The Express bus to St. Petersburg departed uncomfortably early, at 6:00 a.m. Nevertheless, we opted for this route since "Express" meant shaving one hour off the trip as compared to all other departures. We packed up as well as we could the night before and set multiple alarms.
Another Soviet-era clock souvenir we picked up at the household junk market in Tallinn. ("I bet it rings like a bitch" said to have been uttered at time of purchase. And, I assure, you it does.)Out the door a little after 5:00 a.m., we led our rolly-mini-suitcases through the morning fog down to the Telliskivi tram stop, in time to catch the first public transport of the day, and enjoy the scenic ride around the stone walls of still-sleeping medieval Tallinn en route to the Autobussijaam.
We were relieved to discover that this Eurolines bus was differently-configured than the ones we'd taken to and from Riga and Vilnius. There was actually leg-room enough for 2 people to sit comfortably side-by-side and face forward, instead of sitting diagonally, with 2 of a couple's 4 legs blocking the aisle. The bus was only half-full, though all passengers were jammed up into the anterior half, since everyone either opted or were advised to sit in their assigned seats. We left Tallinn and travelled down Narva mantee [for Edmontonians, Narva being to Calgary what mantee is to Trail], revisiting some now-familiar territory, as the road traverses the southernmost section of Lahemaa National Park.
In Narva, the essentially all-Russian town on the Estonian side of the border, we handed over our passports to the Estonian authorities and beeped our watches 60 minutes hence before the bus trundled over the bridge to Ivangorod, on the Russian side, where we had to unload all of our luggage and walk it through the visa-processing border shack ourselves. Notably, this procedure is not much different than what one faces at the U.S. border when travelling by Greyhound, except that the Russian border guards don't grill you with questions about drugs, weapons, produce or animal husbandry. Paying close bureaucratic attention to the required documents instead (including some or all of passport, visas, invitations, official stamps, migration cards, form listing the currencies and valuables you're taking into the country, health insurance policy) -- provided these are all in order -- you are thankfully ignored.
The road was far less worthy on the Russian side, perhaps not repaired since the days of Catherine II. The change in road conditions was accompanied by a switch at the helm, the Ivangorod-to-Petersburg pilot clearly an expert at navigating these 200 kms of so-called road, these 3 hours of rubble and craters. Any hope of making it safely to Peterburi rested on this one man, it was he who intimately knew these roads, these barely-passable stretches and trecherous crevasse-ravaged curves, who knew where best to drive in the shoulder, which sections could be passed only at snail-speed, when to swerve, what to avoid, how to roll with the bumps and bobs, how to careen and come out relatively clean. Only once when a Lada attempted to make a blind left turn directly in front of us did we risk losing complete control. An elderly woman passenger did eventually lose her breakfast, though, as a result of the relentless lurching and jerking.
We finally reached St. Petersburg -- and immediately became ensnared in a traffic jam for 45 minutes, though we were just blocks from the Baltijskij train station, our final destination. This made us late, thus rendering moot the "Express" status of our route. This introduction to the now vehicle-choked St. Petersburg was appropriate; there would be many more "probki" (literally, corks) to come.
Calming Interlude
Talk of traffic jams has the potential to set the heart a-racing and the blood a-boiling. So time-out for a little soothing bell-chiming and bobbling from this weeble-wobblin' Gator Gena (An acquisition from the flea market at Metro Udel'naya in St. Petersburg.)
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