We left Warsaw at 23:57 on Friday night for a 28 hour train trip to St. Petersburg. From Krakow, St. Petersburg is 1300km's. I have been surprised that all the trains have been on time. Our compartment was a standard just below first class and it was just Lauren and I in the compartment. We made our beds, not realising that the heavy duvet was actually a mattress. Only once Lauren was in bed and complaining that she couldn't move her body as the "duvet" was too heavy and didn't cover her arms did we realise our error. In fits of hysteria, we remade our beds correctly - by now it was 1am in the morning and gratefully climbed into bed. This after wondering what the purple blankets were for.....
Two and a half hours later we were woken up for passport control by the Polish border patrol. We then hit Belarus border control where an alarming number of border guards jumped on the train. We handed over our passports, our compartment was checked for people hiding under the bed and for about 30 minutes, we had guards patrolling up and down the passage, all with different types of uniforms.
We then headed past the border, taking half the guards with us and dropping them off at the nearest station. We then backtracked 10 minutes down the line to a building where the bogies on our train were shunted. Impressive jargon - what it means is that the wheels on our polish train didn't fit the Russian rail track and needed to be changed. The carriages are lifted, the old wheels rolled away and new ones fitted. A time consuming and very noisy process.
We slept quite late the next morning, it is quite relaxing on the train. We then stopped at a random station for about two hours. Most people got off the train but as we didn't understand or know what was going on, we stayed where we were, eating ham and cheese sandwiches for both lunch and dinner. There was a hot water boiler so we could at least make some tea.
We were both waiting to hit Belarus border control when we left it, but it never happened so until this morning, we still thought we were in Belarus. We were woken up this morning when we hit St. Petersburg - very confused.
Anyway, we made our way to the hotel on the underground (thnk goodness for an english underground map) which proved to be quite difficult to find at 7am in the dark and it is down a side street. We weren't able to check in so we registered our passports and headed out for a walking tour of a very misty and cold St. Petersburg.
We found the Church of the Spilt Blood - very pretty, though much prettier when the sun was shining on it a few hours later. We have been walking now for three hours so are heading back to the hotel for a shower and some sleep before Anthony and Kala arrive and we pound the streets once more.
