I Didn't Feel Like Lenin, But It Was Still Fun

So I've made it, by plane, train and automobile. Took car to JFK, planes to London and then Helsinki, and then a train to Sankt Peterburg, or just Peter, as people seem to like to say.

Rather minimal travel woes so far, thank goodness. So far I have lost my CD case (with, alas, many CDs in it) and been overcharged for one piece of my trip -- the train ticket from Helsinki to Peter cost just over 100 euros, but the travel agency I used to buy the ticket charged me quite a bit more than that. Next time, I'll know better than to use an agent. Naturally, in the Helsinki main station there was a ticket office in the train station that would have happily sold me a ticket the day before my trip, provided I visited the office during its limited opening hours (you can't just buy a ticket anytime like you can in the States). I used the travel agent because I couldn't book directly online, and the big online European rail reseller (name I forget) couldn't help me eitehr, and so I panicked. I had already bought my plane tickets and was working under that constraint -- another bad move. I should have started with the rail schedule and the hours of the booking office in Helsinki. Duh. Expensive mistake. Oh well.

Finland is achingly gorgeous. Flat pastures broken by glassy dark lakes and stands of dark, tall, very straight pines and white birches. There was a storm in Helsinki the night I arrived -- it rained for six hours straight and the sheets of rain bouncing off the metal roofs made a sort of sweet urban thunder all night long.

The train was the fabled Sibelius -- Russian-style, with cabins in first class and those little horizontal windows that you can throw yourself halfway out of, kissing someone goodbye. Romantic. Unfortunately, I was followed by a swarm of flies on the platform and so the romance of the scene was not quite so ... unalloyed. Once on the train, I took my assigned seat and the wagon then filled up with vacationing German retirees. At one point I felt a disapproving stare, but the woman perpetrating it would not speak to me and instead complained to her husband about "people taking the seats that don't belong to them." I intervened and asked if she meant, uh, me? Should have seen their faces -- I look American, but I speak something besides English! And I overhear things! Thus ensued a long discussion about the rightness of my seat, procurement and examination of documents, chitchat about the miracle of my speakign German and how *that* came about, etc. Everyone was jolly, so I sat down and we were on our way. Then the ticket-taker came by and informed me that although I was in the right seat (#33) I was in the wrong "vagn" and so I bid my German friends tschussie and went on my way. Next seat I took was also wrong. This hilarity continued, with me lugging my junk the whole time, until we got very near the border, at which point the train authorities had more important things to worry about and so I finally sat down.

Coming into Russia, I saw the pretty border town of Viborg from the window -- it's almost medieval (it dates from around 900 AD, so that's not too surprising) and looks to be very pretty at least in the historic area. The outskirts are mostly little houses and an apartment block or two, all in a rather sad state of disrepair. The feeling of neglect got worse as we approached Peter -- many tiny shacks made, it seemed to me, haphazardly out of plywood and tin, leaning in all directions, peeling, decrepit.