After surviving another night parasite-free, we woke up on our last day in Russia determined to make the most of it.  To satiate our thirst for culture: Peter & Paul’s Fortress (with a lovely cathedral, beach and….helipad?), St. Isaac’s Church (with a 300-step climb to the top of the colonnade), Kazan Cathedral (with – astoundingly – more worshippers than tourists) and a trip on the metro to briefly spy Alexandr Nevsky Monastery.

We then returned to the hostel for a snooze, a chat with new arrivals and a farewell to our departing multi-national friends over a hearty home-cooked Dr. Oetker pizza.  We also found out that Mark and an American were involved in a late-night scuffle with the St. Petersburg locals following Tamera’s birthday celebration – it’s true what they say about going out at night…

With our hand-drawn map of St. Petersburg’s metro system from the receptionist, we left Crazy Duck hostel and arrived promptly at Baltiskaya – our supposed bus terminal.  In truth, this was just the square in front of the metro station and, after trying to get on the wrong bus in a blind panic, we boarded the off-white 2355 Eurolines Baltic Express, stopping service, to Riga. ETA: 1045.

2356: no free wi-fi.  0115: thunderstorms and the first stop.  0230: the routine stop at the Russian border that we’ve all come to know and love.  Humorous anecdotes were shared only three hours earlier in the hostel about the lax security at the edge of the Iron Curtain.

Apparently, however, they’re much more concerned about people leaving the country than entering it.  When I’d hauled my bags up to the passport desk, I was met with a steely gaze and a frown at my passport pages.

Customs officials muttered into their walkie-talkies, and I was escorted through a labyrinth of doors to a back room.  A beer-drinking Ruskie and a non-descript young man awaited me.  The uniformed official left and shut the door.

Well, this is it, Nick. You meet your end at the border of Estonia and the Russian Federation, at the hands of a drunk and someone claiming to be there for “assistance”.

On 12th July 2009, it seemed my luck had run out.  Not only my, luck, but my visa, too.  Yes, that’s right, it was 12th July 2009, and our visa expired two hours ago, on 11th July 2009.  Let’s just forget that we boarded the bus at 2355 on the 11th, shall we?

Mr. Manners wasn’t too far behind me, so we were at least matched in terms of numbers.  The plain-clothed “official”, whose English was so poor we had a better job communicating with the drunk Russian, eventually managed to tell us that it cost 300 Rubles to prolong our visa.  That’s not too bad – I had that in my pocket.  I see how this works: I give them 500, they keep the change and we all go our separate ways.

Nope.

After politely arguing our travel details with him and two other uniformed customs/immigration people (who still had our passports), we were told to obtain a document from the bank to go along with our visa.  At 9am.  No passport so far, no bus (that had long since left) and no visa meant no exit.  They didn’t budge.  I threw everything at them – doubling the money, blaming the embassy,  pretending the bus was late….and still, nothing.

Finally, a severe-looking woman in charge of this whole palaver came to preside over this five-way debate.  Her English was the best out of the lot, and after no consideration to our situation, simply gave us the same information we’d already digested.  She was even prepared to let us stay in their lovely clinically-decorated room for free!  We’ll take the nearest hotel, thanks.  800 Rubles a night is far better value than the company of an intoxicated native and Soviet-era desks and chairs.

We were given our passports back, a map (in Russian) and instructions for obtaining our document in the morning (in Russian).  A heavily-jacketed Russian soldier then escorted us to the side of the border we were so desperate to escape from and we were then left to our own devices.  After failing to navigate to the hotel in a place we’d never heard of, let alone located at half past three in the morning, that plain-clothed official had followed us in his new capacity as Russian fixer.  Leading us up inside the drabbest post-Soviet dilapidated relic known to man, it was time to wake up the old Russian proprietor to check us in to our room.  Of course, to get a room, they required such important details as your passport number and exact place of birth,  Clearly a little riled about being woken up so early/late, she wanted a conversation out of the three of us – we joked and laughed like old friends.  Just don’t ask me what we talked about, because I have absolutely no idea.  After much studious perusal of some ancient chart, there was a room free on the third floor with two beds.  1500 Rubles each.  Sorry, what?  We’ll just take a single bed, then.  Cue more careful studying of the chart.  Fourth floor: 750 Rubles each.

We climbed up to the top floor (penthouse!) to spend a night in what many Russian salesmen must have done before us.  Think of all the stereotypes you could fit into a dodgy Russian hotel, and it was fully furnished with all of them.  Even the check-in card had the year of birth section listed as “198_”. We locked the door behind us.  Double-locked it. The novelty of the situation has long-since gone.

I’m sitting on the chair, finishing this entry before squeezing onto the bed.  No, I’m not going to risk the floor.  I’m barely going to risk the pillow.  You know what? I might just stay on the chair.

In about three hours, it will be time for us to have another go at leaving the country.  I’ve no idea where we’re going to get another bus from, either.  Our Russian fixer said he’d help us, but I’ve got a feeling that once we’re in Estonia, we’re on our own.

