To Russia With Love

We arrived to the Helsinki port and were unpleasantly welcomed by pouring rain as we trucked through the streets a good ten minutes to the train station. We had plenty of time to kill so we decided to sit down at the Aseman Wursti, a highly overrated hotdog joint. An hour of hanging out passed and we were distastefully introduced to the lamest of lame ladies on the planet. “Usually at restaurants you buy something. Have you ever heard of it?” With few words in exchange, we moved to the outdoor train departure area where we sat for another hour deliriously recording videos of God knows what to pass time. We were not satisfied with the way the lady treated us so we relocated back to the wiener café and established dominance as we bought the cheapest option on the menu. As we entered, we shouted, "We would like to buy a small Pepsi, Have you heard of this?" Other cafe patrons laughed so we  to post up there for another couple of hours slowly drinking the Pepsi, drip by drip. Our train had finally arrived so we hopped aboard and made ourselves comfortable for the upcoming six-hour ride to St. Petersburg.

After going a little crazy in the train station, we met some girls on the train that graduated from the University of Virginia and exchanged travel stories until we were finally in St. Petersburg. As we stepped off of the train, we were immediately struck with a feeling of intimidation. After receiving a variety of dirty looks from everyone around us, including the guards, we were in the train station searching for an information counter to figure out where our hotel was located. The lady sitting behind the information desk did not speak a lick of English, so we moved on to the next potential source of assistance. After several attempts with other Russians in the station, a guard finally assisted us out of the station and to a map where he would lead us on our pursuit. With extreme gusts of wind blowing us all over the place, we cautiously walked over a  bridge under construction, weaving side-to-side to avoid workers on the sandy walkway. After many complicated attempts to figure out our whereabouts (most strangers were not able to communicate with us), another guard pointed us in a direction down the main road. Thanks to Sheree, our great family friend, we broke out the Lingo translator device for one of the words the man muttered and we were able to understand that we needed to take a right turn. Following the right turn we came across another problem and no maps were to be found. Tension was building even more as strangers continued to stare at us and light began to fall. We waved down a cab and roller coasted to our hotel that we would have never found by foot.

We entered through a large steel gate entrance followed by a courtyard to reach the Sky Hotel. It was extremely run down as we entered the first floor which put off a grimy musty smell. We reached the sixth floor and were pleasantly greeted by a beautiful receptionist name Svetlana. Her English was great to hear and we were in our much nicer hotel room han expected. We were exhausted from all of the effort spent traveling and walking aimlessly in the streets of St. Petersburg so we decided to call it an early night and got some great rest.