I (Julia) am writing from a train headed to Helsinki, Finland at the moment.
Two weeks ago exactly Esack and I flew from shanghai to Moscow. And let me tell you, the way I felt about Russia from then until now has COMPLETELY changed! I was absolutely terrified to get to Russia when we first arrived. To be fair, while we were in china Esack and I talked to a friend of Trevor's named Peter, who has spent a lot of time in Russia, and after hearing of our plans to spend ten days in Russia his response was: "oh, you're definitely going to get robbed."
Nice.
So with my base knowledge of Russia from American movies, I figured that 80% of Russia's population is made up of KGB assassins, and the other twenty of babushkas who look like life size nesting dolls. Well I was wrong, apparently, the other twenty are there to rob us.
As you can imagine, I really was wrong. About everything. Our first interaction with a Russian was our taxi driver, hired to take us to the Moscow hostel for 1700 rubles. I'll let you figure out how many dollars that is. Fine, 35. He was a large man named George who expressed his love of American music very enthusiastically by cranking up the billy Joel, Celine dion, aretha franklin, and Barbara Streisand for the ride home. He gave me a giant bottle of iced green tea to keep me occupied while he and Esack grunted to each other in the front seat. It's really lucky Esack speaks fluent Male.
The hostel was homey and had free tea. We met some friendly Kazakhs and Nepalese guys. Then the next day we were scheduled to be picked up by a driver to take us to an apartment owned by my friend Varya, who I know through my dad. She and her husband live in st. Petersburg but offered to let us stay in their apartment in Moscow that they use when in town for business. It was a luxury having a place to ourselves even for just 36 hours or so! We cooked, watched Police Academy dubbed in Russian, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We hit the major tourist attractions of Moscow: st. Basils, red square, and of course, saw lenin's embalmed body. Creepy.
Then we took an overnight train to st. Petersburg. We slept well and awoke to watch the obese Russian man across from us eat half a chicken and guzzle vodka. Like it was water. But he was nice and helped us order tea, which is some word like "cha" which is how you say tea in Chinese. Wow. Cultures colliding!
Varya picked us up on the platform and drove us back to her home in st. Petersburg. Esack and I both liked her right away and really she's wonderful! Friendly and intelligent and so welcoming... Really we could not have been luckier to know someone like her in Russia. We stayed with Varya for a week. Her children were at their summer home in Finland with their nanny, so we stayed in their room. She encouraged us to spend our time sightseeing while she worked during the day and then she cooked us amazing meals in the evening. Varya's husband Kirill came home a few days after we arrived because he was in finland as well. Both understand English very well but he didn't seem as comfortable speaking as Varya was. Esack and kirill really seemed to connect though.
So we did see the sights in st. Pete's. We went to pieterhof (the Russian Versailles sort of), Peter and Paul's cathedral, church of Christ on spilled blood, Nievsky prospekt (main st), artillery museum, and spent a whole day at the hermitage. We also walked around on the city's birthday, so there was a celebration with music and dancing and food. We saw two adorable kids doing traditional Russian dancing, and this really strange contemporary dance where this guy wearing a beige sheet and a helmet danced with a giant gold ball to a Tool song. The fair was a great place to people watch too... We noticed that Russian women really love to dress glamorously. They wear high heels always! It doesn't surprise me that a lot of models come from Russia. We also saw a lot of women pose really dramatically when having their photos taken. We started doing it for our own photos :) Varya told us a Russian saying that basically says, even in the morning, Russian women are dressed for the night. Oh and apparently it's very stylish to be taller than your man in your heels.
Our friend Peter also kindly sent us a huge list of Russian food that we had to try. We showed it to Varya and she took it on to help us try everything! She made incredible homemade borscht, which we drank with frozen vodka. We had several kinds of pickled fishes, including sturgeon which only comes from st. Petersburg area. We had two kinds of blini, sweet and savory with salmon caviar, piroshkee or dumplings, shashlik (meat cooked over open fire), buckwheat, Russian black bread, kvass which is bread soda and kind of tastes like sweet nonalcoholic beer and so many more things! If you are reading this Peter, thank you for the list, and I think we did you proud! I didn't really understand Russian food before, or at least had heard it was nothing special, but that's totally untrue! It's earthy and wholesome and so delicious.
So then, towards the end of our stay with Varya, the four of us were sitting around their dining room table drinking wine. Varya and kirill were leaving for Finland the next day and we had a train scheduled for Helsinki, where we were going to spend a few days then take a ferry to Rostock and then Berlin. Working through the logistics we realized it was going to be a little complicated, and Varya suggested we just trade in our rail tickets and spend the weekend with them in Finland and then go to Helsinki and fly to Berlin from there!
