Kaliningrad
Another swift border crossing into Russia, briefly threatened by a surly border guard shouting at us as her colleague had forgotten to give us a piece of paper with a stamp on for her, saw us arriving at Kaliningrad in early afternoon. The roads were brand new from the spit to the Moscow road, absolutely nothing to do with Putin having a villa built in the spit, and the hotel actually had a camping area with hookups by a lake! We were so on a high we decided to go into the city that evening for a wander around and perhaps a meal. The taxi ride was, as is the custom in Russia, terrifying and...
Read MoreBack to the Future
After an overnight en route from St Petersburg to the border with Estonia we arrived expecting the usual Russian bedlam of border controls, but to our pleasant surprise a very well organised and efficient border crossing actually saw us leave Russia in under an hour. Almost immediately you seem to go forward in time as the fields suddenly became more organised and the villages more welcoming and homely. Houses were more well kept and gardens better tended. It is amazing the change you get in such a short space. Russia seems like a country where everyone has to look out for themselves, public...
Read MoreSt Petersburg!
Church of the Spilled Blood St Saviours Yusopov Palace Theatre Hermitage Church of the Spilled Blood Hermitage St Saviours Peterhof Peterhof Memorial to the siege of Leningrad There is a saying here that in communist times a man was asked where he was born, St Petersburg he replied, where did you go to school? Petrograd he answers. Where do you live now? Leningrad he continues and where would you like to live? St Petersburg. Of course they are all the same place but this city in its short 300 year history has seen enormous changes from Majesterial Capital of Russia, the birth of the...
Read MoreWelcome to Russia, now get off the road…
Good old Joe Nudist Washing Looks lovely… but cold The A140 Novgorod Novgorod Kremlin Last time we entered Russia it took us 19 hours to get in, this time it took about 1.9 seconds as the border between Belarus and Russia is now like an EU crossing. I’m afraid though that’s where the similarities end. When we left Russia we passed a town called Ugly, given some of the towns we’ve driven through we’d hate to visit it because most of the towns and cities here are seriously unattractive. Communism seems to have taken Ugly its sister town of Decrepit and joined them together as the state...
Read MoreFarewell Russia
We arrived at the border at 11am with about 40 cars infront of us and at 17:30 we got Into the customs area! Russia is surely the king of bureaucratic incompetence. The customs have 5 lanes to clear cars so with the queue probably around 10 miles by the time we got to the front we find they have two lanes open. They make everyone open every door, bonnet and boot and don’t touch a thing just stare miserably into the boot. You almost think they expect someone to open their boot and inside will be a large bag with “drugs” written on it! Once you’ve had your car checked...
Read MoreFarewell to Moscow
Like Napolean we left Moscow in smoke a bit earlier than planned. The smoke seemed to have booked in for the next week so we decided we’d leave two days early. We’ve seen most of what we wanted to and will hopefully get another chance to visit in the future. So yesterday was our last day in the city and we spent it at the fascinating Museum of the revolution. There’s a helpful sheet in English for almost every room and it was really interesting to see how the revolution changed the way of life of the average Russian. We thought it was a bit too rosey eyed view of the past...
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