First impressions

This excerpt written Wednesday night (Sept.20) in my new room in Petersburg:

I think the culture shock is starting to set in... I was beginning to wonder if it would at all, having felt really no unease or real sense of foreign-ness in Helsinki (where I spent last night), even though the fact I dont know a single word in Finnish, not even "hello" or "two beers, please!" Despite the sea of umlauts (the Finns really go crazy with those little dots over just about every letter it seems), Helsinki was so sleekly modern, hip, and obviously affluent that it didnt feel that different from some parts of Van, like Robson or Kits... Ok, mabye a little more Scandanavian and a whole lot cooler. Russia, from the brief glance I've had so far, is an entirely different kettle of fish.

My first experince of Russia was pretty unnerving. After a few hours by train from Helsinki, we arrived at the frontier under a grey drizzle. While Russian border guards (mostly not unattractive young blonde women!) checked the train, my solitary blue Canadian passport dissapearing into a large stack of red ones, I gazed at the dilapidated customs building and the huge Russian flag outside, flying over a field absolutely choked with dandelions. Once the train chugged off again, it was mabye another two hours to Petersburg, during which we passed through some positively gloomy countryside. Everywhere derelict buildings, collapsed fences, and abandoned factories - total contrast to the Finnish landscape of meticulously-kept farms and car dealerships. At one point a boarded up railway station flashed by, plaster hammer and sickle crumbling away over the main doorway, and a few times I saw bombed out concrete buildings, 60 years after the war and still not repaired. Everything looked so exhausted even I, who felt I knew enough about Russia to expect this sort of thing, was feeling my spirits sink. But then we pulled into Saint Petersburg...