Where is the Russia from my Childhood?

Greetings from the belly of the beast. Right now I am in Russia, which is also known as the former Soviet Union. Remember those days? Remember when Rocky fought Ivan Drago in Rocky IV? Remember when Matthew Broderick saved the world in War Games? How about when Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase put a stop to imminent nuclear war in Spies Like Us? Does any of that ring a bell? Well, without the Soviet Union we would not have been the beneficiaries of such cinematic brilliance.

But the cold war is over. Apart from the worn-out Lenin statues and the Soviet kitsch being sold on the streets, there really isn't much remaining from the USSR of our childhoods. Really, we just have the cola war now.

Anyhow...We have traveled a long, long way since I last wrote. But I will get to that in a minute. Two things:

1.) Sorry for not writing in awhile. Internet access isn't exactly prevalent in Russia (weirdly).
2.) When it is around it is expensive...which means this entry is going to be short. Leave it to the Russians to charge $6 an hour at an Internet cafe.

Right now I am in St. Petersburg, Russia. This is several thousand miles from Ulaan Baatar, which is where I was last time I had a reliable internet connection. Since then I have done the following:

1.) Left Mongolia
2.) Taken care of two sick friends on the train
3.) Waded into lake Baikal
4.) Slept in a Siberian train station
5.) Had dinner with the Vice Consul of the United States in Yekaterinburg
6.) Spent a month's salary in Moscow
7.) Walked miles and miles through the streets of Russia's spectacularly beautiful, most european city
8.) Learned the Cyrillic alphabet, which has been invaluable...and annoying.

It has been one hell of a trip across Russia. While I don't know exactly how many miles I have traveled, I do know that I have covered around five time zones and have spent nearly 200 hours on trains since leaving Hong Kong. For those of you interested, pull out a map, or better yet, a globe, and measure the distance between HK and St. Petersburg...not close.

And I still have a ways to go.

How do I feel...spent...and by spent I mean poor. Moscow, and its $10 McDonalds meals, really took it out of us. But I also feel great. Over the past couple weeks we have seen a tremendous amount of the world. Whether along the gorgeous shores of Lake Baikal, in the central Siberian towns of Tomsk and Yekaterinberg, in the depths of Lenin's Tomb in Red Square, or from a seat in a Trans-Siberian rail car, we have seen both the Russian landscape and Russian culture literally unfold before our eyes.

But now that is over. Upon arriving in St. Petersburg this morning, we more or less have ended the train travel portion of our trip.

Crazy.

It is only crazy because I have been riding trains since leaving Hong Kong on the 21st of June, about forty days ago.

Here are some of the highlights since I last updated:

1.) Touching the ice cold waters of Lake Baikal from the shore of Olkhon Island. While that was the main highlight, missing our ride to the island, watching a track suite-clad russian woman fight some russian men, and trusting my life to a Red Bull-driven Russian mini-bus driver were all part of the adventure as well.

2.) Seeing Tomsk for about 12 hours before realizing that we had no way to get back to the main Trans-Siberian line to catch our train. Thus, we packed up all our stuff and caught the final commuter train to Taiga, where we spent the night in metal chairs watching dubbed-over english movies and eating pigs in a blanket.

3.) Enjoying both the sights and sounds of Yekaterinburg...but mainly the sights.

4.) Shaving my head in Moscow. I haven't done this...really ever. But I did it a few days ago.

5.) Arriving into Moscow at 4 am and promptly going to an American diner for an ommlette and beer. From there we went to Red Square at dawn. Being more or less the only people around the Kremlin and St. Basil's was one of the highlights of my entire trip.

5.) Hanging out at the US Embassy's dacha just outside of Moscow. It was a nice way to relax and spend the day with some cool people on the outskirts of Russia's slightly neurotic capital city.

Now what?

Well, we are playing with the idea of taking a bus to Helsinki, Finland before dropping into Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. From there I am still playing with the idea of burning a path through western Europe to Portugal so that I can say I covered the entire Asian and European continents on this trip. Hong Kong to Lisbon...it could happen. Stay tuned.

PS - The next entry won't have as many bullet-pointed lists. Sorry about that.
PPS - Remember Russkies? A classic Cold War meets suburban Florida movie.