Saorrento

Six weeks, seven countries and twelve cities later, our tour to Russia the long way round has finally drawn to a close. It has been the most incredible experience and I am very glad to say there isn’t any one thing that stands out well beyond the others, there were so many magical moments of our trip: seeing snow and wild Elk in Golden Colorado and dining out with Jon and Julie who we both had a fantastic time with; the neon extravaganza of both Las Vegas and Times Square in New York City; the climb to the observation deck of the Empire State Building; seeing Phantom of the Opera on Broadway; my first rail trip in England going out to Bristol and the Eurostar voyage to Belgium; pub crawls and luxury dining in Belgium; hiking through the snow in St Petersburg to various World War II monuments; getting up close to Soviet and German war machines and other various relics of the Cold War at a number of Museum exhibits; travelling from St Petersburg to Moscow by second class rail, with snowy landscapes out the window; cruising down the Rhine river in Frankfurt past the many vineyards, medieval styled castles and villages. These are just a few of the highlights, simply put; ‘The Long Way to Russia’ has been an EPIC adventure!

What’s next? Well this trip has wet our appetites for so much more travel; I personally would love to see a great deal more of Colorado during the ski season as well as re-visit Frankfurt and spend time touring about Germany. Things like a Route 66 road trip in the United States, a month long stay in Germany and other Euro Road trips are just some of the ideas buzzing through my head for the near future.

Of course then there are also new exotic locations such as the likes of Egypt, Antarctica and Dubai which are pretty high up on the list of new places too. So if nothing else, WATCH THIS SPACE!

On 1 May, 1703 (Russian calendar), during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenskans on the Neva river in Ingria. A few weeks later, on 27 May, 1703 (May 16, Old Style), lower on the river, on Zayachy (Hare) Island, three miles (5 km) inland from the gulf, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. He named the city after his patron saint, Saint Peter, the apostle. The original name was meant to sound like Dutch due to Peter’s obsession with the Dutch culture.[7] The city was built by conscripted serfs from all over Russia and also by Swedish prisoners of war[8] under the supervision of Alexander Menshikov and later became the centre of Saint Petersburg Governorate. Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war.

We arrived at St Petersberg just after midday on the Friday. Michelle and I were both excited and nervous at the same time. We were excited as we had finally made it to Russia; a place both of us had wanted to explore for so many years. Nervous, because we were not sure how easy it was going to be adapting to probably the vastest of European cultures. We hadn’t quite done any near enough Russian language study as we had originally planned, and various travel reviewers had noted their frustration at the lack of English signs and English speaking residents. You can imagine our relief upon entering the airport terminal from the plane when we saw translated airport signs in English (that was more than we got when in Brussels).

We collected our bags and headed to the exit where our driver was waiting for us, holding up a sign with both our names on it and so began our 40 minute drive to St Petersburg city.

After I was taken by the sight of the roads, I had expected everyone to be driving around in rather small cars as seen in the 1995 film James Bond Goldeneye, to my surprise the traffic didn’t seem that indifferent from any other country I had visited so far. In addition we passed a number of car dealerships leaving the airport; Ford, Volvo, Toyota, Land Rover and BMW all had large car yards prominently placed on the side of the motorway. I sat back thinking this wasn’t quite the Russia I was expecting.

We arrived at the hotel, exiting the car we were instantly greeted with the dry coldness of Russia, vapor was drifting from our nose and mouths as if we had been smoking. Our hotel was located just off Nevsky Prospect, one of the main streets in St Petersburg, and right across the road to one of several canals which St Pete’s is famous for. In total St Petersburg has over 70 canals, with over 500 bridges connecting them all up. The largest of these bridges located in the main square is over 90 meters wide; you wouldn’t know it was a bridge if someone didn’t tell you so. Essentially, St Petersburg is a collection of islands, 42 in total.