Until then, here we are:  trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

We lazily dozed through our alarms (something I am personally becoming very skilled at) we eventually arose and got out of the hostel and to the supermarket for breakfast roundabout a rather lethargic 1120.  Not the most taxing start to the day, but it was all yet to come.

Refuelled and raring to go we began the familiar commute up to The Admiralty and Winter Palace that bordered the Neva river. The aim was to cross the river and venture to the Museum of Political History. The one thing you should know about St. Petersburg is that it is bigger than one would expect – even just walking the apparently small distance across the river and finding a building on the other side took a long time. It didn’t help that the nearest metro station was shut, either. We arrived at the museum and played our favourite Russian game of Student Card Roulette. For those of you that aren’t familiar with this engaging past-time, it’s when you go to a museum in Russia and take a punt on whether they’ll give you a discount on the attraction or claim it’s a fraud and then proceed to rip you off.

Today, the gods were on our side and we got through for some paltry sum of Rubles. The exhibitions themselves were quite interesting, giving a very detailed history of specifically St. Petersburg’s governance from the time of the Tsar’s to the present day (Putin was born in the city).

After this, admittedly, quite heavy-going,museum we walked to the nearby Peter & Paul’s Fortress. Due to it getting late in the day, after a lunch of cold soup and even colder pastries we decided to forgo the fort and get to the Kunstkammer (there is an ’s’ in there, you dirty-minded people).

This was Russia’s first museum and apparently one of ethnography, but the guide book indicates a more compelling reason to visit (we did enough ethnographical museums in 2008 to last a lifetime). Peter the Great, who started the museum, had an interest in ‘curiosities’, and the museum still houses its original collection – what can only be described as a pretty grotesque freak show.

The collection included tens of horrifically aborted foetuses preserved in a tasty cocktail of vinegar and vodka. These had afflictions ranging from no limbs to cyclops babies, even by our lewd ’standards’ it required quite a bit of a stomach. Also included were skeletons of two-headed calves and even more baby bits (limbs, heads etc).

Overall we’d proclaim this experience as a fun day for the whole family (if you visit this place on our recommendation you may never forgive us).

Having had enough of freak shows and museums for one day we began the massive trek back to Crazy Duck. On return our wish to have something resembling nice food was destroyed by our laziness after walking many many kilometers, so Dr. Oetker pizza it was, warmed in the oven by our very own Gordon ‘F*** f*** f***’ Stylianou and Nigella Manners.

After all this excitement, we slept…

…and slept…

…and slept until…

‘Hey guys! Get up!’

It was Tamara’s birthday and she certainly wasn’t going to let us sleep. We traipsed to the common room and despite (weak) protests, our two Serbian friends promptly got everyone to do five shots of vodka (lest we be described as ‘not normal’) and that really set the tone of the night. We all eventually went and mooched around St. Petersburg and found some bars and a club that resulted in (fantastic) dancing from myself until the early hours of the morning.

Unfortunately the Cypriot contingent of our travelling duo was unable to make it so far due to feeling a bit under the weather – weak, but I wasn’t going to risk a parasite-scare. I’d just have to do the drinking for the both of us.  Despite the very late night, there’s no respite: we were to rise at 0800 the following day.

It’s Mr. Manners.  He’s shaking me.  What on earth does he want?  I was so comfortable!  He points at his watch.  It must only be about five-oh, what’s that?  He points at his watch.  Right.  Ten past eight.  Time to get up, lest we want a four hour wait for The Hermitage…

The Hermitage, as Wikipedia will helpfully inform, is a museum of art and culture situated in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest[1] and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise nearly 3 million items[2], including the largest collection of paintings in the world.

It sounded like a must-see.  Free for students, it had notoriously long queues.  We were going to order priority tickets, before we found out that the $18 passes may take two to three working days to arrive, and we didn’t have that long!

Braving the queue, we set off later than expected, with Tamara and Mark (an entrant for the Tall Ships Festival taking place in St. Petersburg this year, and a fellow Crazy Duck hosteller) in tow.  The minute we joined the back of the queue, the heavens opened.  Still, we were in better moods than we had been the day previously, and put on our waterproofs – we were prepared.

During the course of our two-hour queueing session, however, I found out that my five year-old waterproof was, sadly, no longer waterproof.  The only function it had to perform was to keep me dry, and it failed spectacularly.  I was soaked to the skin.  Not even an adjoining pastry kiosk or a cup of coffee could save me from shivering like a wet puppy.  But, we were in, and we spent the next four hours in The Hermitage, admiring not only the exhibits of fine art, but also the stunning architecture, frescoes and sculptures that made up the interior of the magnificent building itself.

In no way did we feel those four hours were wasted, and the breathtaking decor of the building was more impressive with each room we entered.  Works by Matisse, Monet and Van Gogh hung on the walls, and we passed an impressive library room – a personal favourite among the gold leaf and high ceilings.

