Proper Russia post!
Soooo I've been back for a few days. I think I am stable enough now to do a thorough play by play of events :D
Despite the following list of 'things that went wrong' I did have a great time, so don't be thinking it was hell :P
Ok. Lets get the bad out of the way first:
- They lost our luggage - we had two flights, one heathrow to frankfurt, then frankfurt to st petersburg. Cos of snow our frankfurt flight was late coming in, so although we got on the plane, our luggage didnt. Couple that with a thousand immigration forms and thennnn lost luggage forms and yeah, not a great start. Luggage didn't arrive until the next morning so night in clothes, yucky.
- Night train - not too bad, IIIIII thought. Very cramped, itchy blankets (which i didnt use in the end), crappy food. But then... in the night crazy drunk russians came knocking on our compartment doors, so some rather brave boys from our group saw them off :). Also, in my compartment a girl was sick so I had to go wake up the teachers (LOL TEACHERS IN PJS/BOXERS!) and really did notttt get much sleep T_T
- Fire - in the hotel in Moscow there was a fire. We were on the 21st floor, the fire was on the 12th. Cleaners and hotel staff said not to worry, we didn't need to evacuate (this was after FIVE fire engines were called to deal with the fire) but the teachers insisted on keeping us gathered outside in the corridors, using a few flights of fire escape stairs, and not letting us back in our rooms for ages. Did I mention this spanned 2-3.20AM
- Illegalness - there was nowhere to park coaches so our coach was often parked illegally. This was fine, until we had to make our own way back, the group (42 kids) got split, and half appeared on the opposite side of the road. We couldnt wait for them so the guide and a couple of teachers had to take them back on the metro!
- Flight trouble - again, snow. Flew to Berlin from Moscow and literally ran through the airport cos our flight was late. Fortunately, being almost a 50 person party, they held the plane for us XD BUT I got frisked in their security, the germans always frisk me So those are the bad things. Good things:
- Amazing guides - Andrei for St Petersburg, he was so laid back and just cool XD Awesome accent and had a strange young guy following him. India and I hypothesise that it was his boyfriend oooooo. Galina for Moscow, she was fun. Big fur coat and headscarf, would not stop talking. Also amusing over the illegal coach parking, a closet communist, and awfully complimentary of our ability to stay awake during museum visits!
- Cool people - made some friendies :) mostly boys, which is a bit backwards eh. But oh well...
- Teachers - our history teacher is just GOD. We knew this. The other male teacher (there was one from each school, four schools btw) was apparently a welshman but has adopted this terrible posh voice and that was a riot by itself. The female teacher who was head organiser was... interesting. Needed to stop saying alright ok alright ok and pretending to know everything... Final female teacher was nice, but we didnt learn her name til halfway through, oooops...
- Feel yourshelf russian - we went to a russian folkshow called feel yourself russian, and one of the more.... unusual new friends I made decided to make a spoof 'feel your SHELF russian', which, in the words of boy from my school, turned into 'shelf porn'. This is perhaps a 'you had to be there' thing but I thought I'd mention it XD
- Bowling - in russia, a little scary. But I turned out to be quite good, oooooo. Didn't win tho, my history teacher beat me :(
That'll do. Pictures? Maybe later :P
p.s. cut is messed up T_T sorry!