I don't think that I covered the cities of Moscow & St Petersberg too well in my previous epistles. So maybe I should do so now b4 heading into Finland & France & Spain.
Moscow was a big modern city. As I said we were in a hostel miles down to the southeast in a fairly nondescipt suburb. The good thing was that it was close to a market, a supermarket & the Metro. THe Moscow metro is amazing. Really efficient, the stations were works of art & the cost was miniscle. The down side was that the crowds were huge &they all moved at 100kphr. So you could not stop or slow down to admire the architecture. If you did you were swamped in a tidal wave of people.
We went to the Pushken museum (art work good but the museum was being renovated so everything was a bit disjointed), Red Square (really great as it was easy to visualise it in the days of Stalin, Kruschev, Brezshnev etc), Lenins Tomb with the great man himself emblamed for all time & the Kremlim which really is a sort of walled area. Once inside we did not have access to the soviet parliament but rather six or seven old Russian churches which have been converted to museums. They were great - in one we got some clasical russian church singing by a small group. Superb music -better than the Catholic lot who I feel tend to chant more than sing. Also the russion religious art is very different from the west. MOst of the art is based on ikons ie paintings & gilt on wood. And it is all to do with Mary holding Jesus as a young child. There is very little depicting the Passion and Mary is given a really high profile. It is her face that your eye is drawn to first. Painting is usually in red (sometimes green) & a lot of elements eg robes, halos etc are covered in gold gilt. If somewhat styilised it is still superb & I never got tired of looking at it.
But somehow I think that I have described all of this in a previous e mail. If I haven't please let me know & I will carry on. Because I am now going to skip straight to Helsinki & the story from there.
We both love Helsinki. Got there by bus from St P (8 hour trip) with no problems at the border. We stayed in a suburb of H. called Espoo about 15min by bus west along the coast. A nice hotel/hostel which had small dorm rooms. Buyt best of all it had this fantastic FREE buffet breakfast & free internet. YOu can see which we valued the most highly. So in true frugal backpacker tradition we were first in to breakfast & last to leave. We ate so much it lasted us for lunch & we only needed a small dinner. But our excuse was that the food was good & Europe is expensive (both true). I would recommend the Hotel Matinlahti to anyone but after we had finished with it I am sure they have probably declared bankruptcy. Loved the area - all the streets are tree lined, there are nice walking paths & the beaches were very atmospheric.
But all good things must come to an end & it was off to Madrid. Where we spent 3 days, arranged our Indian visas & then headed off for some voluntary english "teaching" at Vaughntown a place about 2.5 hours west of Madrid. A greast concept whereby 17/19 first language english speakers join with a similar number of spaniards for intensive english conversation (sort of total immersion on the spaniards part). So there were one on ones English/Spaniard, telephone conversations, conference calls, play acting, some mini theatre work, games, siestas etc etc. The spaniards were all top level people & really interesting to talk to. Surgeons, Nuclear regulatory people, civil servants, people from private industry - a really eclectic bunch and very nice. The deal for we anglos was free board , all meals & wine at a four star hotel. The food was great, wine even better & the rooms all high quality. We both enjoyed the experience greatly - we would not get to meet such a diverse range of people any other way. I learned more about bull fighting in one hour from Havier than I ever would have by reading books!! THe programme runs on a 6 day 5 night basis & we did two in a row, followed by a third in late September. I will definitely go again if I ever return to that part of Europe. If anyone is going to Spain & has a spare week I would strongly recommend. It is a nice part of Spain near a walled city called Avila. You get to spend an afternoon in the local village (Barco De Avila) & they put on tapas nights (or BBQ's) to wind each programme up.
So that was the major part of our spanish experiences. We spent a couple of weekends in Avila at the YHA & enjoyed exploring the old city. We caught the tail end of Avilas festival programme & managed to catch an evening of tango music.
