HUBBERS DOT COM BLOG

Slept through alarm and missed the tour to the summer palace. Gutted. Once functional we did some more sight seeing including the Hermitage which is an excellent museum based in the old Winter Palace. Found out that even the Ruskies have a few pieces of stolen Egyptian art. Had the thought that maybe the reason that the Gypos try to rob you blind when you visit Egypt is because they want to get some of their own back.

Returned home for a quiet evening until we found out that two of our tour mates were going to a restaurant called Lenin’s where they show soft porn and old soviet propaganda clips while you eat. As if that wasn’t good enough the waitresses were dressed like they were in the R18 version of the Thunderbirds. This place has hugely successful global franchise written all over it.

Stopped at the corner bar for a beer and ended up ‘talking’ to all manner of Ruskie girls who didn’t speak a word of English. Runty of course was in his element.

Last month four women left an appartment in Chechnia. So far three have been found dead at terrorist attack sites. The last one blew herself up outside the Metro in Moscow. These are the conditions we are entering the country under. Scary.

Walking tour of city followed by dragging Runty around a few museums including the naval museum and the fort. The fort holds several small museums including the coin museum (aka the coin shop) the printing museum (aka the print shop) and the prison museum where Lenin locked up his brother and had him killed. Nice people those commies.

I bought a fox fur had which I wear everywhere much to the amusement of the locals. I have christened it Samantha Fox. And before anyone gets all high and mighty about fur being murder I eat meat every day so I am already evil. And why should the cute animals get to live when the ugly cows and chickens get it in the neck in their millions?

Had a great introduction soviet style bureaucracy when I tried to get some laundry done. Initially I was told that there was no laundry service until Monday but after talking to several members of staff I got some action. Normally hotel laundry involves putting your stuff into a bag and it turns up clean. In Russia you get given a form to fill out where you itemise each item right down to your dirty undies in one column and put their cost to wash in another then total the lot up. I nearly caused a panic when I put the numbers and prices in the wrong columns. Fortunately they let me complete another form and normality was restored.

The other thing about Russia is that everything is BIG. St Petersburg just blew us away. The walking distances for even the smallest trek on the tourist map were huge. To give you an example the escalators in the underground are faster than the ones in London but it still took two and a half minutes to travel down the one by our hostel. Throughout our time in Russia our guides would frequently say things were built to be the biggest in the world to impress the West.

First impression of St Petersburg is that it is as large as it is run down. The suburbs are block after block after dozens more blocks of dirty old soviet apartment blocks. Found out that the population of this city is four million people. That is the same as NZ.

Our tour guide told us that Russia has a ratio of three girls to every guy. We are heartened by this excellent news.

Got some pub advice and after much walking we found Money Honey. Which turned out to be a hard-rockabilly pub which was entertaining to say the least.

Man if I thought Finnish was hard crack boy am I gonna struggle in Russia. The Ruskies don’t even use the regular alphabet. I’ll give you an example, the word Zealand is spelt ’3, E, backwards N, A, H, piano looking symbol, backwards N, backwards R. Tricky.

Ferrying to St Petersburg via Helsinki represents the first significant departure from the planned itinerary. Basically we are doing it to save a day bus ride on Friday. Also it is another country under our backpacker belts. Finland is the 46th country I have backpacked. Runty, as I frequently remind him, is one behind on 45.

An interesting fact about Finland is that they consume an average of 14 kilogams of coffee EACH annually. This translates to about 9 cups a day. The traditional coffee ritual involves refusing an offer of coffee three times then saying ‘okay just half a cup’. This usually result in having about four or five cups. The Fins sound like my kind of people.

The language here is going to be a bit of a problem as some words are over 40 letters long. It takes ages just to read them let alone remember all of the wacky sounds of all of the syllables.

Managed to get off the beaten track and see the Maria Hospital after Greg felt very ill and was shaking and almost fainting in the afternoon. They took blood and did an ECG but they couldn’t find anything wrong with him. Despite the hectic drinking pace on tour Dr New has decided that caffeine is the problem. He’s feeling loads better now in case you are worried.

Another interesting fact about Finland is that it is the socks and sandals capital of the world. I’ve seen more people in Helsinki wearing socks unashamedly under their sandals than in all of the rest of my life. Kooky.

Spent the day doing the usual museum tower tour of the city. Had to do it alone because as Runty put it museums are just ‘old paintings and stuff’. Also saw the latest comic book come movie Hellboy, which was very good.

Stoke City have named me Freak and Greg ‘man down’ which they shout at him at random intervals.

Caught the England v Poland game with the infamous Stoke City Three who had been at the pub on and off all day. England didn’t choke for a change and the boys were well pleased. After the pub we moved to a local club called Hollywood. The most accurate way to describe Hollywood would be to call it an massive smoo fest. At 11pm when we arrived the dance floor had about fifty stunning Estonian chicks and four blokes. Fantastic odds. Very quickly we were surrounded by a group of seven Estonian girls and one was putting the moves on me. A perfect start for the Hubster. I wasn’t that into her so on the way back from the toilets I stopped to dance with a taller cuter model. At this stage one of her friends came over to me and pulled my neck down and told me that if I didn’t make her friend happy or if I made her unhappy she would cut my balls off. It should have been laughable being threatened with castration by the friend of a girl I had chatted to for 5 minutes. But she wouldn’t let up and kept grabbing my neck and verbalising an array of unsavory threats. Every time I stepped away she kept coming until I literally ran behind Runty and told her to ‘fuck off you crazy psycho’. After that I did what every smart Kiwi would do and found myself a nice dark corner of the club and started knocking back the wodkas. Needless to say we left the club at in the early hours pissed as monkeys with no girls. But I still had my meat and two veg which was a bonus.

