Hello from PoccNR

Vyborg Cathedral, Russia
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

We spent our penultimate day in Finland traipsing around Helsinki in the rain. Unfortunately Helen has a cold, so this wasn't ideal. A last ditch attempt to make her better was a trip to the sauna. I diligently sat in Wayne's Coffee whilst she sweated away with the local ladies. Upon exit Helen informed me that the results of her survey of a large number of naked Finnish ladies in the sauna and pool was as follows - 20% gorgeous blonde Scandinavian beauties; 50% 'normal' women of varying ages and sizes; and 30% very large, very scary shot-putters. From there it was back to the van and an early night so that we could get cracking up to the Lakes in the morning.

The Finnish Lake District could be more accurately titled the Finnish Forest District. I thought Sweden was heavily forested but that was before we came here - I cannot now sympathise with any concerns we have about losing small areas of trees in Britain when Scandinavia must be using up carbon dioxide like nobody's business (is that how plant respiration happens? I forget...). Anyway, Helen took over the driving and we had an extended argument/silly tiff about who's job it was to spot the seemingly endless speed cameras - driver or passenger. Looking back this was probably just due to the repetitive nature of the scenery, but I responded in a suitably mature fashion by sitting in a sulk and putting the Foo Fighters on loudly. That evening we approached the Russian border and travelled south along the Karelia Highway (Karelia appears to be a particular bit of lake/forest which has been repeatedly grabbed by Finland or Russia over the years and is now divided between the two) trying to weigh up the best place to cross the border. We were rather put off by the rumours of 15km queues of trucks at the main motorway crossing which we had planned to use between Vaalimaa and Vyborg, as you can imagine, so we decided on the Nuijamaa crossing instead. Our last night in Finland was spent (very appropriately) by a lake in a forest, but we both slept only lightly, being too excited/worried about the border crossing the next day.

Next day - a stop in Lappeenranta to post home excess traveller's cheques (to avoid breaching restrictions on the import of currency into Russia) and print out a few more copies of documents, then we headed down the road to the border. Even though we were not at the very busy main crossing, we still passed hundreds of trucks and car transporters patiently queuing in the right hand lane. We then went in the wrong lane to exit Finland but got waved through and past our first Russian, an army lady who seemed very nice - glanced at the passports and waved us through. This seemed strangely simple but it was, of course, only the physical border rather than the border control / customs. After a couple of kilometres of even more forest, we arrived at the actual border control and followed the Finnish cars into the 'Cars registered in foreign country' lane. The traffic was being marshalled by a lady who seemed to fit the mould for the Russian border guards - imagine a rather small but quite burly woman; dark hair; lots of make up; top half in army uniform; bottom half fit for a night out in Watford with tights and black leather boots up to her knees. She had a large white stick and waved it around unnecessarily aggressively, in an attempt to direct the traffic. We queued nervously at a small window to show our documents. When reaching the front we handed over our passports and vehicle registration documents to another heavily made up woman who laughed, rather scornfully, at each one in turn and then giggled at my polite note (in Cyrillic - thank you Claire and Becky) asking for her not to use a blank page for her entry stamp (given that I am going to run out of passport pages at some stage on this trip). She asked her friend for help; looked cross; stared at me for a bit looking concerned; rifled through the passport another five or six times ignoring the Russian visa; rifled through it again under a UV light, revealing tons of information on my passport which I didn't know was there, but apparently still not giving her what she was looking for; and then asked us to stand aside whilst the 'friend' shut her hatch and disappeared off with my passport. No-one spoke any English and we hadn't got a clue what was going on.

This then leaves you in a strange limbo where you have no idea what to do. We were now holding up a queue of Finns who had all been accepted straight away but Burly Army Lady With Stick was unable to manage the traffic to get them round our van, so they stood looking gruffly at us whilst we stood looking rather quiet and British and woefully short of ideas of what to do next. Time passed. A Latvian man indicated the way to deal with these problems by leaning through the hole in the kiosk and shouting loudly at the customs lady until she grudgingly stamped his passport. But he at least had the benefit of speaking Russian - we do not and decided that his approach was not the tactic for us. Eventually (about an hour after we had initially handed over our passports) the collective stares of many disgruntled Finns spurred the Russian officials into action. Our lady's 'friend' reappeared with the missing passport and ran off with Helen's passport too, only eventually to reappear and push us to the front of the queue to receive entry stamps (on an already used page - hurrah). We then had to try to work out the Cyrillic on our immigration forms, which we got wrong, but thankfully a random lady appeared who spoke just about enough English to get us through (she didn't even seem to be an official - perhaps someone sent by the waiting Finns to help speed things up?). Customs was easier, despite the incredibly complicated declaration we had to fill in for our van (twice), because we found a customs lady who knew some limited English and Helen employed the successful tactic of smiling sweetly and repeating "Spasiba" (thank you) over and over. Eventually we managed to get the fourth and final bit of paper we needed (bringing a vehicle in makes it so much more complicated than arriving at an airport with a bag or two) and had our van searched briefly (with very little interest from the guards). And that was it. After just over two hours, we were in Russia and driving off - and very strange it felt too.

We stopped at Vyborg (the rather crumbling old Finnish border town) but had to make sure that we made St. Petersburg by the time it got dark as I didn't fancy negotiating the traffic in the dark. The M10 'motorway' heads all the way there and wasn't too bad, bar the enormous potholes all over the place. The road consists of three lanes: one each way and then a mysterious invisible one in the middle that traffic in either direction can go down if they are feeling brave enough - needless to say lots of Russians took this option but my legendary lack of overtaking skill left us chugging along behind some dirty great trucks belching out smog whilst the happy Lada drivers cruised by - having a good old stare. We filled up with diesel once we had sussed the pre-payment system - you have to put the pump in your car and then go inside where they press a button - bizarrely, one indicates that you want a full tank by drawing your hand across your throat as though you want them to finish you off. Then into St. Petersburg, fortunately going against the rush hour traffic; locate hotel; drive past hotel as left turns are illegal; turn right 3 times and eventually get to hotel. Here we had to hand over our passports for 'police registration' and we collapsed knackered onto our beds. Now we are really excited about looking around the city over the next 3 days or so, just as soon as I recover from this hangover - too many 'Baltica' beers last night.

Spasiba very much to everyone for all the nice messages on the email and on the blog. 12B, you don't need to worry - little yellow man is still hanging from our window, he has been for every kilometre since Watford. He doesn't have name yet though so let me know if you think of a good one. The long hair is coming on well, a nice mullet is developing... I'm aiming for a Scase style mane.