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| Cycling in Riga at -8º C |
We left Riga at 10am, jump in the car and drove to Russia. Before getting there we had to pass through Estonia. Bad roads again, but the distance was short. On the road we found some curious ice sculptures.
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| You can do almost everything with ice at -10º C |
Then, the border to leave Estonia. Problem. Silly system alert: you have to go to a big parking lot, officially pay 5 € (to get out of Europe!! Is that legal?), then they let you know when you can leave the parking lot, and go to the border control. Passport control. More problems. Two handsome and smiling young guys are trying to go to Russia with European passports: one Polish passport and one Spanish passport. Too suspicious, they make us wait 30 minutes without any additional information. Then, a man appeared with a dog (who was shaking because of the cold). Ahhhh, we understand, we are suspicious of drug traffic. The dog inspected the car and left it after 10 seconds, the man tells the dog to keep searching, the dog insist: “no drugs man!” Finally, everything OK, and the woman that rule the border (they were only women, besides the man with the dog) said we can continue.
We reach the Russian border, more waiting. But this time better, just slow Russian procedures, light car checking, more waiting and after Ilja told the trip to the Russian border officer, she told us it was not a good idea. More waiting, then, after 2 hours, we can go.
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| Masha worried about us |
So in front, we had 7 hours of driving at night in Russian bad and freeze road. We had to stop every 2 hours to remove the ice from the front lights, they were covered with ice and we couldn’t see anything. Temperature was -14ºC, and the washers of the windscreen were frozen, so we couldn’t clean the windscreen, after 4 hours, it was full of salt and dirty, so we had to stop to clean it with drinking water. Problem: when we throw the water on the windscreen to clean it with a piece of paper, it becomes frozen in two seconds, so it was impossible to clean it, but there was no more option than continue to Saint Petersburg. Finally, we got to the house where we were going to sleep, they were waiting for us awake. They even had some dinner prepared for us. We ate and hit the bed immediately, it was too late.
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| BMW in St Pete |
Next morning, we did some tourism in Saint Pete, nice churches, frozen rivers, frozen everything. We bought a Russian SIM card and now we have internet in our phone, but only where there is 3G signal. Saint Pete, is the most European style Russian city. The Hermitage Museum is huge, and we were able enter for free with our student ID. Even when David’s student ID is actually a teacher ID, and it is already expired. Great!
At night, we came back to Masha’s home again, we prepare some chicken with mushrooms and meet her boyfriend from Kamchatka. He explained the way they fish and prepare the Russian caviar. Hard work, old style. We share our stories and have a really nice night.
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| Ilja and David representing an ancient battle in Turkmenistan |
