todays program: starting bike tour through the Archipelagos; first day = approximately 70km

note: we know we have to report about a lot of things here, but right now we don’t find the time. We will be back on Sunday and hope to get by with our blog entries by Tuesday.

today’s program was: driving, national park, lakes, hiking, an osprey and a moose …

entry to be written

April 22nd
We had a good, but rather short night’s sleep in the train as we arrived at about 9 a.m. But that night train was a nice experience after all. Only a shower in the morning would have been nice as well. From the train station we were taken onto a bus tour through Moscow. We saw Novodevichy Convent, the Red Square, Sparrow Hills (where one of 7 huge stalinistic buildings is situated), the Peter the Great Statue and much more – such as the chaotic traffic in Moscow. We had the chance to get off at some places to take pictures and especially the Red Square we would see again and again during our stay.
After the city tour we went to check in at the Hotel Cosmos just across the All-Russian Exhibition Center. We had loads of time before the next event and visited that after we had relaxed in our rooms for a while. The All-Russian Exhibition Center is an older exhibition center mainly featuring pavillons of the Soviet nations and inhabiting huge, stalinistic architecture. In its middle there is the golden “friendship of nations” fountain. During our visit there was also a fun fair set up … Just next to the exhibition center there is also the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman sculpture that was once presented at the World’s Fair in Paris (1937).
In the evening we attended a guided subway tour. The old parts of Moscow’s subway are mainly from the 50’s, i.e. from the old Soviet days. To show off the domination and future paradise of Socialism the decorations of the subway were very rich, ranging from pictures, over mosaics to gold.

April 23rd
The next day we had a Kremlin tour. The Kremlin is not only a single building, but a fortress (“Kremlin” derives from the Russian word for fortress) with at least 3 churches and some presidential buildings. It has originally been a fortress to take refuge in and as a seat of the rulers of Moscow. Before the Russian emperors lived in St. Petersburg this was also the center of their life. The funniest features are a huge/biggest cannon that has never fired a shot and a huge/biggest bell that has never been rung. After our tour we were lucky to see a presentation by Russian soldiers supposedly practicing for a presentation at May 9th festivities. Horses, marching and music produced a nice program.
For the rest of the day we walked around the area of the Kremlin as the travel company didn’t manage to get tickets for the ballet. We saw an oldtimer rallye starting at the Kremlin and walked all the way to Peter the Great Statue next to the old chocolate factory. In the end of the day we had a nightly bus tour through Moscow that also took us to the illuminated Kremlin and the Red Square. There the humongous and expensive shopping center (just across the Red Square) was lit as if it were Christmas

April 24th
On our last day we checked out at about 11 a.m. and supposedly through that missed the chance to see Lenin. However, we went to the circus, which was very nice, even though we didn’t understand a word Afterwards we were taken to Arbat Street, a long shopping street. Whatever it was, but there were loads of (mainly) school students offering “free hugs” along the whole way. It felt like someone had sent all schools to this single street. Other than that we found a closed post office and had lunch from McDonald’s before we were taken further to an old Soviet bunker. That bunker was once built and used secretely to be home to the airforce command. The structure resemblemed that of a subway and could resist even nuclear strikes being located about 60 m beneath the earth’s surface. Our last stop before the train station was the Red Square again. We took some last photos and said good-bye to Moscow.
At about 10.50 p.m. our train (a night train again) left for Finland. We had a fabulous evening with a whole bunch of people in our 4-person cabin.

April 25th
We had to get up early for customs (7.30 a.m.), which first came through the train on the Russian side and then again on the Finnish side. At that point we somehow realized that Russians really seem to have a different mentality. The Finns seemed much friendlier and welcoming. Kind of felt like coming home
All in all this has been a trip that we wouldn’t want to miss. We’ve had great retentions towards Russia, which in 99% of the cases did not come true. Whatever the causes we are even considering going back to Russia for another nice stay in St. Petersburg or Moscow.