Next stop was France & our pilgrims walk so that will be the subject of Installment 9. Unless I have missed big chunks of our time in St P & Moscow.
Moscow was a big modern city. As I said we were in a hostel miles down to the southeast in a fairly nondescipt suburb. The good thing was that it was close to a market, a supermarket & the Metro. THe Moscow metro is amazing. Really efficient, the stations were works of art & the cost was miniscle. The down side was that the crowds were huge &they all moved at 100kphr. So you could not stop or slow down to admire the architecture. If you did you were swamped in a tidal wave of people.
We went to the Pushken museum (art work good but the museum was being renovated so everything was a bit disjointed), Red Square (really great as it was easy to visualise it in the days of Stalin, Kruschev, Brezshnev etc), Lenins Tomb with the great man himself emblamed for all time & the Kremlim which really is a sort of walled area. Once inside we did not have access to the soviet parliament but rather six or seven old Russian churches which have been converted to museums. They were great - in one we got some clasical russian church singing by a small group. Superb music -better than the Catholic lot who I feel tend to chant more than sing. Also the russion religious art is very different from the west. MOst of the art is based on ikons ie paintings & gilt on wood. And it is all to do with Mary holding Jesus as a young child. There is very little depicting the Passion and Mary is given a really high profile. It is her face that your eye is drawn to first. Painting is usually in red (sometimes green) & a lot of elements eg robes, halos etc are covered in gold gilt. If somewhat styilised it is still superb & I never got tired of looking at it.
But somehow I think that I have described all of this in a previous e mail. If I haven't please let me know & I will carry on. Because I am now going to skip straight to Helsinki & the story from there.
We both love Helsinki. Got there by bus from St P (8 hour trip) with no problems at the border. We stayed in a suburb of H. called Espoo about 15min by bus west along the coast. A nice hotel/hostel which had small dorm rooms. Buyt best of all it had this fantastic FREE buffet breakfast & free internet. YOu can see which we valued the most highly. So in true frugal backpacker tradition we were first in to breakfast & last to leave. We ate so much it lasted us for lunch & we only needed a small dinner. But our excuse was that the food was good & Europe is expensive (both true). I would recommend the Hotel Matinlahti to anyone but after we had finished with it I am sure they have probably declared bankruptcy. Loved the area - all the streets are tree lined, there are nice walking paths & the beaches were very atmospheric.
But all good things must come to an end & it was off to Madrid. Where we spent 3 days, arranged our Indian visas & then headed off for some voluntary english "teaching" at Vaughntown a place about 2.5 hours west of Madrid. A greast concept whereby 17/19 first language english speakers join with a similar number of spaniards for intensive english conversation (sort of total immersion on the spaniards part). So there were one on ones English/Spaniard, telephone conversations, conference calls, play acting, some mini theatre work, games, siestas etc etc. The spaniards were all top level people & really interesting to talk to. Surgeons, Nuclear regulatory people, civil servants, people from private industry - a really eclectic bunch and very nice. The deal for we anglos was free board , all meals & wine at a four star hotel. The food was great, wine even better & the rooms all high quality. We both enjoyed the experience greatly - we would not get to meet such a diverse range of people any other way. I learned more about bull fighting in one hour from Havier than I ever would have by reading books!! THe programme runs on a 6 day 5 night basis & we did two in a row, followed by a third in late September. I will definitely go again if I ever return to that part of Europe. If anyone is going to Spain & has a spare week I would strongly recommend. It is a nice part of Spain near a walled city called Avila. You get to spend an afternoon in the local village (Barco De Avila) & they put on tapas nights (or BBQ's) to wind each programme up.
So that was the major part of our spanish experiences. We spent a couple of weekends in Avila at the YHA & enjoyed exploring the old city. We caught the tail end of Avilas festival programme & managed to catch an evening of tango music.
Next stop was France & our pilgrims walk so that will be the subject of Installment 9. Unless I have missed big chunks of our time in St P & Moscow.
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