St Petersburg, pretty groggy from the interrupted sleep and had a look around. I gave Thad his birthday present - a swiss army knife, which has come in handy so much since. Haha. It’s such a beautiful city - wide roads and footpaths with big old colourful buildings with beautiful facades running down the roads. We walked down the main street, Nevsky Propsekt and saw a few of the main sites - beautiful churches, canals and statues and ending with the Winter Palace, a beautiful green building that runs as far as the eye can see. It was the home of the Russian royal family until 1917 when they were killed in the revolution. Inside is the biggest art collection in the world, which we explored the next day, although we only got half way through one of the 4 floors before having to leave - and that took us 5 hours. Good grief. We also took a walking tour on the 3rd day with a local guide. He steered us away from the tourist attractions and showed us more where the Russians lived and worked which was fantastic. We discovered an arts centre that started as a squat but has grown into a fantastic community that produces a lot of non-conformist art and
underground music. We also travelled through the backyards, behind the main buildings, where everyone lives, which saves time and showed us a lot of things we’d never notice if we’d taken the main roads. St Petersburg truly is magical. I’m going to have to go back some day and stay for a few weeks.
We headed on another overnight train to Moscow, arriving at 4 in the morning which sucked cos we had to wait for it to get light before we were bold enough to leave the station. It then took us 3 hours to find our hostel, and no one would help us because we didn’t speak russian - like London nobody stops on the street even if you stand in front of them so that sucked. Eventually we were approached by a lovely guy called Peter who spoke english and was working in a local real estate office. He took us to his office, gave us cans of coke and a seat while he printed out a map with the exact
building highlighted, and then walked us to the door. Oh he was so lovely! A saint. We went back later and gave him a cake and a koala to say thankyou.
Seeing the Red Square and the Kremlin was so odd because it’s a place you just never expect to find youself standing. It was very nice though - although I think that St Basil’s cathedral was a bit overrated - Church on Spilt Blood in St Petersburg was far more impressive. We went into the Mausoleum and saw Lenin’s body which was absolutely strange! You have to walk down these completely dark stairs past all these very stern looking, heavily armed soldiers and then file past his embalmed body, swathed in red velvet and lit up. How odd. We went inside the Kremlin as well which, oddly enough, was filled with churches. It was strange being inside a place that
British spies had tried to infiltrate so many times only 15 or 20 years ago. It was pretty boring though - the only highlights being seeing the Tsar’s burial places - including those of Nicholas II and his family who were killed in the revolution - we were especially excited to see Anastacia’s plaque. The other highlight was accidentally walking on the wrong path and having a guard furiously toot his whistle at us for about a minute before we realised. He was so angry and was smacking his baton into his hand rather menacingly. Eeek.
I also had my 21st in Moscow WOO! Which was fun. The night before we had some drinks in the hostel and then headed to a bar around the corner. The barman was told it was my birthday and made me a present - a sambucca shot with whole coffee beans, set on fire. He told me I had to shot the liquid, coffee beans and all, and then breathe in the fumes that he’d captured while setting the alcohol on fire. It went straight to my head and I didn’t need any other drinks all night haha. Woke up on my birthday feeling less than pretty but that’s OK. Thad bought me a really nice necklace that has a
Rainbow Moonstone set in it from Tibet. When you hold it to the light it glows this really bright blue. We had a pretty quiet day - did a tour of the Metro system and saw all the stations - which are decorated with mosaics, stained glass and chandeliers - an odd contrast to the greyness of the buildings above ground. We leftthat night for an overnight train to Riga, Latvia, but ended up only spending 8 hours there before catching a night bus to Klaipeda, a town on the coast of Lithuania for some relaxing time. So for two days all we did was chill out on the beach - so nice! We then headed to the Hill Of Crosses, which was really more like two mounds but quite impressive nonetheless… very eerie. Lithuanians have been planting crosses here for centuries - in memory of relatives and as shrines to saints. The Soviets bulldozed them all down when they occupied Lithuania and surrounded the place with barbed wire and soldiers, threatening to send to siberia anyone who put up a cross, but still people snuck through the wire to place them. Pretty incredible.
