My time in France was coming to an end and it was the time to start thinking of the next adventure: Russia! Why Russia? Why northern Russia? Well, I'll give an explanation. I did already two SCI work camps. I saw it's the most meaningful holiday which gives me strong pleasure and a smile on my face. I want to do it every summer. In March I searched for a destination, I had a really short time span. Only options were basically something like Czech Republic, Turkey and Russia. The project in CZ was not that interesting and Turkey at summer didn't inspire me. Trip to northern Russia seemed adventurous enough and we wanted to challenge ourselves, so there it goes. The aim of the project was to help in creating and promoting the National Park Khibiny. Cleaning, building, tracking rare species, talking to local media. Khibiny is a mountain massif close to Kirovsk, a popular skiing resort but also a very beautiful mountain area full of untouched wilderness, but now threatened by the mining industry. Something has to be done to save the area, and that will be to create the Khibiny National Park. That's were we come in.
So, I left early in the morning from Toulon and said good bye in Marseille, where Marine continued to Paris and I stay to catch my flight to Helsinki. Time to explore Marseille! Even I heard a lot of stories how it's not actually the most attractive city of France, I found it quite charming, especially the old town. Again it was fun to admit how I and Kata have so different opinions: she liked the more modern part while I made my home in the old town. Ambitious plan to climb up on a hill with the suitcases and heavy backpack to reach a beautiful church. It was a terribly hot day and at some point I realised it was not a very good idea with all the wine we have inside the bag. But we did it and it was time to fly to Helsinki.
4 hours later we were in Münich. Just like before. 3 hours later we were in Frankfurt am Main. Eating a bad Frankfurter. And who we meet there again! Marine! Yey! Let's fly together to Finland! We managed to change her seats so that she was sitting with us and so happily we finished a bottle of sparkling wine while thinking of the upcoming adventure. Amazing.
3 o clock.. Sleeping in the floor of Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.. Eating sausages and unable to sleep, so eager to travel to the north. Poor students will wait for the morning bus so we were finally at Kata's place at 5 and managed to sleep for 2 hours. Shower, breakfast and the beginning of the hitchiking tour. So, we decided to reach Tampere by thumb.
Highway is full of cars. No one pays attention. We found a bus stop which would be suitable for a car to stop. An hour passes and people don't give a single glance. Finally a car stops and a Greek restaurant owner takes us in. He doesn't really speak Finnish nor English, but he is going to the right direction so we agree. The guy turns out quite nice and we agree to eat a sandwitch in his restaurant, of which he is really proud of. Finally he brings us to Riihimäki gas station and the hitchiking trip continues.
Almost another one hour with no luck. Finally we see a Belgian car coming to gas station and we thought maybe they would be happy to talk French with Marine. We go to talk with them and it turns out that actually they are a Finnish-Swedish couple who just lived for some while in Belgium. They are going to Tampere and take us in their fancy Audi! They proved really nice people and eager to hear about our adventure. Soon we are in Tampere and we are quite satisfied: 200km/2 cars/4 hours! Let's take a nearly 8-hours train to Rovaniemi, 600km north!
Long way, few beers in a restaurant, a couple of hours of sleep, long talks, sun starts to go down, some hills appear and the forest looks different. We are reaching the Arctic Circle. 11 o clock and Rovaniemi it is. Evening is bitter, only +8 and the sky is clear and red. We start walking to Seb's place, who is our couchsurfing host. A long way and a bit lost. Local people are showing their friendliness and helping us to find the place. Seb is a perfect host and also an SCI active so there's plenty to talk about while drinking wine we brought from France. Finally we need to get some sleep.
 |
| Rovaniemi |
Again we are lucky. 10 minutes later an English traveller car stops and takes us in! We sit in the back with two dogs. Nice way to travel. Unfortunately they are not going to Salla and we have to get out 30km before Salla. Now we are "deep" as I like to say. It means we are far from the civilication. One car per five minutes. At least they pay attention to us but seems like they are full or not going far. One hour and nothing. Finally we see a bus which will be our last chance. Well, at least we made it to Salla.
Yes, Salla, in the middle of nowhere. 4000 inhabitants, more reindeers, just 20km from Russia. It's really warm and we're sunbathing while waiting for the bus to Russia. 3 hours pass. We see a bus. It's blue, old, ugly, it's written Kandalaksha. That's our bus. The driver doesn't talk a single word of English end seems surprised to see two foreigners in Salla going to Russia. "Nada biljet" he tells and we give the tickets. Our quick Russian studies seem to be worth it. Although then he starts telling something else and looks like he wants something more, and we give up and go to sit. He seems to agree.
