Arrived in Helsinki

I have arrived safe and sound in Helsinki. It feels good to be back in the EU.

Moscow Sunset...and a man on a horse

This statue just near the Kremlin and depicts a man on horseback trampling Nazi insignia.

Moscow Underground

I spent my last few hours in Moscow travelling round a few of the underground stations. Built mostly in the 30s and 40s, they are very impressive and feature mosaics...

Stained glass windows...

Soviet Insignia...

And propaganda art...

St Petersburg

An overnight train took me to St Petersburg where I spent 3 nights.

The Winter Palace, home to the Hermitage musuem.




I was not expecting to find this impressive Mosque here.



St Petersburg has some beautiful Cathedrals...

Murmansk

The largest city inside the Arctic Circle! I just couldn't resist going up here as it was only 28 hours by train.

Murmansk, like every city in Russia, has at least one statue of Lenin.


Some propaganda posters I saw in the a museum here.





Depicting a Russian soldier from WWII (or The Great Patriotic War, as they call it in Russia), Alyosha is an impressive 30m high statue overlooking the city. It was an hour or so by foot from my hotel and I set off through the wind and snow to take a look at the big fella. Rather than walk the entire distance by road (which would have added another kilometre or so) I decided to take the path indicated in my guidebook. I reached the point where the path should be, saw a sign for the monument and saw the statue in the distance so set off down a very snowy track. After about 15 minutes I found myself clambering up a hillside in fierce arctic conditions. Although some of the snow had frozen solid it felt like every with other step my leg would sink in snow up to the knee. After another 5 or 10 minutes I realised that 30m high statues can seem a lot closer than they actually are.

I was about 100m from the monument when I heard a loud crack from behind me and looked back towards the road just in time to see all the street-lights go out. Very odd. I turned back towards the statue to find that it too was now in total darkness.

It was about this time, on the side of a hill in Russia, knee deep in snow and in the middle of a blizzard that I had a 'what the hell am I doing' moment.

Despite the gloom I spent some time admiring Alyosha and taking a few photos. I walked back the long way round, using the road.






Halfway toward Alyosha, about 10 minutes before the power went out.


Me, only much colder than usual.


A memorial to Russian sailors lost during peace-time.

Russian Beauracracy

I had my first taste of real Russian beauracracy today. Having too many clothes, a few souveniers, presents not to mention many (now unrequired) guidebooks I decided to pop to the postoffice in Murmansk and send a parcel back to the UK. After an hour or so of messing around queuing, buying a box, filling out countless forms (in Russian and French only) I finally got the stage where I expected to hand over my parcel and some money. Oh no. Its not nearly that simple. At this point, the girl behind the counter proceeded to open the box and wanted to count and individually weigh(!) every single item within it. In filling out the various forms I had not been entirely accurate with the descriptions of the contents, EG I had written Items of clothing: 5 when there in fact turned out to be 7 (I had forgotten about a tie and a rogue sock had found its way in there). She looked shocked at my inability to count and was horrified by the fact that there were items in there which I hadn't listed on the forms such as a novelty watch and a couple of badges. By this point the queue behind me was full of tutting Russians and as I had packed so many different odds and ends it would have taken a very long time to unwrap, count and weigh everything so I decided to cut my losses, picked up the box and made for the exit. The border crossing into Finland was comically simple in comparison; the customs officials didn't even look inside my bags.

Arrived in Helsinki

Its been a fun couple of days of travel. Minibus from Murmansk to a tiny little town in Finland called Ivalo then another bus and an overnight train down to Helsinki. The PC here in the train station won't allow me to connect my camera to I can't upload any photos from the journey (I had already updloaded the other photos from Murmansk). I'm planning to spend the night here then catch a ferry to Stockholm tomorrow evening.