The check-in process was longer than previous experiences mainly due to the registration process all visitors must undertake when they arrive into Russia. Visitors that stay at a hotel simply hand their passport over to reception and the staff takes care of the registration. On the other hand If you were staying with family or friends you have up to three days to make your way to the registration office in the city and register yourself there. The registration papers that are created must be kept with your passport until you leave Russia. In addition, your passport must remain on you at all times in case the authorities want to check your credentials. Unfortunately our check-in process wasn’t helped by the fact that the registration system was down so we headed up to our room to settle in while reception worked on our passports.

Our room, like the one at Monte Carlo in Vegas was located right down the end of the hallway, well out of wireless range unfortunately. The room itself was quite spacious, especially compared to the hotel room in Brussels. Aside from not having a fridge (which was fixed by placing all liquids right up against the window at night, a trick I learnt from skiing in Melbourne a few years back) the only other item which was rendered useless was the TV since everything was in Russian.

After settling in we finally got rugged up in our warm clothes and headed back to reception to check on our passports. I was glad that lugging around my heavy coat through the United States and Europe had finally been justified. As it turned out our registration papers were still not ready, reluctantly, at the receptionists suggestion we took our passports anyway (it’s better than nothing) and headed out for a brief walk around the suburb. It was cold, but the scenery was so incredible that the cold didn’t matter. Walking down the main street Nevsky Prospect with the tall traditional looking Russian buildings running down either side of the street was an experience neither of us had ever felt before. The only thing that was missing was the Soviet icons placed on the buildings and flags flying of the railings and you would believe you were back in the Soviet era, the street and the city itself in some respects just had a timeless feel to it. The buildings had that depressing cold-war look, having witnessed so much history and tragic events, but they were beautiful at the same time.

Not wanting to be questioned about our lack of papers our afternoon walk was brief making our way back to the hotel before nightfall.

The next morning with our registered passports in hand we were greeted by our tour guide who was to be our guide for our St Petersburg stay for the various tours we had booked. Our first tour was a generalized city tour, the perfect way to become familiar with a new city.

We visited many interesting sites along this tour including the Winter Palace of the Tzars, which is now the Hermiage Museum), the gold-domed St Isaac’s Cathedral and many other magnificent churches, mansions and tree lined canals.

St Isaac’s Cathedral, popularly known for its gold-domed top was quite an impressive site to see but like so many other buildings in St Petersburg shared its own piece of history. During the bombing runs the Nazis did over St Petersburg, the Soviets painted the golden domes of the Cathedral, along with any other buildings boasting gold domes and trimmings in a grey indistinguishable colour making it difficult to spot targets from the air.

Our tour continued on to visit the Church of the Savior on Spilt Blood. The interiors of this cathedral were breath taking, featuring over 7000 square meters of religious mosaics depicting the reign of Jesus Christ. The site of the church also marked the location of the murder of social reformer Alexander II in 1881.

Inside, an elaborate shrine was constructed on the exact place of Alexander’s death. Amid such rich decoration, the simple cobblestones on which the tsar’s blood was spilled and which are exposed in the floor of the shrine provide a striking contrast.

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the church was ransacked and looted, badly damaging its interior. The Soviet government closed the church in the early 1930s. During the Second World War when many people were starving due to the Siege of St Petersburg (known then as Leningrad) by hostile Nazi German military forces, the church was used as a temporary storage site for the corpses of those who died both in combat and of starvation and illness. It suffered significant damage. After the war, it was used as a warehouse for vegetables, leading to the sardonic name of Savior on Potatoes.

In July 1970, management of the Church passed to Saint Isaac’s Cathedral (then used as a highly profitable museum) and proceeds from the Cathedral were funneled back into restoring the Church. During the restoration a un-detonated Nazi bomb from a fly by during the war was discovered in a damaged part of the Church. The Church reopened in August 1997, after 27 years of restoration, but does not currently function as a place of worship, currently it is a Museum of Mosaic.