Two passengers, one driver. One Finnish and one French in a Russian bus crossing a border which is one of the least active border crossing points of Finland. A strange feeling. The Finnish people working in the customs seem as surpsised to see we are going to Kola with a tourist visa. In the second passport control in Russia they seem even more surprised and start asking a lot of questions. Some paper works, questionaries, strange looks and half an hour later the driver starts to get nervious and luckily we may continue. Some people come to check the bus a couple of times and finally we are over the border!
Even though the forest looked exactly the same, we were looking outside as if we were in moon. "Look, we're in Russia!". No buildings, no sign of life. Wilderness and a couple of fells. Beautiful. Then the Finnish road ended. Then started the Russian road. The uncoated sand road. The speed decreased to quarter. 20km/h. The bus was jumping and I needed to hold the seat to not fall. Some items were flying on me from the roof. Still no one else. Where the hell are we going?
Few hours later we saw few houses and some potatoes. I guess it was a village and few passengers came in. We were not the only passengers anymore! A couple of more hours and the "good road" (you can drive even 50km/h) started. Although it didn't last for long when we turned left on
uncoated road again to go to "Alakurtti". It's the first real city, maybe 10 000 - 20 000 inhabitants, hard to tell. First thing we saw was a shaky bridge made of wood, 3m wide and full of holes. For sure no car can pass that.
But a Russian shaky bus can for sure. We made it! And then came the shock. If you've seen some pictures how a city looks after a war you can understand what this city looked like. There was also some tanks there. Most buildings were partly collapsed or didn't have windows. Some seemed to still be inhabitated. I had some kind of idea how could it be but this was still a shock. Again I thought to myself "where the hell am I going and what the hell am I doing here?".
Some more hours and we desperately wanted to go to toilet. No chance. Finally the road turned into "good" again (the word "good road" is very relative). Kandalaksha, finally! Luckily it was not as bad as Alakurtti, we sigh. Although the place was full of dogs running free and people sleeping on the ground. We made our first big, big mistake. With our succesfull Russian we asked for the _TOILET_. Rule number one: Do not use the public toilet in Russia. We found it. We opened to door. We closed the door. We opened it again, stopped breathing for a while and did it extremely quickly. First of all, there was a woman sleeping on the floor in the middle of a cloud of dusk. For sure it was never cleaned after it was built. Just a hole on the ground and that's it. Next time: behind the toilet, not inside the toilet.
The ticket buying. Oh man. No one talks a single word of English and we really start to need every single word we managed to learn. First of all, people don't really seem to respect the queue and it takes 45min before we even get to the ticket counter (there was only 1 group before us). I manage to explain her what we want but then she started asking questions I did not understand. We begun to get desperate and I again thought: "what the hell am I doing here??". Everyone stared us as if we were from moon. I tried to ask if anyone talks English. No. Finally an older woman behind me told something I understood: "Sprichst du Deutsch?". Ja, ja! German seemed almost my mother tonque after Russian. She didn't talk much German but managed to work as an interpret. We got the tickets which was just a check point to more troubles. Bahn. Kaput.
When does the train come and where? No one knows. We found a group of young people who spoke few words of English which were "we don't know!". I tried to ask from the information "na skolko?" to ask how much it's late, but seems like no one knew and she will just announce when it comes. 1 hour, 10 hours, who knows. Finally came a guy who we named "Ivan". He was a young traveler like me and spoke perfect English. He was our saviour!! He went asking around where our train could be with not much success. Finally someone told this could be our train, but then someone else told no, it's not that. We found another train and "Ivan" told that this could be it!! They promised that this one will pass through Apatity. "Ivan" took us to our vagon and showed us our bunk bed and the trip may continue. Again I believe in human being - there is always someone like "Ivan" who can save your life! If we had missed this train (left only 5min after we got in) we would have to wait for 10 hours. In Kandalaksha. At night. With the wild dogs and homeless people. We sighed and ate some tuna, although I felt still a bit unsafe because there was still no way to communicate. Landscape is magical, it's midnight. "Ivan" had asked the train personnel to tell us when we are in Apatity because there is no announcements and it's not written anywhere. We got into Apatity and Birthe came to pick us up.