So that was that and we drove to Finland the next day. They have a beautiful wooden cabin on a lake. It's next to their friends who also have a cabin. The two cabins are secluded among a forest of beautiful birch trees. One of the best things about staying the weekend was getting to spend some time with varya's children, Tima and Gregory, ages ten and two. Tima is smart and well mannered, and totally relished his time with Esack. They played chess and soccer together. Tima loves to eat and one night he agreed to workout in order to have extra scoops of ice cream for dessert and so he and Esack did push ups together! Tima speaks excellent English and we had a lot of fun with him. Gregory, who everyone calls greisha, is funny and loud and very energetic. For some reason he really took a liking to me... Varya often told me he would ask "where is Julia?" in Russian when i wasn't around. He was shy around me, but Warmed up slowly. He would climb up on the couch between Esack and I and get cozy. It was really nice to be around kids for awhile.
Our first night in Finland kirill made salmon that was grilled on a cedar plank so it partially smoked, and was the most amazing fish I've ever eaten! It was so moist and juicy and had tons of flavor! Kirill was also very generous with his extensive liquor collection. I tried port for the first time, we had lots of different whiskeys brewed different ways, and good Cointreau drizzled over ice cream! It was so luxurious to spend a weekend this way, especially since Esack and I have been trying to be conservative with money since we are traveling.
But possibly the MOST amazing part of Finland was the sauna. Both Varya and her neighbors have their own sauna houses. So Esack went with kirill, Tima, and misha (the nanny's husband) and I went with Varya's friend anya, her friend Alissa, and a girl named Olga who is my age. The saunas were about 80 degrees Celsius and the process was basically: go in the sauna as long as you can stand it, then run and jump in the lake, Get out and drink some water, spend a few minutes outside, then back in the sauna. I think I went four or five times. They also do a special practice where they dry birch branches and do and combination of fanning someone and hitting them with the leaves. Anja did it to me and it was intense but felt good! Esack said kirill did it to him too. The best part was the smell the dried birch emitted... Like the best pine tree in the world! Doing the sauna was the most relaxed I've felt in months. It felt so nourishing too... To go from super hot to super cold. Anja said they even do it in winter, cutting a hole in the ice which can be up to a meter thick. Yikes.
And so here we are. On the train to Helsinki. Esack and I have a busy six weeks in front of us but we are so excited and ready for an adventure. We sent a bunch of stuff home while we were in china, so our packs are light, and we are well rested. We are over halfway through our trip now and plan on moving every five days or so in Europe. Our plan is helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Leiden, Barcelona, Italy (cinque terre, Florence, parma, maybe Siena), Switzerland, maybe austria, trier, and finally Paris!
Europe, bring it on!
Love,
Two weeks ago exactly Esack and I flew from shanghai to Moscow. And let me tell you, the way I felt about Russia from then until now has COMPLETELY changed! I was absolutely terrified to get to Russia when we first arrived. To be fair, while we were in china Esack and I talked to a friend of Trevor's named Peter, who has spent a lot of time in Russia, and after hearing of our plans to spend ten days in Russia his response was: "oh, you're definitely going to get robbed."
Nice.
So with my base knowledge of Russia from American movies, I figured that 80% of Russia's population is made up of KGB assassins, and the other twenty of babushkas who look like life size nesting dolls. Well I was wrong, apparently, the other twenty are there to rob us.
As you can imagine, I really was wrong. About everything. Our first interaction with a Russian was our taxi driver, hired to take us to the Moscow hostel for 1700 rubles. I'll let you figure out how many dollars that is. Fine, 35. He was a large man named George who expressed his love of American music very enthusiastically by cranking up the billy Joel, Celine dion, aretha franklin, and Barbara Streisand for the ride home. He gave me a giant bottle of iced green tea to keep me occupied while he and Esack grunted to each other in the front seat. It's really lucky Esack speaks fluent Male.
The hostel was homey and had free tea. We met some friendly Kazakhs and Nepalese guys. Then the next day we were scheduled to be picked up by a driver to take us to an apartment owned by my friend Varya, who I know through my dad. She and her husband live in st. Petersburg but offered to let us stay in their apartment in Moscow that they use when in town for business. It was a luxury having a place to ourselves even for just 36 hours or so! We cooked, watched Police Academy dubbed in Russian, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We hit the major tourist attractions of Moscow: st. Basils, red square, and of course, saw lenin's embalmed body. Creepy.
Then we took an overnight train to st. Petersburg. We slept well and awoke to watch the obese Russian man across from us eat half a chicken and guzzle vodka. Like it was water. But he was nice and helped us order tea, which is some word like "cha" which is how you say tea in Chinese. Wow. Cultures colliding!
Varya picked us up on the platform and drove us back to her home in st. Petersburg. Esack and I both liked her right away and really she's wonderful! Friendly and intelligent and so welcoming... Really we could not have been luckier to know someone like her in Russia. We stayed with Varya for a week. Her children were at their summer home in Finland with their nanny, so we stayed in their room. She encouraged us to spend our time sightseeing while she worked during the day and then she cooked us amazing meals in the evening. Varya's husband Kirill came home a few days after we arrived because he was in finland as well. Both understand English very well but he didn't seem as comfortable speaking as Varya was. Esack and kirill really seemed to connect though.