Later that same day we journeyed to the location of the RRS Aurora the battleship-turned-museum. The Aurora was already a floating monument before the commencement of World War II. When this war broke out and the Nazis started bombing runs of St Petersburg, the Russians, in attempt to preserve their historic monuments deliberately submerged the Aurora in the bay where it was residing so it wouldn’t be a target. Slimily various other monuments and statues were also removed and buried in grounds for safe keeping until the war was over. Can you imagine, war time in Russia would be depressing enough, but to have all of the city monuments removed and buried, the golden domes repainted, everything that makes St Petersburg colourful and lively all obscured and hidden, it would have been an extremely depressing time to of lived here.

Ironically, one of the most interesting parts of the tour that day was not the monuments or visiting the grand palaces, rather a now shabby looking brown building on the edge of St Petersburg square; the Hotel ACTOPЍЯ.

This Hotel, built in 1912 was the hotel Adolf Hitler had chosen to host his celebratory party for once Leningrad was captured. The egotistical leader went as far to have invites to the event prematurely printed and delivered to guests. Today the hotel is occupied by visiting presidents and world leaders when they stay in St Petersburg.

The second day included a river tour along the Fontanka River, the very same river that runs parallel and across from our hotel. As mentioned earlier, St Petersburg is a conglomeration of islands, so the tour in fact involved quite a few river systems. On the previous day our tour guide was umming and arring about the availability of doing the river cruise since heavy rainfall on outer parts of St Petersburg had meant the river was a lot higher than usual. Yesterday, walking along the waterside near the naval college and Aurora battle ship is you could easily see just how high the tide had become with part of the pathway around the bay completely submerged.

At the time I didn’t think her concerns were justified, it turns out though she wasn’t far off, although the cruise left on schedule various bridges only just cleared the top deck of the river boat some by less than 20 cm.

It was another very cold morning in St Petersburg; I loved it. To me, the only thing that could make the whole Russian experience even better would be if it snowed. So here we were on a river boat, cruising through various canals at 11am. The maximum temperature for the day was 5 degrees Celsius, of course being on the water meant in reality it was probably a lot colder. On a typical morning I leave the hotel wearing pants, shirt, a thick jumper I bought whilst at Cambridge, my long black ‘London’ coat, a scarf and gloves, this morning was no different, in addition we also each had a blanket covering us as we sat on the deck chairs on the aft section of the boat. My fingers, despite the gloves and the rest of my body all wrapped up were still going numb, in fact, after a few minutes on the water my whole body was cold, but for some dumbfounded reason I just didn’t care, I was in Russia, cruising on a river boat through the canals of St Petersburg. It felt great.

The cruise lasted about 40 minutes and took us through various canal networks showing a variety of architecture; some original 1800’s architecture along with post World War II bombing zones which have of course since then been rebuilt.

The architecture in St Petersburg is very colourful. When Peter the first ruled St Petersburg he made it clear he wanted a colourful city. Being a fan of Venice, Italy, he invited architects from all over Europe to plan and design St Petersburg. Buildings were rendered and coloured in yellow, reds and greens. Owners of buildings which refused to comply with the colour scheme were taxed accordingly. St Petersburg became known as ‘The Venice of the North’.

For a 300 year old city, St Petersburg is drenched in history, the city name itself St Petersburg was not the only name the city had. After the death of Lenin, the city was renamed ‘Leningrad’ in honorary memory of their former leader. It wasn’t until September 6th 1991 after a referendum held in June of that year that voters chose to restore the name ‘Saint Petersburg’.

We are only two days into our stay at St Petersburg, and already in some respects it has completely lived up to my expectations. There quite simply is no other place like it in Europe.

The epic tale of this journey started just over seven months ago, and like all good tales involves a girl. During an initial meeting [December 30th at the Broken Hill Pub] (some might call it a first date) after all the small talk and flirting banter had subsided hypothetical plans for a trip to Russia were being sketched.

