Back to Europe on the Trans-Mongolian

After spending a hectic morning in dreary Ulan-Bator getting organised for our long journey, we finally boarded the train around mid-day ready for some good "sit back, relax and enjoy your trip" kind of action. We came prepared with a few books, a good amount of food and even a cross-stitch I have been working on at times of intense boredom all the way since Laos. Not overly worried about the lenght of the journey, we thought we might actually enjoy a bit of a forced break where all we could do is...well...sit back and relax really. The busiest portion of the trip was from Ulan-Bator to the Russian Border after which things got pretty quiet on our carriage. We only had to share our cabin for a few hours around the border crossing, a painful process itself, but not again afterwards which turned our cabin into a cozy little nest where the hours went by slowly, one cross-stitch at a time. We mostly had enough food for the whole trip and with some clever rationing, we were able to break up the day into small portions, pausing for tea or a pastry every few hours. Once in a while, the train stopped at small stations where we could pick up very basic things like bread and observe the train's population. Mostly Russian, it was a bit of a scary sight with voluminous amounts of exposed white flesh, very very short shorts for women and an overall ressemblance to V.Putin for men. When the train was moving, we would just look out the window and gasp in awe at what we were seeing which, at one point, included a very rotund woman watering her Siberian veggie garden only wearing underwear. When we weren't observing the local fauna, we also admired the landscapes which, no doubt would look hostile in the middle of winter, but in summer, were mainly thick forests of tall slender birches and conifers with the obvious exception of the beautiful Lake Baikal which greeted us, bleary eyed, on the first morning. Those were our main forms of entertainment and after 5 fairly repetitive days, we happily arrived in Moscow ready to give our stiff legs a good work out and get cracking on this whole Europe business.

In Moscow, we found a reasonable hostel and, with only one day, spent the whole time walking around, ticking off the main sights and reviving ourselves with ice cream breaks at McDonalds, also conveniently the best public toilet in the world. Moscow, straight after Ulan-Bator, seemed like the peak of sophistication but it isn't really. It is pleasant but apart from a few areas, mainly touristic, it doesn't seem to be especially interesting.

If Moscow is the gobernatarial (?) capital of Russia, then St-Petersburg is definitely it's cultural centre and we enjoyed it very much. We stretched the limits of our Transit Visa and allowed 2 nights and 3 days in St-P. and by the end, we wished we had a bit longer to explore. Apart from the major sights like the Hermitage which we barely skimmed in an exhausting 3 hours, the Church of our saviour on Spilled Blood and of course, walking up and down Nevsky Prospect, there isn't a single street or building which doesn't seem appealing, doesn't make you want to turn the corner and walk farther and farther away from your intended destination. Each day, we got sidetracked like this and would end up adding kilometers into our planned loops. Our saving grace were the never-ending days which made it possible to fit most things we wanted to see. Russia is a pain to get to, the visa process is expensive and intimidating but St-Petersburg is one beautiful city and we were very glad we could have a look.

From there, we caught a night bus to Riga, Latvia which took 12 hours and even longer to recover from. Our entry into Latvia marked the end of proper borders and visas and I had a sigh of relief at that thought. We got to our camping ground, the first of what will be a long successsion, around mid-day and after quickly setting up our tent, we headed into the city centre to have a look around. Riga is a pleasant, reasonnably sized and charming Baltic city. The weather was delightful when we were there and although there weren't tons to see and do, we enjoyed some nice strolls and lunches in various parks around the city.

In a slight strike of bad luck though, we also spent a considerable amount of time at our camping ground. Believing the guy at the reception, I drank some tap water and quickly realised that it might have been a mistake. After a terrible night, we headed to the closest hospital where all I wanted was a prescription for some antibiotics. We actually had some in our first aid kit but Chris did not want me to self-prescribe. Anyway, it was a waste of time. They put me on a drip and I had a bit of a sleep which was nice, they ran a few tests and then...nothing... The doctor who was seeing me came up with everything under the sun except for a solution to my gastro problems. The bill was not very high, we got back to the campground empty handed and well, I self-prescribed. It got better but it still took a few boring days of complete inactivity. It was lucky we had a while in Riga before heading to Stockholm.

After about 5 days in Latvia, we broke our own principles and boarded a plane for Stockholm. We spent our last evening in Riga cleaning out our bags and shifting things around to try and make it under the 15kg weight limit. It was in vain but we were close with 15.8kg each. We were wearing as many clothes as we could on a hot July morning and our carry-on bags were stuffed to maximum capacity. The flight was only an hour long, very short but long enough to leave a slight aftertaste of having cheated our overland objectives. Still, we were pretty excited about finally heading to Scandinavia and checking out how people who live in the dark most of the year can come up with such good design!