So we did see the sights in st. Pete's. We went to pieterhof (the Russian Versailles sort of), Peter and Paul's cathedral, church of Christ on spilled blood, Nievsky prospekt (main st), artillery museum, and spent a whole day at the hermitage. We also walked around on the city's birthday, so there was a celebration with music and dancing and food. We saw two adorable kids doing traditional Russian dancing, and this really strange contemporary dance where this guy wearing a beige sheet and a helmet danced with a giant gold ball to a Tool song. The fair was a great place to people watch too... We noticed that Russian women really love to dress glamorously. They wear high heels always! It doesn't surprise me that a lot of models come from Russia. We also saw a lot of women pose really dramatically when having their photos taken. We started doing it for our own photos :) Varya told us a Russian saying that basically says, even in the morning, Russian women are dressed for the night. Oh and apparently it's very stylish to be taller than your man in your heels.
Our friend Peter also kindly sent us a huge list of Russian food that we had to try. We showed it to Varya and she took it on to help us try everything! She made incredible homemade borscht, which we drank with frozen vodka. We had several kinds of pickled fishes, including sturgeon which only comes from st. Petersburg area. We had two kinds of blini, sweet and savory with salmon caviar, piroshkee or dumplings, shashlik (meat cooked over open fire), buckwheat, Russian black bread, kvass which is bread soda and kind of tastes like sweet nonalcoholic beer and so many more things! If you are reading this Peter, thank you for the list, and I think we did you proud! I didn't really understand Russian food before, or at least had heard it was nothing special, but that's totally untrue! It's earthy and wholesome and so delicious.
So then, towards the end of our stay with Varya, the four of us were sitting around their dining room table drinking wine. Varya and kirill were leaving for Finland the next day and we had a train scheduled for Helsinki, where we were going to spend a few days then take a ferry to Rostock and then Berlin. Working through the logistics we realized it was going to be a little complicated, and Varya suggested we just trade in our rail tickets and spend the weekend with them in Finland and then go to Helsinki and fly to Berlin from there!
So that was that and we drove to Finland the next day. They have a beautiful wooden cabin on a lake. It's next to their friends who also have a cabin. The two cabins are secluded among a forest of beautiful birch trees. One of the best things about staying the weekend was getting to spend some time with varya's children, Tima and Gregory, ages ten and two. Tima is smart and well mannered, and totally relished his time with Esack. They played chess and soccer together. Tima loves to eat and one night he agreed to workout in order to have extra scoops of ice cream for dessert and so he and Esack did push ups together! Tima speaks excellent English and we had a lot of fun with him. Gregory, who everyone calls greisha, is funny and loud and very energetic. For some reason he really took a liking to me... Varya often told me he would ask "where is Julia?" in Russian when i wasn't around. He was shy around me, but Warmed up slowly. He would climb up on the couch between Esack and I and get cozy. It was really nice to be around kids for awhile.
Our first night in Finland kirill made salmon that was grilled on a cedar plank so it partially smoked, and was the most amazing fish I've ever eaten! It was so moist and juicy and had tons of flavor! Kirill was also very generous with his extensive liquor collection. I tried port for the first time, we had lots of different whiskeys brewed different ways, and good Cointreau drizzled over ice cream! It was so luxurious to spend a weekend this way, especially since Esack and I have been trying to be conservative with money since we are traveling.
But possibly the MOST amazing part of Finland was the sauna. Both Varya and her neighbors have their own sauna houses. So Esack went with kirill, Tima, and misha (the nanny's husband) and I went with Varya's friend anya, her friend Alissa, and a girl named Olga who is my age. The saunas were about 80 degrees Celsius and the process was basically: go in the sauna as long as you can stand it, then run and jump in the lake, Get out and drink some water, spend a few minutes outside, then back in the sauna. I think I went four or five times. They also do a special practice where they dry birch branches and do and combination of fanning someone and hitting them with the leaves. Anja did it to me and it was intense but felt good! Esack said kirill did it to him too. The best part was the smell the dried birch emitted... Like the best pine tree in the world! Doing the sauna was the most relaxed I've felt in months. It felt so nourishing too... To go from super hot to super cold. Anja said they even do it in winter, cutting a hole in the ice which can be up to a meter thick. Yikes.
And so here we are. On the train to Helsinki. Esack and I have a busy six weeks in front of us but we are so excited and ready for an adventure. We sent a bunch of stuff home while we were in china, so our packs are light, and we are well rested. We are over halfway through our trip now and plan on moving every five days or so in Europe. Our plan is helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Leiden, Barcelona, Italy (cinque terre, Florence, parma, maybe Siena), Switzerland, maybe austria, trier, and finally Paris!
Europe, bring it on!
Love,
Wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing your trip with us. I leave tomorrow for Mozambique, so it will be a while before I can catch up with you. Can't wait to "see" you on the next part of the journey. Enjoy!
ReplyDelete