Hopping off at Helsinki...

Hopping off at Helsinki... (4th December 2008)

“Would you like beer or juice... it’s free” said the buxom, bottle blonde train attendant in her short little jewelled encrusted skirt, with long slits up the sides, from where her thunder thighs (which rather matched her thunderous personality) poured out. As she stood, chomping on her gum, staring at us blankly, some kind of magic occurred. Maybe it was the affect of the romantic glistening snow outside, or perhaps her heart melted with the over zealous heating system. No, it was actually the puppy dog eyes of the somewhat more mature train driver, who was coming towards her. Suddenly, out of nowhere, her harsh ‘am I bothered’ glare was transformed into the cutest and wryest of girlie, come get me smiles imaginable. As he inched passed the small space between her and the seats, she arched her back and her heaving bosom gave him every bit of reason to stay awake throughout the journey. Their hands touched and lingered on each other enough for one to feel uncomfortable both around them and for them, and for just those few seconds they were transfixed by each other, as if no one else was around. In that very moment, their lives had intertwined in some deep and meaningful way, much like their bodies would do so in just a few short hours....

And so it was, the most exact moment of lust I have ever beared witness to, right here on the train to St Petersburg. It was a moment of sheer comedy and so unreal that I literally had to contain myself, before I burst out laughing and had to check that I wasn’t on some dodgy train that was in fact the set of a, shall we say, grown up movie?! Meanwhile, there was a skinny ‘Matt Lord” a like in the seat in front of me (Matt's a friend from home) all very surreal, but the perfect way to leave Finland, after a not so perfect day in Helsinki, which begun like this...

We awoke rather groggy from a long night’s sleep on the ferry and I succumbed to Stuart’s wining and allowed him breakfast. After tucking into the overpriced but actually delicious cinnamon Danish pastries, we wondered around the deck, watching as we pulled into Helsinki. Even after just a few days we have grown used to starting off in new cities and countries with wet, grey and cold weather. Helsinki refused to break the trend. Trudging through town we reached the station, bought our tickets to St Petersburg and crammed our ever expanding (despite not buying anything new) bags in to the lockers, reluctantly throwing four whole euros into the locker feeder.

We thought we would spend the next four hours walking around town and maybe taking in a site or two. In fact we marched on, heads down, trying to avoid the rain. No use, it was relentless, however when we popped into this tiny little worker’s cafe, we did see our first flutter of snow, though it didn’t settle. I have informed Stuart that I will be turning right back around and coming home if there is no snow in St Petersburg. Having made our own hot chocolate in this cafe and taking our mugs back up (and paying for the pleasure!) we headed back into town. Whilst we didn’t see much of Helsinki at all I think we may have covered a few distinct areas, including the “Chelsea” of the city, which actually had a rather Boston-esque feel to it, in terms of the architecture and street layouts. Back in the centre we dipped into a shopping complex and picked up a few essentials (i.e. jam to go with the left over cracker bread from the ferry) for the train journey and grabbed ourselves some fodder - chicken and pineapple sandwich on rye for Stu and a scrumptious salad for me (gotta get those five a day in). Then we had some time to kill in the station, as we sat people watching on the only available seats next to this sh*ty little toe rag who was causing no end of grief for his family and everyone around.

Finally it was time to board the train, where we promptly fell asleep for an hour. Everything is very official (apart from aforementioned slightly dubious encounter and the fact that we are pretty certain that the female train attendants substitute their incomes by substituting male passengers’ “needs”). We had our passports checked, returned and checked again; immigration cards sorted, food handed out and if we wanted to we could have changed money, though like every other country we have entered we decided (perhaps foolishly) to wait until we arrived.

Now we wit on the train with about another four hours left before we are greeted at the station with our own private transfer to the best hotel in all of Russia, things really aren’t all that bad in a traveler’s life today....