I flew from South Africa to Saint Petersburg.

I first had to get through customs and border control. It isn’t the easiest process, getting a Russian visa. I went through an agency instead of doing it myself, but I did have to pay a bit for the convenience. As an American going into Russia, even with an already-approved visa, I was a little concerned I was going to get taken into a dark room and grilled for a bit before they would actually let me enter. I was standing in line for the passport control for quite a while. It was finally my time. I walked up to the counter and handed the agent my passport as I was ready to show tons of supporting documents I had saved on my phone, just in case. She looked down at my passport. The looked at me. She then glanced at my Russian visa and then back at me. “Thank you,” she said as she handed my passport back. Way easier than I was expecting, not that I’m complaining, haha.

I had planned on leaving Africa to come up to the northern hemisphere in May so that I would be chasing the warm weather. As the southern hemisphere enters fall, my thinking was that it should be nice in May in Russia. Wrong!

As I walked out into the city, I was welcomed with a nice drizzle.

I needed to connect to Wi-Fi, and while there were plenty of Wi-Fi hotspots, they all required you to authenticate your phone number via an SMS or automated phone call. I tried, but I still had my Namibian sim card in my phone, and it seemed that it just wouldn’t connect to the towers in Russia. I eventually dug out my old German sim card and put it in my phone, and that was able to receive an SMS. Otherwise, I think I would have had to ask some random person if I could have the authentication number sent to their phone so I could enter it, but luckily it didn’t come to that. Annoyingly, some Wi-Fi hotspots don’t allow you to change to country code from a Russian one, so I had to hunt until I found one that would allow a foreign number. Tip: the “DOM.RU WIFI” network works (mostly) as long as you can receive an SMS.

Braving the weather, I walked around Saint Petersburg the next couple of days. It frequently rained and even started snowing during one evening.

In that time, I went out with another couchsurfing guest that was staying with the same host as I. Together we went to the Russian Ethnography Museum. There were a lot of exhibits on ancient societies as well as a temporary Incan gold exhibit.

The weather actually improved the next day!

 

I later went to the Savior on the Spilled Blood. I paid entrance, but I didn’t find it actually quite worth it…

I also went to St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

On my last full day in Saint Petersburg, I decided to check out the expansive Hermitage Museum. It houses tons of ancient art. There are also supposed to be cats roaming the museum that hunt mice, but I didn’t see any.

My highlight of Saint Petersburg was meeting up with April Rain, which is one of my favorite bands ever. A while back, I messaged them on Facebook asking if they wanted to hang out when I was in the city since I saw that they were based in Saint Petersburg. Surprisingly, they said yes, so we had some beers, and they even signed a couple of CDs for me!

I then took the train to Moscow and walked around a bit with my friend who picked me up from the station. The Red Square was cordoned off in preparations for a parade, so I just walked around other areas with him and another friend over a few days

After a few days, the Victory Day parade happened, marking the end of WWII. Curiously, my Russian friend explained, the Russians don’t refer to the war from 1939-1945 as World War II. They call the time from 1941-1945 as the Great Patriotic War. Russia and Germany had a non-aggression pact the first couple of years since the two states had divided eastern Europe between themselves. In that time, Russia invaded Finland, but kind of got their butts whooped. They then got attacked by Germany and almost lost Moscow. Basically, Russia did really bad the first couple years, and they kind of conveniently don’t mention that part. Instead, they focus on the war starting from 1941, when they joined the allies in the fight against Hitler’s Germany.

Back to the parade, there were some fearsomely large tanks and mobile missile platforms. The engines made the air thick with diesel exhaust fumes, and it actually gave my friend and me headaches.

While the tanks were a silly show of force, I was actually surprised at how short the parade was. I think in total, maybe less than 40 or so vehicles drove by, which was just much fewer than I would have expected for such a show of “my army is so big and powerful.”

After the parade, the Red Square was reopened, so I visited again.

I wanted to party at least once while in Moscow (since it’s Moscow), so I decided to go on a pub crawl on a Friday night. It was pretty fun. We went to a couple of bars and then a bar that had a dance floor, and I danced with quite a few people from the group.

I missed the last train to get home (which is at an early 12:41), so I had to take a taxi, which was pretty pricy. I mean, nothing compared to German prices, but still having to pay about 12 dollars was relatively steep for there.

I then caught up with the other couchsurfing guest from Saint Petersburg, since she was actually from Moscow, and we went through a sculpture park, Gorky Park, and the embankment at night.

The next day, I met up with another friend, and we went to the same embankment but at day. It was much quieter during the day actually. At night, it was populated with lots of motorcycles and people drinking and enjoying the view.

We later went to “Moscow City,” which is the business district of Moscow where all the skyscrapers are at (visible in the previous picture).

On my birthday, I met up with a friend and we went to see Lenin’s preserved corpse. No photos allowed, unfortunately, but you can google them if you want. Quite a few of the people I talked to said that his corpse looked like old bread, and they weren’t entirely wrong. At this point, his corpse is almost 100 years old since he died in 1924.