We are safe.
The fire, the blueberry jam and a pair of dry socks
As usually, for sure I will not write about each day. I will write about my impressions. The culture shock eased after the first day and after all Russia was not that different. The warm weather surprised me, the first 5 days it was every day at least 20 degrees and sunny. Mountains had some snow in shadowy places. The nature was undescribably beautiful. The landscape was even like non-real for me. The bare treeless mountains, looking somehow a bit threatening, endless tundras, cristal clear lakes. I'm not trying to capture it in words, it can be seen on photos.
One of the reasons I left for Russia was to understand better this huge neighbor country of ours where Finns rarely go, of which we don't have very good image and the historical things are stuck deep in our brains. I was aware of the political and economical stuff but about the culture and the people itself I didn't know so much about (trying to filter all things I've heard during my life). It was not that easy to get a contact with the local people because of language troubles. Only the university students talked English. The people from the local environmental center talked just enough to tell what to do and so on ("take your plate and eat" "tea is ready. drink" "take your bag and walk"). Camp leaders spoke very good English (the other was actually Finnish). Our group consisted of me, Marine, a Frenchman Eric, a Russian-Austrian girl Alina and the rest were Russians (younger participants Vasilisa, Ljuda, Anja, Artjom and Little Sasha, the others were already +40 and didn't talk a single word of English). Actually I prefered to be in a Russian group so I could learn more from the culture.
I never thought I could learn so many words in such a short period of time. I think I learnt like 50 words. I learnt to read and count until 1000. Sometimes it didn't matter if we didn't have a common language. We played a lot of different games together and the language never turned out a problem. Some Russians kept talking to me in Russian and I even laughed at their jokes even I had no idea what they were telling. It just sounded funny and the others were laughing too. Maybe I cought a word or two and got an idea of what it could be. In these circumstances I would learn to talk Russian in one year, for sure. I realised that these people are just as nice and the prejudices Finland is full of doesn't hold true. In fact I see a lot of similarities between Finnish and Russian people. Just the history and politics have built our countries different. Russia is not just "medvets, balalaika and babushkas" like Eric accidentally told to local media. When the day of returning came I wished I could have stayed longer.
What I learnt of Russian culture? Chai (tea) with everything. With breakfast, lunch, dinner and in the evening. A lot of kasha (porridge). A little bit melancholic like in Finland. We didn't have vodka so I can't really say anything about that. I guess they don't drink as much vodka as people assume around the World. If a house goes bad they just leave it. Maybe some day they will have money to renovate it, maybe not. Finland is one of the most well-organized countries so I saw how Russia is different. Everything is made cheaply and not that well (for example, floors were not straight and this kind of stuff). It doesn't really bother me but I just can't avoid noticing how everything looks like it was built in a huge rush. A bit charming, actually. The Finnish ruler-straight lines are in fact a bit boring. Where ever you looked you could imidiatelly see this is no Finland (except forest). But I'm not saying this as a bad thing, why should it be like that. Candies. Russians love candies, there isn't a single hike without candies. And they are pretty good in making candies!
A lot of moments throughout my journey made me almost laugh for being so happy of my life. The self satisfaction when I realised I can walk 8 hours in cold, rain and fog across mountains with heavy backpack. I'm strong enough not to complain a single time and to keep my mind full of positive thoughts even my feet wanted to tell me "no more". Looking at the most beautiful view around me and realising how close it was we almost didn't get here (had some troubles with visa). Sitting around fire, playing some games and laughing out so loud we fell on ground. Realising how easy it is to live far from the civilication without any electric devices or running water. Water in the river tastes better than any bottled water. I'm dirty and smelly, I can eat cheese that felled on lemming poo, I wash my dishes with sand. Sometimes theres pieces of wood or stone in kasha but we don't care. We just spit it out or swallow it, we won't die. I was not sick a single time. I thought I'm kind of picky with food but I experienced all the food sort of good. A huge bowl of forest mushrooms. How good can taste blueberry jam? It just needs few blueberries, water and sugar and that's it. It was like the best thing I had ever tasted. Collecting garbage with local orphanage kids and seeing how happy they were to see a foreigner, probable never seen one before. The amount of giggling when they heard we can say some words in Russian. They also tried the ones they knew English. Amazing. I don't know if we saved the Khibiny but for sure I learnt to respect the little things, we don't need someting like huge parties, a lot of technology and attractions around us. It can be just the fire, a blueberry jam and a pair of dry socks.
