Long story short, I refused to take the one direct flight from LA to Moscow, and ended up on a grueling itinerary of 3 different flights. My last layover was in Helsinki and we had to board the flight to Moscow by walking up the stairway. The Finnish air was so fresh and crisp and the storm in the distance was pretty.
I remember on this flight to Moscow I sat next to an old lady who spoke no English, only Russkiy, and I was very fascinated to watch her pull out a portable DVD player (I had one of those back in 2005!) and watch a very old, very black-and-white, very Soviet-looking movie. It felt like such a great introduction for what was to come.
The passport control took foreverrrrrr and then I had about an hour cab ride to look forward to to get me to the hotel. My cab driver was an incredibly pleasant man who was very excited to have "California gurl" in his car and insisted my purse go on the seat and not the floor. He loved talking so much, but his English was so limited, so he would talk into his phone and have it translate and show me the transcript. In this way I learned he was actually from Azerbaijan and he thought my company must be indecent to not pay for the toll roads to get in to the city. Towards the end, he was texting someone and I had a clear shot, so to make sure I wasn't in the middle of a scheme to be human trafficked, I took a picture of his phone and sent it to my friend Jessica, who translated his screen for me. It said that he was busy, with a client, and had been working for 24 hours because he needed to make his rent. So, that was friggin heartbreaking.
Coming into Moscow was absolutely beautiful. It reminded me a lot of Vienna with the classical 1700s architecture, and mixed in with the Eastern, onion-topped cathedrals and so elegant! so clean! so many lights! so beautiful! I was perfectly enchanted.
Above was my hotel. I was liking seeing all the Cyrillic writing. And actually- what a godsend! Back in 2016 when I started working at UC Irvine, one of my coworkers and closest friends was (still is!) Bulgarian. As a linguist major, I'm not only in love with languages, but the fact that I had a native speaker around to help me, I was down to learn Bulgarian. She bought me a Bulgarian phrasebook and the first thing to do was master the Cyrillic alphabet, which I didn't quite do, but got pretty close.
And OH. MY. GOD. Thank God I did! The amount of help it gave me being able to read signs was second only to actually speaking the language. (A big jump, but still better than nothing). And, I got a lot of practice. By the time I left I had such a headache trying to sound out every sign around me. It wasn't even because I consciously wanted to, but everytime I saw something I invariably tried to sound it out in my head.
Before checking in, I stood outside my hotel to take in the fresh air and try to recover from the all the plane and car rides and breathe out my nausea. It was wonderfully chill. I should mention that my hotel was in the midst of the inner city, walking city from the Kremlin, when out of nowhere... a girl, a teen girl, leisurely just walked down the street on her horse. On her friggin horse. As if it was nothing at all. I was amazed. All the backward-Soviet-Russia jokes were floating right in front of me. I was amazed. And figured I had seen enough for the past 24 hours to go to sleep.
In the morning I had an appointment at the Education USA center in Moscow. Their office was in the middle of this whole compound called Artplay that was so cool! Super artsy and chic and fun, and I loved their cute little office!
After my meeting, the girl I met with, Indira, was heading to the train station and offered to walk me to the metro stop on her way, so I accepted it and it was really nice. Loved this mural outside of the metro entrance.
...and the metros!! The city was already clean and classic and beautiful, and the entire metro system was breathtaking like some Parisian museum. Marble floors and intricate ceilings and gold chandeliers and massive paintings and impressive statues. I feel like you can't ride the metro and not feel like you're some form of upper class. What they must think when they see the NYC system!
I took the metro to the stop at Red Square so I could visit it before heading back to my hotel to crash. I remember, walking and not entirely sure where exactly I'd be looking, and seeing the crowd and turning a corner and there it was - unmistakably St Basil's Cathedral - colorful and amazing and trying to believe my eyes that it was right there in front of me. So I wandered around for a bit, taking it all in. The lighting wasn't the best for photos but the clouds and sun looked prettily dramatic.
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| Loved the sky blue ceiling |
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| I was able to read "LENIN" and realize it was Lenin's mausoleum! |
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| Love the bright colors and gold tops! |
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| Love those sky blue tops! |
I had some amazing Russian pelmeni, and also this yellow lentil soup served with yes, that entire side bowl of sour cream. They love sour cream for everythinggggggg.
I noticed that every single place I went for coffee, the cup was always served with a small cookie on the side. As a matter of fact, when I was working away in my hotel lobby, I ended up getting two refills of coffee and each subsequent cup still came with a small cookie. I thought maybe this was just a fancy hotel but nope. One day, grabbing lunch from a grocery store, I got a small to-go iced coffee cup, and, peeling off the top, there was a hidden compartment for what else than a small cookie. They're serious about this! And you know what, I enjoyed it! Your move, Starbucks.
The schedule of events had me taking a late train from Moscow to St Petersburg, completely exhausted and going straight to the hotel, so I really didn't see much until the morning, when I had to head straight to the fair, but my walking tour to the metro took me past some stops. (And the metro here was just as impressive as the metro in Moscow).
At the fair, I was given a translator to help me at my table, and Ms. Elena was so sweet and so adorable and we had such a good time, that she insisted that I join her, her friend and her boyfriend for dinner that night. Not only were they super nice, they were super cool too! They played awesome tour guides and gave me a full walking tour of their city, and took me to a great farm-to-table restaurant and made me try borsch (it was delicious!) and even finished the night off at a fun hookah bar where a man from Santa Cruz, California came up to talk to a fellow American. Small world!
