Goodbye Scandinavia

Our first glimpse of St Petersberg
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This morning we were up with the birds to leave Helsinki by 6:45am. This was to try o be at the front of the line of coaches at the Russian border on our way to St Petersberg. The wait here can be up to 5 hours depending on how many coaches are waiting to be processed.

On our way to the Finnish border we were given two sets of forms to fill out. The first was the Russian immigration form which was short and sweet and easily filled out. The second one was the visa application form for Belarus. This form was a horror with 43 questions that needd to be answered. This was a difficult task given the bumpy roads on the way to the border. During this time we also saw more than 400 fully loaded semi-trailers parked on the side of the road. We were told that this was one of two main entry points for goods into Russia, and the trucks waited here to pass through customs. Goods entering via the sea-port or rail have been known to "disappear" overnight when left in holding yards on the Russian side of the border. Companies prefer to have the trucks wait on the Finnish side for clearence to ensure that their goods get through.

Some locals..
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The Finnish immigration control required us to get off the bus and individually be processed like at an airport. This went smoothly and we were back on the bus quickly. It was back on the bus and the 5 min drive to the Russian border. Our tour director Monica said the Finnish border control people said there were 5 coaches ahead of us. This apparently wasn't too bad. On arrival at the border, the other coaches had already been processed, which meant we went to the front of the empty line. The Russian immigration lady didn't crack a smile at first, but apparently by the time all our travellers had passed by her and each made their attempt at saying thankyou in Russian (spa-sea-bo) - she was amused. Some of our travel-mates walked down the red "goods to declare" line by mistake and were approached by military offices and told to turn back and return down the green line. The only thing separating the two lines was a thin see-through fence?!?

St Peter and Paul Cathederal
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We then had to wait for our driver to be cleared with his licence papers. This seemed to take longer than processing all the people on the bus. After a customs inspection of the bus we were on our way, but not 5 mins down the road there was another checkpoint where an official boarded and checked our individual passports to ensure that no-one was missed back at the border. The backup of people travelling in the other direction at this point was backed up for kilometers!

We were soon free to go on our travelling way for the last two and a half hour drive to St Petersberg. Today the seat rotation on the bus had Joe and I in the front seat behind the driver. This had both positive and negative points. The positive is that you get a great view through the front window at the scenery. The bad news is you get a birdseye view of the crazy driving that goes on, both by our driver and the maniacs on the road in Russia. Our tour director said that Traffic lights in Russia are only a "recommendation" for how to drive. We also saw that lines on the road are only suggestions as well with traffic driving down the middle of the centre line continuously with no concern. A two lane bi-directional road continuously carried four lanes of traffic - anyway the cars/trucks/buses could sqeeze in.

St Peter and Paul Inside Ceiling
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After another 45 mins we stopped for one hour for lunch at a hotel. This was a welcome respite on our journey. There was another two hours 30min drive from this point to S