Magical World

Today we visited the Kremlin and the Red Square, or at least the parts that we were allowed to visit. The inside of the Kremlin is very nice with a central place on which you can see a lot of churches (unfortunately we are starting to get a little bit fed up with all the church thins everywhere, in some way they all start looking the same) and other nice buildings. Directly on the left after the entrance there is the arsenal with some captured canons of Napoleon times.

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06.08.2007:

Today is our last day in St.Petersburg and although we had quite a few days here, there were still a few things that we did not visit yet. We started of this morning with a visit of the Nicholas Church actually quite close to our hostel. The church is very nice from the outside painted in white and light blue. On the inside it is a typical orthodox church with ornaments in gold and with a lot of paintings.

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So we booked this so-called “Around the World”-ticket that allows more or less independant travelling without fixing exact destinations and dates. The idea of having some “fixed” means of transport from time to time seemed quite assuring to us, especially that nowdays with modern techniques rising to mind-spinning precision, little is likely to go wrong.

August 1^st, the first day of our trip around the world (07h25 CEST)
British Airways flight 5080 from Frankfurt to London

Sitting in the plane with our eyes half open (or half closed) still suffering from a little lack of sleep, we start wondering why we do not seem to move yet as departure was foreseen at 07h30. Suddenly the voice of the pilot sounds and announces us with an unmistakable british accent:

“Good morning ladies and getleman, here is your captain speaking. Unfortunately the batteries have not been switched off yesterday evening and stayed on the whole night which makes it impossible to start the engines. We tried to load the batteries but this took too much time so I ordered some new batteries which will be here shortly. In the meanwhile I ask you to make yourself as comfortable as possible, be patient and enjoy your breakfast that will be served while waiting.“

“As comfortable as possible” double-folded and squeezed in an airplane-seat, “patient” (what else to do?) and “enjoying our breakfast” (ah those British and their “haute cuisine” – well the tea was pretty good) we discussed about what was going to happen to us. A flight attendant told us that we had basically three options:

1. Catch a flight to Moscow at 12h15 (as there is only one daily for
   St. Petersburg) – for us this option would for sure be the worst one as there is an 8-hour trainride between the two cities.
2. Wait until tomorrow and catch the plane for St. Petersburg tomorrow – could be an option to visit London, there are probably worst cities to be stuck in…
3. Pray to God we arrive on time and catch the next flight – ok that seems the best option to us!

Upon our arrival in London it seemed that some god had felt some pity for us, because somebody was waiting to bring us to the approppriate gate as fast as possible. And off we went conquering time-zones! For the people who like to puzzle a bit, here is a small riddle: we left London at 10h00 to arrive in St.Petersburg at 16h00. How long did the flight take us?

Unfortunately when we arrived in St.Petersburg another surprise awaited us: no luggage. Well not really a surprise as we have two legs to run through London Heathrow International Airport, but the bags haven’t. Well we’ll see, just going to be a bit smelly for a while.

So this was only our first day, still 364 to go. If they are all like the one today then that’s promising!

Vera & Jean-Christophe