Life so far.

Zdrastvuite!

We're in St Petersburg! Me and Clara today concluded that we would not die if we lived here. It's actually quite nice. And I like how we are starting to learn our way around and trying many new and Russian things.

But lets start at the beginning. We took a boat! A fancy smancy flashy things with glass elevators and a pool we never used! Our amazing friends Amy, Anna, Raz and Mirjam joined us on this part of the journey and we raised havock running around in the bollhav and geting turtle tattoos (fake). We stole a bunch of coasters and left funny messages to anyone who found them (sort of like a scavenger hunt) and of coarse jigged on the dansfloor keeping up with the old folks. All in all, very fun but as Clara and I concluded a one way boat trip was good enough for us.

Seeing as we were quite exhausted when reaching Helsinki we mostly ran erands at Stockman (we now own gafa-tape!) and ate Finish-Chinese hamburgers. Amy saw us off at the trainstation and so began our first leg of train journey; a nice, prepatory one of only 7 hours.

Arriving St Petersburg late at night was exciting. We refused to use our guide book and simply walked in one direktion to try to find a metro. It worked! However, although we did everything right and stood on all the right platforms ("it's the one with the name of that starts with a back to front euro sign") our train must have derailed or something cause we still ended up on the wrong line in the wrong place. Oh well we were soon back on track and finally ended up at the right station when new difficulties showed up. It was midnight and dark and we found the street the hostel was to be on but not if we were to walk right or left. We took left. Very stupid. We walked with heavy backpacks until we finally found a sign with a street number on it and then turned around and went all the way back. We did manage to get to the hostel before the reception closed though which we were very thankful for.

Our hostel is clean and nice but was quite intimidating at first. They have no lockers so we have been cuddling our bags all night. But the showers work and the water in the kitchen is drinkable. What more could you ask?!

In P-burg (as the locals call it) we've now eaten bortch (russian beetroot soup), seen a Russian kids ballet in two acts which was colorful and fantastic!, been on a boat tour, visited the Hermitage which has the largest collection of European art in the world, eated at the Idiot cafe which is inspired by Dostojevsky's masterpiece and walked miles in the neighborhood. P-burg is sunny and we've managed to score 2 out their total 35 sunny days a year! Awesome!

We miss home sometimes and I keep saying stupid things and Clara keeps complaining about a certain someone. Everythings grand.

Lots of love.