Russia was an adventure both of us had wanted to do for quite some time, although given the political nature of the country it wasn’t exactly a destination either of us felt comfortable doing alone. So year after year, trip after trip, Russia was left undiscovered, until that very night. That night I had found a traveling buddy, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had also found love.

Over the coming months the Russian adventure was shaped and molded; like a kid playing with play doh unsure of what to make… we knew we wanted Russia in the trip, but we didn’t know where to start or what the journey would involve. The adventure transformed from a Trans Siberian journey across Russia, mainly due to financial constraint, to just visiting St Petersburg and Moscow, to including Las Vegas, New York and London. A round the world fare was then determined.

It was at this point in time that we were getting serious with our travel plans; the next obvious step was to establish dates and look into flight availability. The trip in its entirety was about six weeks long, it then occurred to us that that’s a long time to be traveling with someone you have never traveled with before. Not wanting to compromise our Russian experience with the wrong companion we decided upon doing a smaller scale trip to ‘test the waters on first’ before committing ourselves to Russia later in the year. So in the month of May we tested out those waters in Vietnam.

In many ways Vietnam was a mutual grounds for both of us, namely because it was a place neither of us had been to, whilst offering a nice balance of relaxing atmosphere and exciting things to see and do. We both took particular interest in the Vietnam War, which lead us to a number of war related museums and tours including the Chu Chi Tunnels network that ultimately lead to the demoralization of the US forces invading at the time.

Our two week tour of Vietnam was a conglomeration of one fantastic experience after the other; having stayed at Ho Chi Minh city and then traveling up to the Old Quarter of Hanoi, visiting the various museums of war and history, getting into the thick hustle and bustle of street activity through to enjoying a relaxing cruise on a junket in Ho Long Bay. There was no question upon our return from Vietnam, it was time to get serious about Russia.

It was around this time that we both approached our employment for time off. I was a bit skeptical at this point as to how easy it would be for me to get time off, given that I was requesting six weeks and that it would mean I wouldn’t be available to go to Sydney for the annual Visual Impact Image Expo that the company participates in every year. To my complete surprise, my boss asked if I would mind calling in to visit our main distributors in Phoenix Arizona; Golden Colorado and Antwerp in Belgium. My leave was green-lit and with three new exciting destinations added to our list.

Three months later, with little more than 42 days to go, the adventure ahead is becoming seemingly more real. All flight and accommodation reservations have been booked and paid for.

This is actually my third international trip for the year; the first of these being Vietnam in May, the second, just around the corner being Singapore for 4 days in August to celebrate my girlfriends birthday, and the last of these being the epic round the world adventure setting off 11 of September for six weeks.

I really don’t quite know how I have managed to pull it all together; to save the money required whilst doing one trip after the other, with no prior savings, in the middle of a recession no less! I am consciously aware that I am living life very tightly financially to make these three trips work out, and truth be told it has become far too tight for comfort, but it will be all worth it. (special thanks to Mum and Dad advancing me some travel money for the trip) In a way this trip is rather symbolic; my last harrah before knuckling down, repaying debt and saving for the future; for future adventures and investments alike.

2009 is definitely the year of travel for me.

I am hoping that this upcoming round-the-world experience provides the much needed inspiration that I am desperately in search for. I want 2010 to be a new chapter in my life, a new beginning. Up to this point I have been living a life of dreams and recklessness, and although it has served me well and I have numerous stories to my name, I feel I have somewhat out grown that spir-of-the-moment lifestyle. I am now in search of something more definitive, complying to a plan… I am ready to start growing up and begin shaping my future.

To the dreams that I haven’t yet made happen, watch out – you’re next!

