Helsinki-Piter-Moscow-Kazan-Novosibirsk

Something should be written. This underground internet cafe is full of teenage Russian boys playing Warcraft III and just generally taking over the entire place. I'm in Novosibersk. The past, I don't know how long it's been... Well, we left Helsinki on Monday morning. And now it's Saturday evening.

БЕЗ СЛОВ. As in, even if I had all the time in the world, I would never come up with the right words to explain the past week.

Highlights:

We abandoned the all night internet cafe option in Piter (so I'm sorry for those people I promised long e-mails to and never recieved them). We bought tickets on a 6 hr. night tour of St. Petersburg. Which was originally concieved as a way to see the city during the White Nights of summer (as in it's almost always daylight). Well, winter nights are not really optimable for sight seeing. Especially when you're already exhausted, like EXHAUSTED, like EXHAUSTED. Anyways, we rode on a bus for 6 hours around Piter. I swear every time I woke up we were looking at the same god damn street and the old, but extremely energetic and LOUD tourguide was reciting some ridiculous Pushkin poem.

The bus abandoned us at 5:30. So then it was a rough 7 hours till our train left for Moscow. I don't really remember what we did. At one point, tired of walking from cafe to cafe and drinking endless amounts of tea, we got on the green metro line and rode it from one end to the other. It was miserable.

Train: Piter to Moscow

Train Stations in Moscow: Our train never showed up on the list of departing trains. Like we thought the train didn't exist.

**Intermission: This stately and majestic tall Russian woman in heels and a long shuba is trying to wake up the drunk man asleep at the computer surrounded by empty Baltika beer bottles because she paid for internet on that computer. The man really isn't moving anywhere. I think she found another free computer in the nest of teenage Warcraft players.**

So we ran around the train station asking people if our train existed. And they kept saying it did, but it was still never displayed on the board. Also during this time, while I was buying return train tickets from Irkutsk to Moscow, Susanna befriended some bums.

Then our train really did exist. It was just FULL of school kids. And then this was the greatest train ever because we were going to sleep (IN A BED!!!!!!) for the first time since leaving Helsinki. The train was FULL of school kids. Right. I already said that. And then like an hour into the ride. They all had to change wagons (train cars) so there was an endless marching of children through our wagon. And they all looked at us, as if we were the weirdo's. No. You are members of a freaking endless children's army marching through the train. You are the weirdo's. Also the middle aged Russian woman chaperoning the kids hated us. Most middle aged Russian woman glare at me a lot. I wonder why.

Running out of time.

So then we took the train from Moscow to Kazan and slept in a freaking bed. Then we got to Kazan and it was... -20 Celsius. Which is just plain cold. And we were homeless for like 7 hours until our next train left at 2 a.m.

So we just loitered about for a long time. Susanna and I are really good at this now. It was cold. We went to the Kremlin and the central shopping center place and then to dinner and then bought food for the train and then back to the train station. And then further craziness occured which may or may not be recorded at a later date. And then we got on our train from Kazan to Novgorod.

Kazan to Novosibirsk.

Now we're in Novosibirsk. This morning when we were kicked out of our hotel at 7 a.m. because we didn't want to pay more money it was -28 Celsius. COLD. So now we have wandered about for a long time and spent like 4 hours in the Novosibirsk Regional Studies Museum. And now I think we are going to dinner and probably going to sit there for a VERY LONG TIME. And then our train leaves tonight. And we'll be in Irkutsk Monday morning.

There is a mass migration of all the Russian boys who just finished their Warcraft games. Except a bunch of new boys just showed up. There is so much handshaking occuring amongst them it is ridiculous.