Oh and when we stumbled out the Stoke City boys were still going strong in the middle of the dance floor.

Did a few of the sights in old Tallinn Town. It’s a pretty little place but not much to write about.

Swapped out of the dorm into a private room so our stuff was more secure. An Aussie couple who had just finished the trans-Siberian railway took our places.

After dinner I went out to do emails and write my blog etc. I left Runty in the safe hands of the three forty-something Stoke City supporters from our old dorm. When I got back to the pub at 11pm he was nearly legless but Stoke City were just starting to hit their stride. I put Runt to bed and he handed me the drinking baton for the Kiwi team. Another hour of beer swilling and the Stoke City boys started taking their shirts off and singing football songs. At this stage I have to say that I was still pretty confident of being able to put them into the ground. Especially given the Kiwi drinking teams unbeaten record against every nation we have come up against on tour. But by 5am when the club below the Radisson kicked us out I had to call it quits and snuck off to bed. I thought it was a draw but apparently Stoke City still had one trick up their sleeve. On the way home they picked up a hooker and took her back to their dorm that they share with the Aussie couple and two other guys and took turns shagging her in front of the whole room! Final score Stoke City 3 New Zealand 0.

We booked ourselves in to the local Parnu Mudaravila Mud Baths for a ‘general mud’ at midday. The general mud goes something like this. A middle aged Estonian woman throws a bucket of steaming hot mud over a bed with a rubber sheet on it. She then orders you to take off all your clothes and lie on your back which is a little off-putting to say the least. Any dignity you might have left is quickly dispatched when you scream like a little girl as the she throws a second bucket of steaming mud all over your coozer. Then she raps you up like a mummy in a hot mud cocoon to absorb the healing properties of the mud. After fifteen minutes she comes back and undoes you so you can shower the mud off. Does it really heal you of anything? Well let’s just say I didn’t feel unhealed.

The Runt, with his small town New Zealand values found the experience particularly disturbing as some of his rugby mates might think it was a ‘gay’ thing to do. But we talked about the problems with the All Blacks backline for half an hour and he seemed a little more settled.

There wasn’t much else to do in Parnu so we bused up to Tallinn.

Tallinn is the capital of Estonia and is fast becoming the party capital of the Baltics. It is particularly popular with English stag party groups. On a Monday however it is a little quiet.

Booked into the hostel which the Lonely Planet said had a strip bar upstairs and went out for some beers. Somewhat inevitably we ended up at said strip bar a few hours later. On first impression everything looked great, especially the Estonian strippers. But after a while things got a little tense as they expected all of us to shell out enormous sums for each dance and to buy them eight quid bloody Barcardi Breezers. When we refused they basically told us that if we weren’t big spenders then we shouldn’t be in a place like that. The next morning we found out that the three English guys in our dorm had shelled out two hundred pounds stirling EACH on tips, drinks, lap dances and in one case an opportunity to wank while a naked stripper masturbated in front of him. Unbelievable. No wonder we were quickly given the bums rush with our backpacker-one-pound-tips.

The previous evenings excessive partying caused us to sleep in and miss our bus to Estonia. The next bus wasn’t until six o’clock so we decided to see the movie King Arthur which was watchable and filled a gap that we were unable to do anything else with due to crippling hangovers.

The bus to Panuu was most notable for the public debate over what language the in-bus dvd should be played in. I can’t remember how many times I coughed English into my hand but the final result was some language I couldn’t recognise.

The Estonian beach resort of Panuu is a bit of a ghost town on a Sunday night but that didn’t matter since all we were interested in was crashing.

Woke early to do internet and stuff. Explored the old town and did the usual museum-and-climb-the-local-tower-combo that we love so much in the Baltics. The museum of Latvian history does and excellent job of showing what a raw deal the Latvian’s have received over the last 100 years.

Went back to de Lacy’s to watch the English football team snatch a draw from the jaws of victory after leading Austria two to nil. Hopeless. Got talking to the owner of the pub an Irishman who runs a local bank called Michael. He had all sorts of advice about the local scene. Ended up being invited to another pub by two ABSOLUTLY STUNNING LOCAL GIRLS and as we were leaving Michael warned us to watch ourselves. At the new pub I left Greg with the stunners cos it felt a little dodgey. As it turns out they weren’t prostitutes or on commission for the second pub or some other scam and they were just two nice but stunning local chicks. I would be gutted but I met another local girl and had a good time anyway. After dropping her off at the bus I went home to find Greg asleep on the couch in the hotel reception.

Riga is the capital of Latvia, The old town and is full of cool bars and cafes. Which is handy because it’s Friday and we are keen to see some of the local nightlife. Started at de Lacy’s an excellent new Irish bar where we had our best meals on tour so far. The waitress recommended Martini’s as the best option for the rest of the evening. Spent most of the evening being Greg’s wingman speaking pidgin English to a girl I wasn’t interested in. Had to do a runner in the end after a 50 year old English teacher tried it on.