That Peter's a pretty cool dude

We took the night train from Moscow to St. Petersburg which was by far the nicest train we had ridden on so far. It had hotel like beds in comfort and velvet curtains. We checked into the Nord hostel which has the absolute best location, a stone’s throw from the hermitage, and a really cute receptionist. We were in dire need of laundry so we headed to a Laundromat/bar (what a great idea!) But before that we went to a cafeteria by the canal for lunch. After we left Jon got robbed. Some asshole opened up his bag while he was walking and snatched his portable media player (cowon, like an ipod video but with 35% more techno-cool). This kind of bummed him out so what do we do when we’re down? That’s right! Drinks!
The next day we went to the Hermitage. We stopped outside it to sit and have a smoke, looking around the courtyard and then on our way in stopped again to haggle with a scalper selling tickets to the ballet. All of a sudden we hear, “hey!” and there’s John from Mongolia, the one we never ended up finding in Irkutsk. What a freak coincidence. If we hadn’t stopped for the smoke or to talk to the scalper, we would have been wandering in the Hermitage the rest of the day with him there too and probably never seen each other (the place is huge, with hundreds of rooms, you could spend one minute in front of each piece in the Hermitage and not see everything in your lifetime) Makes you wonder how many people you happen to know that pass you without either one of you knowing the other was there. It was also his last day in Russia too after a week which made the whole thing doubly weird since the Hermitage is one of the first thing everyone does in St. Petersburg. Afterwards we met up with his friend Keith that was studying there and after a quick bite Jon and I went to watch Don Quixote at the Marinsky Theatre.
Next day was the Nabokov museum, free entry that day (score). We bought bus tickets to Tallinn and went to the fortress and the Church of Spilled Blood, which by the way is what I’m going to name my first home, best name ever. We had planned to meet up with Keith but he couldn’t make it so we went to Jagerhouse and Fidels with some people from the hostel, Adrienne (French Canadian), Chris (regular Canadian ehy), Dan (regular dude), and Ed (very very Irish). We had a rowdy time and when we left, Dan and Ed stayed behind since they apparently loved dancing so much. We found out later that Dan got robbed by a taxi driver which involved a headlock and an ass grab. (If you’re gonna get mugged, you might as well do it right)
Got a call from Keith the next day and he invited me to his dorm and to go out with a bunch of his buddies from the University. I rebooked my bus ticket and went over to the dorm to meet a whole bunch of Finns. They were a funny bunch, two had been robbed by the police, another had been mugged and gotten his ass kicked by a bunch of Russians, and the other, who looked a lot like Tom Hastain from law school, could open a beer bottle with anything, including a piece of paper ( I shit you not, I have it on video). We went out to eat some delicious swarma and then to Marstall club which had a pretty steep cover unless you had a foreign passport (check). It was a dance club with rotating strippers up on platforms interrupted by stage shows where the MC gets the audience to do funny things to each other, like draw on other people’s asses. Afterwards everyone went home and Keith and I checked out the Ice bar, a bar were everything is made of ice, chairs, table, cups, everything, and a stock market bar where the prices of drinks on the board changes as demand dictates (if you order a drink demand has gone up and the price goes up while others go down) but they weren’t very hopping so we ended up at an Indonesian bar/restaurant for mojitos. Keith was a really cool dude. He speaks English, Russian, Finnish, Indonesian, and a bit of Esperanto. We parted ways and I said goodbye to Russia.

So I’m on an overnight bus from St. Petersburg to Tallinn, Estonia. We get to the border on the Estonian side and we hand over our passports. My brother and I are the only Americans so of course we have to get out in the middle of the freezing cold at 3am and pull out our bags from the bottom of the bus so it can be searched. The border guard motions for me to open my bag and as I unzip it, a misc white pill falls out and bounces on the floor and bounces a few times before coming to a stop right between me and the border patrol. We both just stare at it. I think…. Well….. do I pick it up? Then he asks me in German (? No idea why in German, we’re in Estonia) “Vas is dat?”
“Uh…. I don’t know…”
“Vas is dat?”
“I don’t understand you?”
“Vas is dat?”
I look through my bag trying to find out where the hell the pill came from and the border guard calls over his buddies, all the while it’s freezing cold at 3am and all the people on the bus have their heads and hands pushed up against the glass to stare at us, same thing from the other bus on the other side of the street.
Finally I find in the bottom of the top pouch, a crushed box. Ah! The parasite pills that Jay bought for me in Mongolia! I forgot I had them. I try to explain to the guard that they are anti-parasite pills. He doesn’t get it so I start rubbing my stomach like an idiot, fully expecting a full body cavity search in my not so distant future.
Luckily, he just sighs and gives up and let’s me go back inside the bus. Whew, next time I’ll bring coke and if I get caught just pretend like I have a stomach ache.

Well, that gets me out of Russia finally. I’m still not caught up in this blog, but I’ve finally entered a country that is entirely in Europe, so this is where I deem the Europe part of the trip to have begun.

End of the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian/Ural/ / / ///// also sidenote: moscow

We got the Moscow and checked into the Hotel Gamma, largest hotel in Europe. It was built for the Olympics and had something like 8000 rooms! We kicked back for a bit and hit the nearby market in the evening where Jon got his Malboro racing jacket after a frightening negotiation with the evil Turkish stall merchant. Picked up a couple of pirated dvds and watched them in our sky high rooms.

Next day we went out to the city center by 12:30 and missed Lenin. You have to queue up for him and they close off the line around 12:30. So we went to the Kremlin and with the misty rain and the armory mix up which had us waiting in line forever only to not be let in, it was a sorry affair until we realized all the stuff we thought was closed was actually open from the not so apparent entrance around the sides. We finally got into the armory which had an amazing collection of…. Well, everything, including lots of gold…. Lots and lots of gold.

Afterwards we went to a bar/club called Woodstock and turned in for the night. Next day we got up late for Lenin again and had to pay off some guy to let us in. Lenin was pretty cool, it’s a very somber atmosphere and the guards are very no nonsense. (word of advice, don’t do anything stupid in the mausoleum like try streaking unless you want to do our trip to Siberia in reverse, and only one way for good.) Lenin was a bit wax like and pretty short and slight.
We went along the kremlin walls and saw a bunch of tombs and graves for people like stalin and yuri gregorin (first man in space, take that Glen!) We hung out in Red Square after they opened it (it stays closed in the mornings while Lenin is out to check out) which was amazing, it’s crazy to think about what was going on here two decades ago. The highlight of the area being of course St. Basil’s cathedral. It’s impossible to look at it without humming the tetris theme song. We went inside and then went to Arbat street, a really cool artisan pedestrian street. After some sushi (yup,
very Russian) we headed to the circus to see all the crazy Russians doing the same crazy stunts as the Chinese in China but without the safety wires for the particularly insane tricks. Oh yeah, and a bear riding a motorcycle. Oh god jes.
We wound down the day at a 5 story bar/club/eating area called B-2 with some pool and a few drinks.