One month from today a promise of a unique re-imagining by JJ Abrams will hit theatres globally with the release of ‘Star Trek’ in association with Paramount Pictures. Sci-Fi (TV and Film) in general usually gets a pretty bad rap when it comes to ratings and unlike other genres, good sci-fi isn’t cheap to produce; sets and special effects alone eat a huge part of the production budget, therefore the necessity for high ratings is heavy. If a Sci-Fi show fails to meet the required viewership it is cancelled. Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the latest of the science fiction genre to be given the shaft… In as little as under twelve months four of my favorite shows have been given the boot: Stargate SG-1 (2008) axed at season 10, Stargate Atlantis (2009) axed at season 5, Battlestar Galactica (2009) axed at season 3, Terminator (2009) axed at season 2. Maybe I should devote said TV viewing to sitcoms like The Bold and the Beautiful or Australia’s Home and Away… theses shows may be shite by my standards but they are still running some twenty years later…

One month tomorrow holds promise to a different kind of adventure; touring Vietnam with my girlfriend. In anticipation of the trip ahead I began scouring the net and book stores for travel information relating to Nam. Yes, the holiday has been booked for some time now, as a matter of fact we’re picking up the travel documents and visa’s tonight and only now have I started to look into what to do there.

Truth be told, the Vietnam trip in some respects has been shadowed by the prospects of a far grander adventure slated for September / October of this year which will take us through the United States and various parts of Europe. While that trip is starting to take shape it is time to pull back and give the Vietnam trip the attention it deserves – there is so much to see and we only have little less than two weeks to make it happen. After Vietnam we can then swing our devotion to our next overseas frolic

So the next four weeks will be damage control; learning as much Vietnamese as I can, working out roughly what we want to see and do so we don’t miss out on anything, organize clothes and items for travel and work out a means preferably of keeping the travel component of this blog rolling while we are in Nam…

My obsession with travel began back in 1997 where a family holiday took me for the first time out of Australia and to the likes of Singapore, England and United States. Since that time I have made a small smattering of trips of my own; revisiting Singapore a number of times and returning to LA/Hollywood and visiting Las Vegas. On the domestic scale I am no stranger to the wide open roads, having driven numerous times to Denmark and Esperance essentially covering the south west region of Western Australia. I have also had the fortune of my work taking me to places such as Newman, deep in the Pilbara of Western Australia and across to Sydney on the east coast.

There are many aspects of travel I enjoy, the first of which and probably still the most significant of these is through my hobby of photography; in my opinion nothing makes for better photography than foreign landscapes and cultures. By foreign, I am referring to anything other than local to the viewer. However in recent times I have discovered how much I enjoy the challenge of learning languages. In anticipation of doing a Russian Trans-Siberian tour in late 2009 I began to learn to speak Russian. To this date I have only a few short phrases to show for my efforts, such as ordering beverages and saying please and thank you – but that is simply because I haven’t really been putting a great deal of time into it. So imagine how good I will be when I do actually start studying it. However my Russian has been put on hold for now in light of a new challenge – learning basic Vietnamese all thanks to my girlfriend / partner in crime who bought me an audio disc and book.

New Years 2007/2008 I made a resolution; to go abroad at least once a year. This year I plan to do a double-whammy (to make up for past years if nothing else) starting with a tour of Vietnam in May.
I am very much looking forward to this trip; lately I have begun to feel somewhat overwhelmed by western culture, though this can possibly be attributed to my recent increase in watching TV - being swamped by western-dramas. I close my eyes and picture the solitude of the Vietnamese country side; through all the hustle and bustle of an over populated country with swarms of mopeds and bikes coming from all directions lays a simpler lifestyle; dramatically different from the lifestyle that I have become accustomed to over the past 25 years. I really am looking forward to experiencing and embracing the change that the Vietnamese culture has to offer.

Later in the year, around late September to mid October dream of a Trans Siberian adventure is starting to form. The month long journey through Siberia will most likely begin in the Far East province Vladivostok and journey on through to Moscow and St Petersburg, making stops at local villages on route.

For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to visit Russia. My fixation with history, particularly World War II has undoubtedly played a strong part in this, as from very early on I became enthralled by the battle of Stalingrad the pivotal turning point in Soviet history and their stand against Nazi Germany.

So much adventure planned for 2009.. Recession be damned!