To not make it too glamorous, I must add some negative points. 50% of the time I had no idea what people around me are talking. Sometimes I was the only non-Russian and the conversation turned to Russian if I didn't ask anything. There was only 5 Russians who were able to talk English. This was sometimes a bit frustrating and at shop I tried to keep my mouth shut to not show I'm not actually able to talk Russian and recieve their suspicious glances. Luckily I learnt to read quickly so it gave me some kind of idea what is what. The nights were extremely cold, like 0 degrees. And apart from 3 nights we were sleeping outside. I had a sleeping bag for extreme conditions but the humid air still made me crawl deep in my sleeping bag not to freeze my nouse. Few of us got really sick. Especially in the end it was also really rainy and the temperature was not more than 10 degrees even during the day. Everything, just EVERYTHING was wet. In the second last day my sleeping bag escaped and rolled on a stream and I jumped to save it. So, both my sleeping bag and my clothes (including my only shoes) were soaking wet. There was no possibility to go inside so I just tried to warm myself up next to a fire, being unable to breath because the smoke coming from wet branches was getting in my lungs. At this moment I just thought I will get really sick and I was supposed to walk like 10km up the hill the next day. Luckily the sleeping bag dried quickly and also I was slowly getting warmer with the help of warm chai and some games.
A rather frustrating task was to find a rare Prioria species which is in the Red Book of Russian Federation and would prevent the mining company to build a road there. All the species looked more or less the same so after 10 samples we just got lost which is which species. The forest was mostly swamp at this part of Khibiny and we needed to cross the stream several times so wet shoes were quaranteed. And how are you supposed to dry anything out when the humidity is like 100%? At some point I was not even sure if something is wet or if it's just really cold. The mosquitoes, the goddamn mosquitoes!! They were everywhere! When I was trying to eat a lunch I was all covered with mosquitoes. I had to cover my body completely just because of those thirsty insects that were attacking us, probably one of the only crazy ones who entered this area for a long time. They just laughed at my mosquito repellent. Did I already mention the most desperate hike we did? The group was separated and the girls + Misha continued to another location to search some plant species. This was supposed to be a short 4km hike. We woke up and it was all foggy, 0 visibility and rain. Just few plus degrees. First we climb up a really sandy and steep hill which took 2 hours. I felt like every step I take I slip two steps back. Then we were finally up on the tundra and climbing even higher. After a hill there was another hill. The rain was getting worse and I was totally wet but luckily the heavy bag and climbing kept me warm. I tried to avoid any breaks because it would just freeze my body. We walked for 5 hours and finally dared to ask how much. "5km told Misha". So we walked several hours more, now down the hill, across swamps and streams (without a bridge of course), being soaking wet, not sure if we could take any more steps. After 8 desperate hours we were at our camp and happy to be alive. It stopped raining but only for one hour. Misha told us it was 16km. Doesn't sound that much but with heavy backbag, great elevation differences and rugged terrain I call tell you it was a lot. It was a one complete day just walking, without thinking of anything else than trying to keep yourself moving. I don't know if the our project did any good to the creation of Hibiny National Park, but I wish all the best to Sasha & Misha who are doing great job.
Time was coming to an end. Our laughter probably didn't let anyone sleep in the building where we slept in Apatity the last night. Recalling the desperate long hikes in tundras, searching for rare Prioria species. Eric's 3-days adventure in the crazy house after he hurt his leg. We were back to civilication. We had pelmeni and fruits. I did not feel like going home. Sadly, my visa was expiring and Marine's flight was going back to Paris.
The return trip didn't go quite like planned. In the end, we lost around 7 hours because of stupid mistakes and nearly lost 4 days because of "stupid Russia". First of all, we had ordered a taxi to take us to Kandalaksha. It was only 5 euros more expensive than the train and in the end, we couldn't risk missing our bus to Finland (the next was in 4 days). Luckily Misha negotiated the price for us (usually it's double price for foreign). So, 100km, 40 euros.
