the trans siberian trip... well, it's already been a week since i got back.

we took the train to st.peterburg first. arrived there in the afternoon and while Tiitta is able to read the russian letters, i was just puzzled for not understing a fuckin word of anything. we searched for Eeva's (my bf's friend) place under the killer sunshine. she studies in the local theatre school which is pretty much soviet/nazi style whichever way u want to see it. they have school some 7 days a week, often from 11am until 11pm. the teachers are gods that u have to pray to and they don't mind yelling to you like berzerk commanders. we went to see the rehearsals at the theater (it was sunday so of course they were practising, only until 9pm tho). this is where we got the first touch to the russian ineffectivness and inability to get shit done properly.

in mere 2 days i finally understood how the biggest army in the world fucked up their invasion of finland. i knew the soviet army was not prepared for a long cold winter, but what else could explain their massive 10 to 1 loss in casualties? bad leadership? yes, definitely. but most of all i think just being fuckin ineffective and incompetent, this is the mystery i solved. if you just want to take a quick look at what i mean, go to some 'fast food restaurant' in russia. the word fast is a joke in russia's context but anyway. i don't think i'm able to describe it for you, how it could be so fucked, you must experience it. everywhere u go, the service is slow, the personnel seems retarded (which i'm sure they are not as people, only as personnel or staff) and in top of it often rude. train and aeroplane staff are exceptions of this, somehow they seem to be knowing what they're doing and they're very friendly as well. i had to order my breakfast 3 times once but in general the train restaurant experiences were good.

as far as st.petersburg goes, it's peaceful and touristy. the russians love it, for them, siberia is the back alley and moscow and st.petersburg are their pride and joy. they put a lot of effort in making st.petersburg the art and culture capital of russia and there is plenty of historical buildings and nice parks. and i appreciate that, but i'm not very interested in such things. when you tell to a russian that you didn't exactly love the city tho, they have hard time believing it. maybe they are even offended, as like i said, they take pride in it and like visiting it themselves. i guess the fact that it's just 5 hours from helsinki could affect my judgement as well, i can always go back. so my advise is, be very politically correct when commenting st.petersburg to a russian person, altho u probably will like it, i think anyone else but me does.

moscow is huge, duh. i was wondering for a second how come the water in the shower was so soft but then reliazed that it must be because they don't use so much chemicals to clean it. chemicals are what make the water hard in cities oftentimes. but you cannot drink the water in russia. the baikal area is an exception of this because they get their water from the lake and it's clean :) the first day in moscow we'd wander in the grocery store our mouths open because of the cheap booze. it was no news that it existed but actually seeing and touching it was quite an experience. smirnoff ice for 80cents *faints*. warfish from dA met us at the train station in the morning and showed us around and to our hotel. later we met our honcho and he had 2 british guys with him as well. we spent the next couple of days with them. we'd then sit in the hotel room wanting to have some music in the background. we thought MTV would do it. wrong! we sat there for 4 hours (in the end just out of interest, we didn't really know if it was ever gonna happen) waiting for the first music video. so, after 4 hours, we saw a music video, then after like an half an hour the next. this turned out to not be an exception but the rule. okay so they get the concept 'music' a little differently but so what?

the red square was nice, altho the famous church (st Basil i think) looks somewhat funny to me. i sat opposite to it, on the pavement, for like 20 minutes when Tiitta and the others were walking around in the area. it was quite peaceful and relaxing. the next day we visited Kreml which was a bunch of fancy buildings in an area surrounded by a fence. as i already mentioned in regards to sr.petersburg, i'm just not so interested in this type of stuff. moscow is #1 most expensive city in the world right now but that doesn't show to the occasional tourist luckily. food is only half of what it costs in finland and stuff like cards or transportation doesn't even cost money by my standards. there was a nice shopping center tho that was very touristy and the prices were the same as in finland. the subway escalators seem a mile long in moscow in general, and world's longest subway escalators are at the victory park station actually :) i was there, yes, it felt long. the subway stations are super fancy and well known for that, although the fine for photographing is just 3 euros, u never know what they do if you piss them off so i kept my camera in my bag. many of the stations were much more photogenic than the buildings outside. but i guess when you have the people fed and everyone is doing so well u have to put the extra cash somewhere, so why not build awesomely impressive metro stations decorated with gold aye?? :)

in general the food in russia was good, but i think i'm not very picky with food. Tiitta claimed to be picky but i think she was pretty happy as well, the only minus was that there is not very many vegetarian dishes available in russia. she eats fish tho so that saved her.

all the bigger shops and grocery stores accepted visa, which you might think is obvious but after paris and vienna i realized that it's not.