I still had one wardrobe malfunction left in me,as my belt completely snapped. I was forced to return to the hostel with my trousers being held up by my indestructible money belt – another must-have.  Personal failures aside, we felt our day was well-spent, even though we had yet to sample any of St. Petersburg’s other historic landmarks.

Dinner was a pleasant meal in a modern café, where our dishes were analysed for possible parasitic content and the bill was served inside a book.  Returning to the hostel, we met a variety of new friends: two Serbian men, two Canadian men and two American girls.  The evening was spent in true intrepid-traveller style:  drinking beer and playing cards.  We were taught a fantastic new game called ‘golf’, but I was sadly more Tony the Tiger than Tiger Woods.

Switching to the universal card-based drinking games, another day in St. Petersburg faded away.  Except, it didn’t quite fade away, because St. Petersburg gets approximately one hour of darkness between 1am and 2am during their Midsummer ‘White Nights’, but I’m sure you can afford me some artistic license…

Although ‘endure’ is probably not the right word, the trip from Tallinn to St. Petersburg was a long one.

The bus itself was not uncomfortable – far from it;

“This was not and ordinary bus. This was a homemade, farmhouse, free range Lux Express Bus covered in a rich, creamy balsamic glaze.”

We should definitely do Eurolines’ new advertising campaign.

Although commonly mistaken for a stealth fighter, as previously described, we Facebooked, Tweeted, Skyped and everything in-between until we reached the frontier of the Russian Federation with virtually not a wink of sleep (this would come back to haunt us later), fuelled only by various baked pastry-like goods we’d brought (smuggled?) from Tallinn.

We were both intrigued by the prospect of the impending border crossing, mostly due to the sheer volume of hassle and paperwork that had to be processed before even leaving Britain. The reality however, was rather less exhilarating: passports collected, passports scanned, passports returned.

“That was easy,” I said as a witticism to The Other One. How long have I been saying this? Surely I would know when to keep my mouth shut. Well, needless to say that wasn’t the last of our official border crossing duties: we had to unpack everything from the coach and wander through the ‘customs’ building – an odd experience as no one’s luggage was checked and one man seemed to get through border control simply by complaining about the toilets.

After this kerfuffle we reloaded the coach and we rumbled onwards to Russia. I found it rather untypically difficult to sleep, which didn’t help when we were told to get off the bus in the middle of St Petersburg’s version of nowhere and started a game of walking dot-to-dot between the sparse tourist information signs. Do not fear, worried readership, we did indeed find a metro station (opulently decorated in what appeared to be marble) and got ourselves to the nearest station to our hostel, saying a tearful (not really) goodbye to our new-found Irish companions at about 0715, who had accompanied us from the bus station to the depths of the deepest Metro line in the world.

Ringing the buzzer, climbing the stairs and perusing the smashed glass, worn stone and rotting walls, we were pleased to see that “Crazy Duck Hostel” was well-kept in this USSR-building relic.  This was where the fun really started. We couldn’t check in until 1300 – not a problem, we knew this already. However, there were also already people lying on the common room sofas that we had planned to use, so sightseeing it was.  We dumped our bags in the care of our not-so-knowledgable-and-equally-bleary-eyed-boy-receptionist and set off.

I could try and recite where we went in great detail, but it would be a waste of time for several reasons:

i) I’m not totally sure where we went. The entire thing is a bit of a blur. We were in delirium for most of it – hauling ourselves around St. Petersburg giggling like schoolchildren, taking frequent rest-breaks in parks as we discussed which birds would be the most hygienic and pleasant to lick.

ii) In true interthink style, St. Petersburg shuts down on Wednesdays,so the places we did visit like the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood was shut and the Hermitage/Winter Palace had a 3-5 hour queue. This necessitates anothier visit which in turn results in another visit on another day that will be recorded in another blog.

iii)  It was freezing, windy and wet.  We were incredibly uncomfortable for the large part of our ’sightseeing’, so our trips were punctuated by Mr. Stylianou’s burkha-style re-arrangement of his scarf and various photo opportunities where we pretended to throw ourselves into the nearest river.

We eventually returned to the hostel at around 1400 (after a spot of lunch from a café) and caught up to an extent on our Zzzzs for in excess of three hours. Upon waking we met several of the characters at Crazy Duck hostel including Tamara. She’s an Austrian twenty-something who gave up PR to travel around for a few months. We went with her for dinner to Sbarro pizza in the local shopping centre (yes, the very same one that provides a staple nutritious diet to the bowlers of Guildford Spectrum) as well as getting some bottled water from the supermarket (the tap water has super-diarrhea-inducing parasites in it).

This leads me pretty nicely up to the present, where it’s nearly midnight (local time) and it’s still as light as late afternoon. Nick has discovered he still has the keys to his Tallinn locker – sorry Tallinn Backpackers (he’s cursing that he’s lost his 100EEK deposit) – and things are starting to quiet down in our homely dorm, with only the buzz off BBC World News next door to usher in tomorrow’s mega day of Soviet sightseeing.