Monday 18^th April
At 14:00 o’clock a bus picked us up from the Turku bus station to drive to the Makasiini Terminal in Helsinki. During the bus tour we finally got back our passport we gave away three weeks before to get the Russian visa and had the possibility to sign up for a lot of extra activities during the tour. At the ferry terminal we got on the M/S Princess Maria which took us directly to St. Petersburg during a 13 ½ hour trip. As there was still a lot of ice on the sea it wasn’t the most silent sleep we got there, but the breakfast buffet was nice :).

Tuesday 19^th April
Arrival time with the boat was 9:30 h. We were on time and just had to pass the passport control. Together with around 15 other people we went through there quite quickly and waited for the others in the terminal. After a while of waiting we thought that the bus had probably already left without us as nobody else was coming. Happily a guide came and took us to a bus and surprisingly enough no one else was there yet. We had to wait for another 45 minutes before everyone was through the control. We heard just afterwards that especially the American and UK people took quite long to pass as they were checked by two or three people very carefully….
Driving from the Terminal in direction to the city center we had a first little city tour.  We for example saw the most Northern Egyptian sphinxes. They decorate the shore banks of Neva river. We furthermore passed the Peter and Paul fortress, the Aurora battleship, the Split of the St Basil Island, etc.  At around 1:00 am we visited St Isaac’s Cathedral. When it was build, it was the tallest Orthodox Church and still is the second largest in the world. After the church visit we drove to our hotel called “Hotel Moscow”. It was located right next to the famous street Nevskiy prospect just around 3km away from the center. It is a huge building and our room was located at the one end. This means that we had to walk for hours from the lift to the room… After resting for about 30 minutes we had a small walk around the hotel area. In the evening we then had a Russian dinner with a folk music show. That was really nice, the food was good, we got a lot of vodka and the show was funny.

Wednesday 20^th April
After breakfast we started a bus tour to Pushkin, the Catherine’s Palace in the village of Tsar at 9:30. It is located around 26 km from the city center. It was the summer residence of the Russian tsars. Catherine’s Palace which was redesigned 6 times during the old days is the main building surrounded by other beautiful buildings and nice parks and is 325 meter long. It is already impressive from the outside. But we were lucky enough to also have a tour inside. It was so impressive with all its gold, the famous Amber room and all its decoration. We spent quite a long time there before driving back to the city. There we had free time which we used to walk around the city to e.g. visit Kazan Cathedral and the Field of Mars or Marsovo Polye, a large park. In the night we had a limousine cruise through the city. Our group were 16 people and we got a big dark red Ford limousine. Soviet Champagne was served and we had a lot of fun driving around and stopping at the Rostral Columns and St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

Thursday 21^th April
We checked out from the hotel in the morning. At around noon we started a guided tour of the State Hermitage Museum. It is a really big museum of art and culture which consists of 6 different buildings which are all connected to each other. It is one of the largest and oldest museums of the world and comprises nearly 3 million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. Our tour lasted for more than 3 hours. After that we were really exhausted. Not only the art they have, but also the buildings themselves are so interesting and we might only have seen a very little part of it. Probably interesting to mention is that we have seen works by Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Rembrandt, etc. there. Even though we are not really interested in arts it was impressive to see pictures from all these famous painters.
In the afternoon we then also visited the Cathedral on the Spilled Blood, a very colorful and funny looking church. At 21:00 o’clock we ended our day with a river cruise through the canals of St. Petersburg with champagne. After that we drove to the Moscow railway station (in St. Petersburg) to take the night train Megapolis to Moscow.

The weather has been beautiful again and we decided to ride to the harbor on our bikes. As the day before there were lots and lots of people on their feet around the city. Awesome, how busy Finland turns with just a bit of sunshine. At the harbor we decided to go a bit further. There is an island just behind the harbor that was formerly known as an island of villas and a recreation area for the rich (?) – Ruissalo. It has many foot- and bikepaths that you an take through the woods and over the fields, which makes it really nice to visit by bike. And we even got to see some toads on their way to a pond.

