The trip I took with the other Moscow ILP teachers to Finland, Sweden, and the Baltics was so fabulous, long, and covered such a wide array of sights that I just could not bring myself to writing about all of it in one post. One post simply would not do everything justice- not that any of my pictures or what I write could do it complete justice anyways- and I would feel extremely overwhelmed trying to sort through and talk about so many cities and pictures in one post, so I decided instead to break up the trip into multiple posts over a period of time. I think will feel much more capable of posting about it if I can dedicate an entire post to each country or section of the trip. I will be starting in Russia, just as my trip did, and then working on completing my documentation of the trip over my next few posts or so. Hopefully I’ll have it all covered within the next week or two and not loose momentum before I get all the way through Lithuania. Lithuania is a forgotten enough country as it is; I don’t need to go forgetting to give it all the time its worth while writing about my experience there.
Let us begin:
On Thursday, 24 March, after getting home from the school and finishing the last of our packing and doing some frantic catching up on email (the internet had shut down all over our neighborhood the day before and only started working again about an hour before we had to leave), we set out for the train station caring only our backpacks and whatever we could possibly cram into them that we thought we might need over the next nine days. One bus ride, stops at the chaotic Russian grocery store and Sarah’s apartment for a short ice-cream kick-off and to meet up with some of the other teachers, two metro rides, and a few kilometers of walking later, we arrived at the train station.
The train station was nothing out of the ordinary, at least for Russia. There were lots of people wearing fur and carrying stuff in grocery bags or other random bags that most Americans wouldn’t consider normal forms of luggage or backpacks, but that most Russians use on a daily basis to carry everything from groceries, to sports equipment, to musical instruments, to books, to clothes, to pets. A fair number of men that were already well on their ways to being totally smashed stumbled through the station with beer cans in hand and alcohol on their breath. Squatter toilets which one had to pay to use if he or she forgot to present his or her train ticket to the money collector lady (as I did) were the only option if one had to relieve his or herself. The chairs were all metal and not particularly comfortable in which we sat in as we waited for the call to board the train to St. Petersburg.
The train was a sleeper train. Each compartment had three top bunks and three bottom bunks. I had a top bunk. The ride was long, hot, rather claustrophobic, and quite stuffy, but I managed to sleep like a rock for most of it. Thank goodness for the four-years-worth of conditioning I received in high school of having to spend long trips on cramped buses filled with either sweaty athletes or choir kids that don’t know how to go two minutes with out singing. That conditioning added greatly to my natural ability to clonk out about anywhere- an ability which was developed even more and that I was extremely grateful for throughout my excursion.
We arrived in St. Pete’s on Friday morning and headed out for an adventure in the city after dropping our bags off at a luggage check. Besides eating lunch at the biggest Carl’s Jr. (yes- it’s Carl’s Jr., not Hardee’s, in Russia) I’ve ever been in, a frozen march which seemed it’d never end to the park (which was closed for construction) where Russia was rededicated to receive the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and watching some teenage guys juggle soccer balls on the street for money, we...
...went to the Hermitage, which is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world and is located in the old Winter Palace.
...walked along the waterways and just enjoyed seeing the beautiful city.
...saw the outside of the Cathedral of Spilled Blood. It might have a scary name, but I think it's even prettier than St. Basil's Cathedral at Red Square in Moscow.
Once we were all sick of being frozen and had seen about everything we could within walking distance, we grabbed some groceries for the next few days and then headed to the station, where we hung out and I watched more drunk men hit on some of the other teachers in slurred Russian before we loaded our night bus to Finland.
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