when the train would stop at a station, they'd play music in the train radio. it was either russian stuff or 80's or 90's pop. 4am moscow time, as we arrived to Irkutsk, they were blasting Ricky Martin's Livin La Vida Loca, which i admit is a nice song to dance to at a club, still, it seemed a little funny in that place and time. the times that i spotted western music somewhere, it was mostly 80's and 90's stuff.

the first long train ride was from moscow to irkutsk and lasted 3 days and 4 nights. we had our cabin to ourselves and the train was pretty modern so the worse that could happen is that we got bored. and that's what happened. on a train, u can only sleep and drink vodka. and at some point u cannot sleep anymore cos u've just slept too much, at which point u have to drink more vodka to fall asleep again. the highlight of the day was reading a book or getting a bottle of cold sprite. i had cow tongue in the train restaurant and it was alright, just mentally repelling, but the fact is that it's food and that's what i kept telling myself. i just want to try all the disgusting stuff (note: disgusting only from my culture's point of view, not universally disgusting by all means).

my to do-list for one day in the train:
-finish reading Freakonomics-book
-make an inventory of the food stuff in the backbag
-read adbusters
-eat 3 meals
-3 visits to the toilet
-send a text message to bf when cellphone has network

in irkutsk we went to a village by lake Baikal. there were tourists but it seemed fairly native and real, the cows and horses, as well as other animals, were running free on the streets. the houses were old and the area seemed poor but the way of life was relaxed and people were generally friendly. we stayed at a small 'homestay' kinda hotel, where they had a few rooms in wooden cottages. the nature as well as the cottages were really finnish looking so in a way it was nothing new to us, but the surrounding mountains made all the difference. there was a bunch of other vodkatrain people staying there as well so on our first night we had a picnic on the hill. there was a nice scenery to the lake. we ate omul, a popular baikal-fish. [view] [fish] the other people were australians, plus there was one irish guy. and then there were the honchos for both groups. Tiitta and me were forming one group so we got a honcho all to ourselves. we impressed even the russians with our vodka drinking skills as we kept having shots of it. the australian girls eventually went to sleep and we were left at the bonfire with the guys. the guys would play a guitar and we'd sing and drink more. at some point i must have fell as i noticed my wrist being sore. that, and the rest of the night is pretty much blank to me, but i think i had fun. the next morning the other group continued their way to the direction where we just came from, and i wasn't there to say bye as i was hugging the toilet seat. however we'd invited them to finland the previous night. our honcho (named Kostja) was a sport with us, i guess he's used to hungover tourists... nevertheless it was weird to have a 19 yr to babysit us two grannies. we slept a bit and then dragged ourselves, with his help, to a boat that would take us on another site by the lake. we lay on the pier as the sun was shining for a couple hours, and were too hungover to bother with the sun block and that cost us burned skin of course. that was about all that happened that day, but my hangover even continued on the next! all in all the lake Baikal area was really beautiful and the huge lake impressed me. on a clear day i could see to the other side (60km) where there were mountains with snow. i wish to go back there some day. we went to Irkutsk next and it was a nice, cute little city. and then some more train... [lake]

the next train ride was less pleasant, and vodka came in good use. the train was old and air conditioning so-so. there were 2 men in out cabin and for the first 2 days they would talk non-stop, except when they slept. well, talking is not too bad, but they had pieces of meat, eggs and other local food stuff that they'd lay on the table and let them lay there for 3 days. unfortunately not only the food smelled but the guys started smelling too. most of the passengers were men and would hang out without shirts because of the heat. in general, russian men seem very comfortable without shirts in the public. the heat, smell of sweat and food and piss in certain places was disgusting and we counted the hours to get off the train. it was really horrible by our standards, and yet i think i'm glad i experienced it, that was the real siberia in a way. i'd made a lot of noise about taking care of my skin on this trip and well i did, but it's not quite as easy as at home. also putting make up on when your face is constantly sweating doesn't seem like an attractive idea. it still makes u feel a bit better though. the sceneries in siberia were to our disappointment like dirextly from central finland, minus the occasional hill and mountain. birch trees, pine trees, green stuff....yea, it looked like we were just going round and round in the middle of finland. but okay so that's what it was like, what can you do. [food] [men] [nature]

eventually we got to vladivostok which was also a nice, cute and small. u could walk around the center and to the beach and the hotel in a few minutes. the japanese sea was right there and people were relaxing on the beach. it felt like florida (but i've never been to florida). we hung out with our honcho and her bf and i had some penne alla vodka in an italian restaurant. after that there was not much else to do but to get piss drunk again :) in vladivostok the concept of a postcard was not very well known. birthday cards and such yes, but u know the ones tourists want to buy and send back home, where there is a picture of the city or whatever. our honcho was as puzzled as the bookstore and kiosk personnel that we asked. in fact there weren't cards in irkutsk either, in moscow we found 2 places selling them. when we mentioned this to our moscow friends they were surprised that there supposedly weren't cards abailable, yet they couldn't point to a place where u could buy them, nor did they remember what the mailbox looks like. which i think indirectly proves my point, if you don't know what the mailbox looks like, you prolly don't send much mail, which in this case i think proves that these people just don't buy nor send cards!! [drinking] [sea]