Day 1
As we were hungry we went to Siida, the Sami museum to have lunch. After that we drove to our hostel in Kaamanen. There we had the possibility to get cross-country skis for free. The sizes of the shoes did not fit all of us so that we drove to the next “shop” 1.5km away to rent one more skis. In the evening we then had our first cross-country ski experience in Lapland. After that we drove to Inari to get some ice cream and relaxed at home. We went outside for a couple of times to see if we can see the Northern Lights, but as it was snowing so there was no chance to see them that night.

Day 2
We got up early because we wanted to drive to Norway and the arctic see on that day. The border to Norway was not very impressive, but the countryside changed completely. We drove along a very nice valley with little mountains and finally came to a point where we could see the arctic see. It wasn’t frozen and there were more snowy mountains around there. It was really nice to see. We then also saw reindeers in the countryside and fishing areas within the sea. We drove along the coastline for a while and enjoyed it a lot. Back in our hostel we cooked Spaghettis and decided to go out for cross-country skiing again. This itself was not a problem, but we decided to go into another direction than the day before. We were thinking that we were skiing on a lake, but later we found out that it was a river. As it started to get dark we decided to go away from the snowmobile tracks were you can easily ski and cross a few trees to get to the other side of the ‘lake’ and go back there. That was a bad decision. Once away from the track we sunk into the snow up to our hips. It was not possible to go on with the skis and we tried to crawl. It was really hard and took us hours. We finally made our way back to the hostel. This night we again drove the 60 km to Inari and back to get ice cream J. We furthermore had a look at the Inari lake in the night because we were hoping to have a better chance to see the Northern Lights from there. But even though we saw stars in this night we could not see anything else.

Day 3 and 4
It was a really nice and sunny day. We had to pack our stuff in the morning. After that we drove to the Inari lake to do cross-country skiing on it. It is amazingly big and really beautiful. At around 2 o’clock we again had lunch at the Sami museum. We than had to bring back our skis. On this way we saw a lot of reindeers. Some were lying on the river and others were standing on the street and not going away … But we then actually made our way and went into the museum we up to now just had lunch in. It was interesting and explained things about the Sami culture and the different animals and times of the year in that area. At around 6 we started our way back to Turku. On our way just a couple of kilometers before Ivalo we saw a wild spirit park. On a sign it said that it is open every day until 8. But another sign said closed and had a telephone number on it. Luckily we called that number and 10 minutes later a woman came. She kind of did a tour with us and showed us the 32 sled dogs (not many huskies) they had. She knew the name and race of every single dog and explained us a lot. She also showed us a raccoon-dog, a red fox, a polar fox, wild pigs, a ferret, etc. It was really cool! After that we continued our way back home. We always looked out of the car window to hopefully see some lights, but nothing. We arrived in Rovaniemi at 11:20 and now were early enough to have dinner at the McDonald’s before it closed at midnight. We went out further South and then finally saw some blue/green lights. We stopped at a lake to have it dark around us. And really, yes we could see some northern lights. But we have to say that they were not very bright or colorful this night and so it wasn’t really spectacular. After another long drive in the car we finally arrived Turku on Monday at midday.

In total we drove 3204 km which took us 42:37 hours.

Day 1/2: Helsinki

Off we were to meet Ulla in Helsinki. We met at the central train station where Ulla had arrived somewhat earlier. She had visited a museum in the meantime. After dropping our luggage off at the hostel we had a little walk around the city – mainly to find something to eat We ended up eating Pizza (which was pretty good). The next day (Thursday) we did a sightseeing tour through Helsinki seeing churches, the presidential palais, the market hall, etc. In the afternoon we picked up a rental car and drove to Porvoo.

