The lights in the bus were switched on at about 2 am and the stewardess Tatjana made an announcement in Russian and Latvian. The only thing we did understand (with the help of a sign out the window) was that we had reached the Latvian-Russian border. We had an interesting break of about 70 minutes – 10 with the Latvians and 60 with the Russians. The guardians of EU’s outer border came onto the bus, checked the passports and off we went. On the Russian side all passengers had to take all their stuff, leave the bus and queue up. After having passed a stall for the passport control one by one, we had to open our luggage for the sinister looking eyes of a female Russian agent. All bags were lined up and a 2m tall guy brought an old shepherd dog to sniff them all. Note that the whole procedure did not involve a single piece of technology (not even the clock on the wall worked – the time literally stood still here).
Back in the bus we fell asleep again – despite the bumpy roads and when we woke up we could already see the incomplete highway constrution projects in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. A friendly Latvian guy called Arti in the seat next to us told us that there would be a festival in the city – 308th birthday celebrations of the city’s foundation. We got off the bus at Vitebsky Vokzal, oriented ourselves with the free wifi at McD, got some roubles from the ATM and walked through the pouring rain to the hostel.
A few hours of sleep later, the sun came out again and we got up to roam around the Tsar’s city. ‚Don’t connect with drunkards or the police, they are both dangerous‘ was the receptionists advice before we made our way to Moskovskaya station and down Nevsky Prospect amidst a huge crowd of people, waving flags, drinking and listening to the many concerts along the boulevard. We came by the Church On The Spilled Blood, the Summer Garden and the Winter Palace and were incredibly impressed by the appearance of this city, which we were looking forward to explore during the coming days.
