Bus From Moscow to Helsinki

September 19th

What a bizarre day. After finally getting off the side of the road in Moscow, we continued on our 26 hour journey through the wilds of Russia to Helsinki. We had two hilarious bus drivers, Jukka and Yuri (no idea if I am spelling those right) and a really nice man from the customs brokerage in Finland on the bus with the four of us museum folk. Shortly following several beers came many shots of vodka and a showing of Gladiator.

I woke up when the bus was pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere by a police officer standing in the middle of the highway. Or maybe it was when the Russian security car broke a belt and we had to go to a truck stop...the details are fuzzy. But basically I got the opportunity to see the inside of a Russian truck stop late at night. Now even in America women are scarce at these establishments, but I felt more out of place than you can imagine. The people taking care of us paid for me to use the good bathroom (instead of the Turkish toilets) and it was freezing cold and had techno music blaring. When I exited, I found my drunk self inside a bizarre dining room where men huddled around wooden tables eating meat on sticks cooked over the fire in the center of the room. It was totally surreal.

After some fitful sleep on the bumpiest roads you can possibly imagine, I awoke around 6am in the morning. In addition to really sad looking shacks on the side of the road, most of what we saw out the window looked like this:

We ate breakfast on the road. Here's a few shots of my other traveling companions.

We spent all together almost four hour hours at the border waiting for our trucks to clear customs. Thankfully we had a special permit to skip many of the steps. On the other side of the border we passed miles of trucks backed up waiting to get into Russia.

By the time we hooked up with the trucks and headed to Helsinki, I felt like this:

You could tell the difference between Russia and Finland instantaneously. The shacks were replaced by tidy farms and it didn't hurt that the sun came out either.

When I arrived to my hotel room, I almost cried. It was beautiful and clean and modern, oh and the shower worked. Helsinki felt like heaven after Moscow.

They even left me a welcome message in English on the TV. Thank you Hotel Seurahunone.