early morning wake up due to our flight was hard. the hangover was the slightest of our problems though as we noticed at the airport. to call it an 'airport' is not really accurate. Tiitta is somewhat of a phobic when it comes to flying so i shut up and sat there wondering what the fuck to do. there was no going back so i thought that flight would finish my life possibly. might sound paranoid, i know, but u go to that "airport" yourself and see what it feels like to you! of all the things on this trip i would've wanted to record this on my memory card, and of the places this is where photography was not allowed. we walk into this hall like room, which is under construction and has holes in it's floor. it could be the lobby of a slovenian immigrant office for all i knew, but it said 'domestic flights' somewhere outside. there were machines that put plastic wrap around your luggage and that's what *everyone* did. makes u wonder why. people were just hanging out there randomly, there were no signs or other informative public displays anywhere so it took us quite a while to decide where to go. no check -in at sight. there was a corner with some offices and people were outside them so we decided to go with them. we pushed ourselves though (cutting in the line is perfectly normal in russia) and offered our tickets to some lady who didn't speak any more english than anyone else in russia. we fought ourselves into the office (another passenger was wanting to cut me in instead) and we told to put bags on a huge scale and then on a conveyer belt (this made me feel like we were in the right place). we picked our tickets on a the counter outside the office. i saw someone in staff type something in an ms-dos computer thingie so i figured this was probably check-in, plus we got boarding passes. then we looked for gate which seemed like a joke since there was NOTHING in the fuckin place. i was trying to see where other ppl went but nobody was really going anywhere. Tiitta took a seat and i walked around the place trying to find something remotely looking like a gate, and after failing, i tried to find staff i could ask but that was hopeless as well, they don't understand the words 'gate' or 'boarding' at the airport. okay, so i go sit with Tiitta and a bunch of other people. there's a cat walking around, cute. and a bird flying. an hour passes. the boarding pass has a time for boarding, but of course no gate number since THERE IS NO FUCKIN GATE! on the wall there is an old poster that's taped inside frames and it has pictures of different types of guns and grenades and ammunition and bullets that you are probably not allowed to take on the plane. so, no 9mm's for example. good to know. i go around walking again and in the corner i now find a bunch of people lining up to go through some small door. i decide it must be where we should go so i get Tiitta and we queue. i was right and once we walk into this back room, there's a woman with orange hair and christmas red lipstick who wants to see your papers. there's a woman standing next to her with purple hair and gold lipstick, she checks the passport and visa. it's more like a closet really and there's another door to go through to the next room. in there they *do* have an x-ray machine and not much else. we follow everyone else and eventually go out from yet another door. in there, there's a waiting room of some sort and through the glass walls you can see thay actually have an airport at the backyard! it may have people and random trucks driving around but it's got aeroplanes as well. and as impossible as it seemed, there was a Boeing 767-300ER. two busses were constantly driving between the plane and the waiting room and we got on. the plane was all normal and clean and all the anxiety that had developed at the "airport" slowly started to vanish. when finally off the ground, we started drinking our Fanta-vodka and slept a couple hours like babies just to continue. hangover goes with what it came from so we were happy campers through the 9hour flight. in moscow we landed at another "airport" but it did look remotely like an airport and since we were waiting for a dA friend of mine to come meet us there, we didn't worry about the i (as in information)-sign pointing into the emptiness. Sasha and her friend Maria came and we headed to the city. there we met some more people and ate and met up with 2 more dA people. suddenly time was up and we had to go search for vodka as the night train to helsinki would leave. as funny as it seemed, finding vodka turned out difficult in the very center of moscow, but we got it and then we could leave. you can only import 1litre of strong liquer from russia to finland so that was sad, our hosts suggested we import more anyway but i explained that the finnish customs officials may not be quite as flexible (read: bribable) as their foreign colleagues. we barely slept on the train as altho it was clean, the 2 other beds in our cabin were reserved to people who got on at the middle of the night. and we passed the border early in the morning, there was not much sleeping after that.

i was really happy to be home, and i think Tiitta had already had enough of my whining "i wanna go home". she wanted too, mind u. despite all my general antipathy and complaints, it was a good trip, the russians we actually met and talked to were nice and very generous and hospitable. yet i won't think of going back for a good while now :)

a couple days after our arrival the australians that we invited came, and we showed them around a bit, as mentioned in my prior blog/s. i had a couple days of sick-leave thanks to my sprained wrist. it still hurts when doing certain things but i guess it'll get better.