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August 10, 2005
the big Europe trip
Okay, at last, some words on my last trip to Europe.
Nadya and I decided to travel on a budget since we're both poor young people with academic/student salaries. So we took an overnight bus from Petersburg to Helsinki. There are official buses you can ride on, where it costs about €30 one-way. But if you ride a bus with professional traders (called "shuttles" in Russian), you can go for €10. These people leave Petersburg at 10 p.m., arrive in Helsinki early the next morning, and leave Helsinki by noon to return to Petersburg by 8 p.m. I'm still amazed that it can actually be profitable for someone to do this, considering it costs money to make each round trip and you can't carry that much stuff across without paying tax on it. Maybe it's just because you only have to pay tax if they bother doing a customs check. And, as we hear, it's only the Estonians working for the Finnish government who ever bother to do it.
If you're really business-savvy (unlike us linguists), you can agree to carry some liquor or cigarettes into Finland from Russia or various goods back under your customs allowance and get someone to pay you for doing so. Allegedly you can even go to Finland for free this way by bargaining right. But we just paid our way and rode through the night, dozing when possible. Now and then the woman in charge would wake you up using the microphone to tell you we've arrived at another store where you can buy cheap stuff to take to Finland and use a free bathroom.
When we got close to the border (around 3 a.m. I guess), we got to a checkpoint, complete with gate that the guard can raise to allow cars to pass, where a young Russian soldier boarded to check that we all had passports. Then we continued, past many, many trucks waiting in line, to Russian border control, where after waiting quite a while we got out of the bus, went into a building, waited for the border people to finish taking their break, and got stamped so we could leave the country. Then we got back in the bus, drove another 100 yards, where we were boarded by some border people who checked that we all had gotten stamps that day.
Then we went to the Finnish border, where it was determined that we would not need to do a customs check that day. Apparently the Estonians weren't in the current shift. Instead we just had a bunch of bored Finns checking our passports and asking us questions just to chat. My guy was surprised to see an American passport and wanted to know what I was doing in Russia. Nadya's guy wanted to practice his Finnish-accented, not so good Russian, asking what she was studied and who she was visiting. When he found out she was studying linguistics and English, he got very excited, and asked her (in Russian) how to say various things in English, such as "It couldn't be worse" (in response to "How are you?).
We arrived in Helsinki, exhausted, so we took advantage of the opportunity to sleep in the bus for a few hours, by at 8 a.m. they made us leave for some reason. Nadya discovered really bad Finnish coffee at Robert's Coffee in the nearby train station, and we toured Helsinki quickly. Only one picture turned out: the third in my series on public art in the Nordic countries:
We stayed overnight with a friend of Nadya's who's studying at the Helsinki University of Technology and discovered that the Finns make the best yogurt we've ever tried. Then we flew to Stockholm on Blue1 and discovered that things there are even more expensive than in Helsinki and that the Swedes don't know yogurt so well. Saw the city on foot.
The fourth in my series on public art:
More photos of Stockholm later.
We stayed overnight in a hostel and then flew on Ryanair to Paris. Really, saying that you fly "from Stockholm to Paris" is a bit misleading. You see, Ryanair saves money by setting up flights at underused airports far from city centers where the operating costs are cheaper. So we took a bus from the center of Stockholm to Skavsta airport, which is about 90 minutes away, in the middle of the Swedish countryside. And then we arrived at Beauvais, which is about two hours from Paris, in the middle of the French countryside. It's not a total exaggeration to say that the Champaign, Illinois, airport is better developed than Beauvais.
Arrived in Paris to our budget hotel, which, while we knew it would not have "ensuite" facilities, didn't have a free shower. It cost €2.50 per person to use it, but at least your use of water and time was unlimited at that point. Perhaps the "per person" charge was to keep clever budget travelers from showering together to save money. It didn't say if this was a one-time charge or per-use charge, but we assumed it meant the latter.
The next day we walked around Montmartre and visited Sacré Cœur ...
... and Notre Dame ...
... where Nadya tried to feed the sparrows:
We also saw Sainte-Chapelle:
Here's a view from the Centre Pompidou, home of the Musée national d'art moderne, which we visited the next day:
Kevin enjoyed the museum but Nadya was less enthusiastic.
From La Défense, looking at the Arc de Triomphe:
Then we visited the Eiffel Tower at dusk:
We stayed till after dark, but none of those photos turned out.
On Saturday, we attempted to do bargain shopping but hit the biggest sale day of the summer, meaning everyone else had the same idea. So no luck. In the evening we met Gabriel R. from library school. A native of Paris, he's living there now while finishing up some research before returning to Illinois. Showed us some neat sites, including Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop, which also functions as an apartment for a handful of people. He also tipped us off on how to find the best ice cream in Paris.
On Sunday, we visited the Museé d'Orsay and did some more walking and took a boat cruise on the Seine. Afterwards we walked some more, ending up at Place de la Bastille. Not much is left of the Bastille itself, but there's a column in the middle:
The next day we took a train to Rouen, home of the cathedral made famous by Monet. None of my pictures of it are that interesting in comparison. But it's a cute town with streets like this ...
and courtyards like this:
Stayed a night there in a room that even had a TV and minifridge. But before that we watched a midnight light show accompanied by music, projected on the cathedral facade, showing various Monet and Roy Lichtenstein representations of the cathedral.
Next day we took a train to Amiens, home to the largest Gothic cathedral in France or Western Europe, depending on who you ask ...
... and a cute historical district:
Back in Paris, a view from the balcony of our second hotel room, with a shower but no toilet. But a balcony!
Flew back to Stockholm, where I saw an intriguing sign:
Sushi-flavored coffee? Or coffee-flavored sushi? Or a place that serves both?
More of Stockholm:
Then we took an overnight ferry to Helsinki, from which Nadya took pictures of the sunset:
Another ferry docking at Mariehamn, as we were getting ready to leave.
After an hour or two in Helsinki, we went to catch a bus back. Since there are lots of buses hauling traders, there's healthy competition among them. We got conned into taking a really old one on the way back by the woman running the bus, who told us it was one of the last buses and leaving soon. We hurried on only to wait there twenty minutes, at which point basically all of the buses left at the same time. Anyway, this woman didn't announce so much on the way back to Russia but did have a goofy dry sense of humor that can't be properly relayed in a blog, let alone in English. However, Nadya and I did notice a couple of signs near the border that we found particularly funny, such as this one outside a store where we stopped very close to the border:
If you don't read Russian, you'll have to trust me that there are numerous goofy things about it.
Posted by kshawkin at August 10, 2005 09:45 PM