We later went to the Museum of the Cosmonauts, which I very much liked. A lot of models of rockets and satellites, even if most of the explanations were only in Russian.

I have always heard about the tubes of space food, so we decided to give it a shot. (note: it’s not what real astronauts eat, but it is a fun gimmick.)

A resounding “meh.”

I ended my birthday in a bar, and a few of my friends showed up. A very nice birthday, if I say so myself!

I didn’t visit that many attractions in Moscow, considering what was available. I more used the opportunity to catch up with some old friends of mine I made during my semester abroad in Germany. And since I had seen a couple of museums in Saint Petersburg, I didn’t feel that I needed to see any more.

The time was upon me. The time to take the trans-Siberian railway across Russia. I decided not to go all the way across Russia because Vladivostok didn’t sound that interesting to me. Instead, I went to Irkutsk, which is next to Lake Baikal, but still required 5 (calendar) days of travel in the train. We left at about 1 pm on day 1 and arrived at around 6 am on day 5.

The first couple of days were pretty full in the train, but the 3^rd day saw quite a few people leaving the train at Omsk. I then had my entire room to myself. That lasted for a day until some more people boarded, but it was nice while it lasted.

I finally reached Irkutsk on the 5^th day of traveling. It was a long time in the train. By the 4^th day, I was very ready to get off. It’s just too much time in one cabin. It was 6 in the morning when I arrived, so I dropped off my stuff at the hostel and walked around in a zombie-like stupor due to a lack of sleep. I did meet up with another couchsurfer who lived in the city, and she showed me around a bit.

Later in the same evening, I met up with another couchsurfer, and we went out for drinks.

I ended up getting back to my hostel at 4 in the morning, so it was a long time being awake since I had been up since about 5 in the morning, but I did manage to see quite a bit.

The next day, I went to Baykalsk, a small town along Lake Baikal. I was invited there by a couchsurfer, and I went for it. We had a nice hike up the mountains just to the south of Lake Baikal. There were tons of bear tracks and signs of bears, but we luckily didn’t run into any.

Later in the evening, I went to Lake Baikal. It was nice, but you couldn’t see very far due to smoke from fires. I heard 2 explanations for the large number of fires. One is that agents for logging companies set fire to forests so the undergrowth is burned, but the thick trees will survive. This allows them to buy the burned land for cheap to harvest the still-usable wood from the thick trees. The logging companies are too big and the police won’t do anything about it since it’s all so corrupt. The second explanation I heard was that a lot of bored teenagers in the area get drunk and just purposely set bushes and stuff on fire for fun. I fear that I believe both causes to be valid and likely true.

Despite the smoke, I wanted to swim in the lake, but it was rather chilly, and the water itself was ice cold, so I decided to spare myself the shock.

This is also when I dropped my phone. My camera had been acting up lately and sometimes not working. I would normally only need to close the camera app and open it again, and it would work. But this fall must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and now the front camera no longer works. The selfie camera does, though, so lots of incoming selfies! Fortunately, the selfie camera still has an impressive 13MP and actually takes decent photos. All photos after this (up to at least my pending Mongolia and China posts) are only with the selfie camera.

I then went back to Irkutsk so I could catch my next train to Mongolia the next day.

I boarded my final train in Russia and headed to the border. It was another long day, and by the evening, we got to the Mongolian border.

Waiting in the train, a border guard came into my cabin and checked my passport. Oddly, later some guy came in and interrogated me. He was young, probably only about 20, and he didn’t even have any official papers. He wasn’t in uniform, either, but the other border patrol people seemed to know him, so I guess he was part of the whole thing. He came into my room and sat down with me, pulling out a blank piece of paper. He then proceeded to ask me where I’m going, where I came from, what my last job and address were, my entire immediate family’s names and birthdays, and a few other questions. About halfway through the interrogation, I guess he remembered to start recording the conversation because I saw him, not as stealthily as I think he attempted, reach into his jacket pocket and then I heard an audible “recording starting” emit from said pocket. A few times I thought about asking who exactly he was and for some form of identification, but I worried that it could bring more problems than answers, so I just cautiously went along with his questioning.

After the interrogation, he got off the train and walked toward the station, not meeting up with the other border patrol agents. Truly, a curious affair. I still wonder how legit he was or if I was just successfully harvested for identity theft.

After that, the train crossed the border into vast Mongolia, but that will come in the next post.

Russia was a pretty fun place. I met some cool people, and I managed to catch up with some old friends. Despite the stereotype, and maybe it was just the company I kept finding myself in, barely anyone drank vodka as the craft beer scene has exploded in Russia. I had a lot of good beer, and I think only 2 mixed vodka shots the entire 3.5 weeks I was there. Most people also seemed rather down to earth. Like people everywhere, they just want to live a good life, and quite a few of them are sick of their politics, but they just feel so helpless with the overbearing amount of corruption they encounter in the government. I hope Russia finds its way. The people don’t deserve the political situation they currently have. And, it would be nice to visit someday again but without such a visa hassle.