Best Eastern Hotel Churin Blagoveschensk

Today was a good day. I finally got a bit of my authentic transiberian railway experience when 2 russians showed up in my cabin around Chita. It was 3:30am, I woke up briefly, tried to converse, but lack of sleep and low level of Russian didn't work well. Then crashed again til 10am (local times).

After I woke up, one of the Russians, Roma, started trying to talk to me in simple Russian and a smattering of ...

... during WWII, the Soviets closed this placeremoving all the valuables inland to prevent the advancing Germans from holding their victory new year party inside the palace. the rest of the palace was badly damaged by the German planes, and it is not until the 1960 to 1970 the restoration started and now it is back to its former glory. The rooms are full gold plated statues, carvings and every room is loaded with the ...

... customer service. I got kind of stuck with my broken Russian about how to get an overnight ticket to St. Petersburg but no luck. I was lucky that a nice lady jumped in to help me translate that the next available train to St. Petersburg will be a 2 am tonight. Earlier trains will cost 7 time more. I went ahead and took the ticket and thanked the nice lady. She later told me that she worked in Malaysia as a translator, no wonder her English ...

... town, navigating the mad drivers and opening bridges, and because I had only traveled underground before, I had no idea if we were going the right way or if he would try to ask for more money (this is common). Despite my nervousness (which I tried not to show), the views were amazing, everything was lit up and there were some amazing sights along the waterways. After about 40 minutes we passed my home metro station and I suddenly relaxed because I knew where I was! The taxi ...

... enormously, so we were game for more sights and went to see the massive Lenin statue at Finlandia station. It's in a landscaped area of water features and as it was 6pm there were lots of folk out having a post-work beer, pretty much ignoring old Len. A long day, we then ate in a nice German/Russian place, had a drink in a beatles pub(!) and picked up our stuff from the hostel to then ...

... but computers stayed in the bag, an other pat down and onto the bus to take us to the plane. 3 hours from hotel to plane, and not time to sit and relax. The flight was only 1 hour 15 and with the time difference we arrived before we left. Final thoughts on St. Petersburg, I'm very glad we went, but won't be going back again. It was just not a comfortable place. The lack of English got to us, never really worried us in China or Cambodia ...

... doesn't feel as good under my toes, either. Speaking of toes, I am getting the MOST INSANE BLISTERS of my life here, because we walk at least a mile and a half everywhere we go. It's really only a problem when we dress up to go somewhere nice, because I can't wear socks. I was worried about running out of clean socks, since we haven't found a laundromat yet, but now I'm just re-wearing, turning them inside out and upside down and switching feet. Maybe tonight ...

... middle of the forest between St Petersburg and Moscow, and they tought why not making a festival here. It will be music festival, and lots of people coming from all over the country and borders countries by hitciking. It's also since recently, a couchsurfing and hospitality club meeting. http://www.digihitch.com/europe9.html (that was the meeting of 2004) This is the web site where i find the beautifull ...

... the river in 'white night' 11pm sunset over St Isaac's which was fabulous. St Petersburg is called the 'Venice of the north' but it just reminds me of Copenhagen. Very scando-european looking. Day 2 We had a 3 hour guided tour of The Hermiage (would take 7 years day and night to see all exhibits) it's an amazing place and has a fab art collection - Van Gogh, Renoir, Matisse etc. and even it's square Palace Sq is amazing. Spent an afternoon in the KGB musuem too which was interesting ...

... he wanted 400 Rubles instead of the 300 agreed on. Since I knew we paid way too much the first time I was really ****** that he was trying to get moer money out of us, so I started taking all our things out of the van. Elissa was still arguing with him and I gave her the 300 and continued getting stuff out. The driver had the key to the back door where our big bags were and I was just about to climb over the seats to get ...