I never thought a taxi driver could get lost. But she did. She tried to ask help from us but I only knew how to say where we want to go. "Avtobus. Kandalaksha. Bystra". She turned twice to wrong direction and we started to get nervious. Bystra, I repeated. Fast. She drove very fast in the bumpy roads and the poor Lada was nearly flying. After asking help, we finally reached Kandalaksha and we had even 20 minutes before the bus would come! This time we didn't use the toilet. We tried to find the bus station but the people in the train station refused to help us. Any of the buildings could be a bus station but we didn't find the familiar words "avtobus". So we waited for the bus to come where it had left us when we came.
And finally the blue familiar old bus and the same driver came to view. He was extremely happy to see we are still alive and told us something in Russian. Probably "how did you survive?". Again "nada biljet?". No, njet biljet. Njet njet. Gdje biljet?? Where can I buy them?? "Kasha" he told and pointed towards some houses. Shit, we thought. The bus is leaving in 5 minutes and we don't have the tickets.
Again, we were lucky. This time there was a young guy, about the same age than me, who spoked rather good English and decided to risk his own seat and guide us to the place. It was indeed quite far and he saved us from stray dogs. The ticket selling point was in the basement of one building - it could be just any building, there was no sign it would be a ticket selling point. The woman was talking in the phone while he was carefully examining our passports and writing tickets. Bystra, bystra, spasiba!! It took nearly 10 minutes for her to finish our tickets. Our guide had left so we ran fast to reach the bus, and our old loyal driver was there. Thank God, we are safe.
It was so much easier to cross the border when going to Finland. A handsome, polite customs worker shouted "any Finns here?", I being the only one got the privilege to skip the queue and he didn't even bother to check my passport, just saw it's a Finnish passport and started to chat "what were you doing there? What was your impression? Tell us about it!". It felt so good to be back home and to be able to talk Finnish. A big relief.
In Kemijärvi the hitchiking trip continued. We waited for one hour and got nearly desperate. We saw Timo, who took us to Kemijärvi, but I guess he was busy because he just horned. We see a very small sporty Porche and think "hahaha, would be funny if this car would stop!".
And it did.
I think the guy just wanted to show "I have money, I have this kind of car, this is my baby". He took us 5 kilometers further and I was laying vertically in the back seat. It took several minutes to get the bags in the trunk. Very funny 5 kilometers I must say.
Just after we got out, a nice Audi slows down and takes us in. "I saw some hitchikers just got out and decided to give you a ride!". Awesome. He was a super talkative businessman, running a skiing center somewhere close by. He was fascinated by my stories from Russia as he's part of a project to cooperate with Khibiny region. The trip from Kemijärvi to Rovaniemi passed quickly while sharing tips and envisioning the future of Kola penisula.
In Rovaniemi we thought "we have plenty of time, let's just hitchike to Oulu". We didn't have to wait more than 15 minutes after a car stopped and a young hunter guy took us in. He was going for duck hunting with his dog to Muurola, around 20km to Oulu. We agreed as there is a train station in Muurola. He told us "just walk few kilometers down the street and you'll find the train station if you're unlucky". We walked few kilometers. We walked few more. We heard the train just passed us. Shit. The guy betrayed us. There is no train station.
We met an old man cutting wood. He was surprised to see two frustrated young girls in the middle of nowhere. We told our sad story that the guy betrayed us. It was still like 10 kilometers to the train station. He thought for a while and decided he can't leave us standing there, no one will pick us up. After showing his nice machine to cut wood, he opened the garage and we saw his car, under a cloud of dust. The old man was at least 80 years old and I bet the car hasn't been used for the last 10 years. I was a bit scared. Well, he took us to Muurola train station and we realised we have 2 hours until the next train. So, we bought sausage and beer and decided to chill down and enjoy our life.
Finally, at 2 o clock at night, we arrived in Vimpeli. The next evening we were about to catch a train from Seinäjoki to Tampere, but managed to miss it and spent the night in Seinäjoki train station committing stupid tasks, like dancing in the middle of the train station, trying to trick the automatic door, fitting myself in safety locker, fitting myself in my backpack and so on. It was very entertaining night indeed. In the train we met a very rude and unpolite conductor who made us buy a new ticket and showed no humanity. I arrived in Tampere at 5 o clock in the morning, happy to set my alarm clock at 7 so that I could prepare my presentation which was to be held at 10.
What I learnt? You can always turn bad things into good. It's up to you if you build your memories good or bad. Just sayin'.
Next summer - new SCI adventure!
Upcoming trips:
- Norway, Denmark and Sweden in the end of September
- Budapest and Serbia in November
- South America in December 2013