Day 2/3: Porvoo

Porvoo is a small town just east of Helsinki. It has a lot of nice wooden houses and a cathedral, which kind of looks like a huge house. Over night we stayed in a beautiful hostel that is situated in a nice wooden building and only has 10 rooms of differing size. Sweet The next day we did a little sightseeing round in Porvoo to see everything they’ve got. It’s not very big, but really nice. All the wooden houses and old streets make it look as if it’s still from some ancient time.

Day 3: Glacial Mills

And again, off we drove towards Hämeenlinna. But first we went to some glacial mills just along the way. At least we tried to. Imagine us driving along, then there’s the sign saying that the parking lot is only 200m ahead. Well, we saw the parking lot … but there was no way of getting onto it through the big snow wall surrounding it. We turned around and went on to Hämeenlinna after that experience. That’s winter in Finland we suppose.

Day 3: Hämeenlinna and Iittala

In Hämeenlinna we went to the fortress (= linna). It’s changed very much into a castle over time. It is one of the impressive brick building that are rather rare for Finland. Very nice to visit actually. The attempt to eat some typical pea soup at the market place failed though as we were too late Our next stop took us to Iittala, a town and a glass factory, where we mainly stumbled upon some impressive prices (imagine an 8x8cm glass cube with some artistic stuff inside for about EUR 500). But the chocolate you could buy in the chocolate factory close by was tasty

Day 3/4: Tampere

Next stop: Tampere. In Tampere we arrived rather late. In the evening we only prepared some pasta (that we had bought in the local Lidl ). The next day we walked around in this rather interesting city that has a very industrial history. Somewhere we read that it’s sometimes said to be the Manchester of Finland, probably also because of the many brick buildings. It has a nice flair though and much of its industry has been turned into museums and other stuff over time. One encounter was interesting. We tried to get onto a tower (like a TV tower) and walked a bit for that. Upon arrival we had to learn that it’s closed from January till the end of March or something, because it’s too cold?! Strange people. Especially considering the fact that the alternative tower a bit away was open to visit.

Day 4: Rauma

Rauma is supposed to be an impressive wooden town and we saw lots of wooden buildings. But it was too cold to enjoy and there was not too much special about the houses. Porvoo had been nicer. After a quick lunch we headed on to Turku where our journey would end.

Day 4/5: Turku

In the evening we only went to bed after driving a round through the city as we were pretty exhausted from our trip. But the next day we showed Ulla most of the city. Sadly enough the market hall was closed and the cathedral was busy (guess what ) so we would have to come back later. We saw the market place, the river (that we walked on of course ) and lots more. We also ended up  visiting Turku’s castle. That was really cool to visit. The only downside was time. If you ever want to visit a castle and see every single room and more, go to Turku Castle … We gave up after we had done the main castle and about 2/3 of the museum (which is in the outer fortification like a front castle). We enjoyed it though.

Day 5: Aurajoki and Naantali

We still had some time on Sunday after the exhausting castle visit, so we went to see the falls of the river Aurajoki which is the big river in Turku. It’s a bit away from Turku, but it was interesting to see. It is covered in ice in many parts, but it still flows rapidly especially at the falls. There are some wholes where you can nicely see that. Afterwards we went on to Naantali as it is supposed to be a nice town as well. And it really is. The houses are just beautiful. There’s also the Moominworld, but as it is closed now the town was a nice and quite place to visit. We think it (together with Porvoo) was actually nicer than Rauma that is often said to be the nicest wooden town in Finland. The highlight of this was the sea. It is still totally frozen and there is a track for ice skating prepared on the sea, for example. We had a nice walk on the ice with Ulla – a must-do when you are in Finland during winter. It’s so cool

Day 5/6: Turku

Sunday night we went to have dinner at Harald’s, a viking restaurant in Turku. Among other things we had reindeer of course On Monday we visited the (important) cathedral and the old market hall in Turku before we said good bye to Ulla and returned to our life as university students attending courses again …

Okay, this has been a loooong post, maybe the longest post ever on this blog. But you just revisited 540km of history

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