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| Church of the Spilled Blood. It had some annoying construction on the main spiral so believe me that these zoomed-in sectional photos were better than a full one at the time |
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| See what I mean? |
I had a train ride to Helsinki the next day and while I was exhausted, I wasn't able to sleep. I had to stay awake because it seemed every half hour, another thing was happening. First train conductors for tickets. Then Russian immigration to mark us departing. Then Finnish customs to see if we needed to claim anything. Then Finnish immigration to mark us arriving. Then we arrived. It was about 4 hours of a ride but I felt like I never got a break.
On these long trips, it's hard to do the whole check-in-check-out system between all the hotels. Especially because you can get really used to one and it feels cozy and home-like, but then you come to the next one that feels completely cold and foreign... until you're leaving and you realized you had just gotten used to it. So, I wasn't looking forward to checking out again, but this next hotel I would be in for 5 nights so I felt like I was practically moving in, and the ability to fully unpack and get settled sounded amazing. And, I was very charmed by the boutique hotel I had through the conference services. Nordic sense at its best, and an original mid-century hotel with each room really feeling more like it's own cozy studio apartment.
I was excited to visit Finland because it was my last stop on my life tour of Scandinavia. It went like this:
Sweden: 2008
Iceland: 2016
Denmark: 2016
Norway (and Sweden again): 2018
Finland: 2019
So anyways, I kinda thought Helsinki would be some hidden gem. It was nice, but it was kinda whatever. Nice size, on the smaller end. Pretty on the water (aren't they all?), an interesting mix of Scandinavian and Slavic and Baltic influence. But, a little gritty seeming. More beggars than some other places (although to be fair my hotel was right by the train station so I spent a lot of time there) and not too much to do.
It was a great place for the conference though. I had a lovely time being in and around the city for the week, but I saw pretty much everything I sought out to see within the first day. But, this was actually awesome because it allowed me to spend my evenings relaxing and in the fabulous hotel sauna. (Saunas we know them today originated in Finland, and Finland has the most saunas in the world and almost every single home in Finland has a built-in sauna!) Below are some sites from around the city...
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| A Lutheran church built into stone |
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| It says President of Finland LOL |
Well because I had already seen what I set out to see in Helsinki, I made the probably-unwise decision to spend my free afternoon at the end of the conference in Tallinn, Estonia after a 2 hour ferry ride from Helsinki.
I was so tired, but couldn't resist, and Tallinn seriously was impressive! An old medieval fortressed city, and just so friggin beautiful!!! I'm such a sucker for medieval history and towns and this just felt so preserved. Also, a lot of the shops and restaurants and kiosks within the old town had employees dressed up in medieval garb which really added to the effect LOL.
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| The Estonian flag was actually adopted from a student protest group. The top bar of blue symbolizes the Nordic sky, the black bar the hard, tormented past, and the white bar the hope for perseverance into a bright future |
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| This plaque was commemorating an event in June 2019 with the Danish crown. While I knew the Danish flag was the oldest unchanged flag in history, and that it was rumored to have fallen to earth from heaven, I was completely unaware that the place it was rumored to have fallen was in Estonia. So, the Danish Crown was in Tallinn in June 2019 to commemorate when the flag fell in Estonia and the history and alliance between the two countries. |
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| Toompea Castle. This has always been the seat of power in Estonia for as long as it's been settled, since the 9th century |
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| Panorama of the town hall and surrounding square |
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| Notice the medieval garb? Hard to see. But it's a cart selling almonds, for which Estonia is apparently known! |
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| Tombstones from the 1300s |
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| A last view of Estonia, the sunsetting over the Baltic city on the Gulf of Finland |
Leaving Finland was interesting. First of all, the Helsinki airport's call code was HEL, and they seemed to enjoy it, branding everything from the airport shops as Treasures of HEL lolololol
They sold reindeer hides. I showed AJ and he was all about it. They eat a lot of reindeer in Finland. As a matter of fact I had reindeer potato salad as part of lunch at the conference. (It was good! Served almost like a ground beef, had a spice to it). I figure, since they eat the reindeer (and I am not opposed to eating animals, only treating them humanely in the process), they utilizing the fur was helping to put the entire animal to use. I would never buy a fur from an animal only utilized for its fur. I found a nice white hide that I decided to buy. And, it was embarrassing.
The fur was wrapped for me in this long white plastic bag that reminded me of a quiver. I had to carry it around everywhere, and it was labeled REINDEER HIDE. For some reason, I felt like an idiot with it in the airport. Almost like when I was bringing back my rice hat from Vietnam. But, I suffered through it.
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| Mountains of Greenland! Always fascinated by the terrain here when we fly over it |
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| And on the other end of the spectrum, the brown mountains of the Nevada desert so close to home! |
And here was the final reindeer product LOL. Don't mind the bed. It's a little too... obvious for my taste. Those arms! I kinda want to cut those off. I received a certificate of authenticity and instructions for cleaning it (and actually, another passenger on Finnish Air informed me she was from Lapland where the reindeer lived and to care for my hide was simple; if it got dirty, throw it out in the snow until it freezes and then shake it off. I didn't have the heart to tell her this hide would probably never see snow again) but I knew it was authentic by Anana's response. She went crazy over it! She was sniffing all over the bag before I even brought it out, and she seems to enjoy it. I think we'll probably move it to the office eventually, but anyways, my prized Finnish souvenir ha!
And if you're wondering why this trip got such a thorough recap, I'm home sick. Yes it's Sunday anyway but I can do nothing but sit on the couch and blow my nose and get up to go to the bathroom, so this was the only other entertainment I had for today. Hope you're having a better weekend than I am!
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