Happy birthday little bro! :) In seven hours time I will be in Helsinki, Finland and hopefully I will be able to call you from there to send you my felicitations properly.
Yes, I said Finland. Helsinki, to be precise. As you can see, we have already deviated from the list of intended destinations for this journey. The plan to make Odessa our next stop was scrapped, as tickets proved to be significantly more expensive than either of us was expecting. Potential new plans ran the gamut from Belgium to Sweden to a return to Malta, but we settled on Helsinki because plane tickets were only around $130. Or so we thought. Clicking on the link to purchase the tickets lead to a new page which featured fares that were, shall we say, drastically enhanced.
The next plan was a train, which was only a little bit more expensive than the initial price we were quoted for the plane. I figured most any train ride had to be better than my train-related experience in Venice (http://occasiopraeceps.blogspot.com/2009/11/venice-103109.html), so I was totally on board for the railway approach. but then we discovered a Saint Petersburg-Helsinki bus for only $40 and, well, that price was just too good to pass up, though it adds an extra hour to our travel time. It's a small price to pay for a small price!
[On a side note, someone is playing Muse very loudly in the bus station and it's making me immensely happy.]
Our last nights in Russia were very quiet, in keeping with what is apparently the theme of this trip. We said our goodbyes to Metro Club on Saturday night, but the event turned into a deep discussion about life and other trivial things over beer and absinthe instead of an evening of vapid partying. As on previous days, we kept our internal clocks on east coast time and stayed awake until our hotel began serving breakfast at 8am. We then napped for a brief while before checking out and trekking to a new hotel, a short ways off of Nevsky Prospekt.
Sleep...sleep...and more sleep...and suddenly it was evening, Russian time, and it was time to get up! It sounds confusing, but I actually rather enjoyed getting to know my vampire side, filling pages with story notes in cramped and frantically excited handwriting, indulging in mint chocolate chip ice cream at 5:30am, and watching the city and its denizens wake for the day.
Must go for now...Helsinki beckons!!
Shoulder watch: Ouch.
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