Baltic Trip - Vyborg      26th May:

    Dan and I decided to explore a more provincial Russia today. We knew of a medieval town near the Finnish border, Vyborg, and we decided to go and explore it.
    We made an early start and joined the commuters heading for the metro. Going down the long escalator, I could see what seemed to be ants streaming towards the bottom of the escalator, and soon they were approaching like a growing caterpillar and metamorphosing into an endless line of people. I was amazed at how quiet it was, with next to no conversation taking place. Later, as we changed metro trains, I was equally amazed as we all headed along as silent sheep to the adjacent line in silence. London's commuters are equally taciturn, but the silence here was eerie. We finally reached Finland Station where we would catch a train to Vyborg. Making enquiries about the trains was extremely difficult since nobody seemed to speak English. We gathered, through a mixture of phrase books and sign language, from three different people that the journey would take from 2 to 3.25 hours - gulp! With such a lengthy trip ahead of us, I made a dash for the toilet (just as well since there were no toilets on the train), only to discover that just the squat variety existed at this station, and I needed to go and find the toilet paper elsewhere, eventually located on a centralised 1m diameter drum.
    The train we boarded was a very functional commuter train, with seats designed for lack of comfort to prevent folk from falling asleep. Our iron horse slowly crawled out of the city through very industralised suburbs, passing a ghastly looking prison bristling with razor wire and tall watchtowers.
    A while later found us clattering through thick forest, in fact the rest of the journey was through the same dense forest. Occasionally the train would lurch to a halt and the odd one or two passengers would alight or disembark - did they all work for the forestry commission? A handful of these stopping points were ramshackle hamlets with allotments and animals being fattened for the slaughter, but the majority just marked the ends of mysterious paths that disappeared off into the dark beyond. This was the vast hinterland as I imagined it.
    To ease the boredom of the journey, an endless stream of on board entertainment passed along the train. This took the form of individuals who entered at one end of the carriage, stood by the door and shouted out their wares before passing down the aisle making what sales they could, and then leaving from the opposite end of the carriage. Folk were selling snacks, drinks, fruit, vegetables, pastries, bags, papers, magazines, books, poetic tracts, cloths for cleaning glasses, household goods and all manner of things.

Vyborg Castle

    After 2.5 hours we lurched into Vyborg and shuddered to a halt. We immediately checked the times of trains going back to St Petersburg, which was just as well since the return times we had been provided with in St Petersburg were totally wrong. It was then that we spotted that there was an express train that travelled between Helsinki and St Petersburg, and it stopped at Vyborg, and would only take an hour. We made enquiries, only to be told that there was a separate ticket office for the express trains. We tracked it down to find one person manning the very wide reception counter. She seemed to be dealing with a request for a return journey to Beijing, calling at Istanbul, Naples, Athens, Vladivostok and Hong Kong, stopping off at Lisbon for a paddle. This was going nowhere fast. Other folk were silently standing around waiting for their two hour time slot with the booking clerk. A bench stood by a wall, with people slowly decomposing, covered in cobwebs and still clutching their ID cards, granny passes etc. People just accepted this mode of working in Russia, it was a way of life. We decided to come back later when the queue had literally died, and thus set forth to discover Vyborg.
    For centuries the area around Vyborg saw the bitter rivalry between Russia and its neighbours. The Vyborg Castle, built in 1293 on a small island, Linnan-Saari, off the Baltic coast, was a powerful Swedish stronghold. The castle was blocking a major trade route between the Russian merchant city of Novgorod and the Baltic Sea. With its tall Olaf Tower, the castle was built with the latest fortification technology of the day. The Russian forces of the Principality of Novgorod laid siege to the castle several times but unsuccessfully. In 1318 the army of Novgorod managed to take the castle, but failed to establish tight control over the area and had to retreat.
    In 1561 the Olaf Tower was rebuilt on the orders of King Gustav Vasa. It became a little shorter, but with thicker walls and more powerful defences. In 1564 additional fortifications were added, including outer walls and powerful bastions paved with stone.
    When Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in 1703 and Russia gained access to the Baltic, all Swedish outposts in the area were captured. In 1706 the first ground assault on Vyborg failed, but in 1710 Peter the Great summoned 13,000 troops and 250 ships for a combined army and navy attack on the fortified town and castle. On June 12 1710, after a heavy bombardment, the Swedish garrison surrendered. With the construction of yet more fortifications, Vyborg maintained military significance till the early 19th century.

Nothing but Forest Inland

    We made a bee line for the castle, going through the usual scam of paying to enter the castle and then paying again to climb the tower. The view from the roof was spectacular. To the west lay the Gulf of Finland dotted with a myriad of islands, similar to the Finnish coast. To the north lay the remains of the fortifications of the "Horn Fortress". The medieval town lay to the south and east. In the distance in all directions, there was a sea of either water or trees as far as the eye could see.
    Departing from the castle, we took a stroll around the old fortifications that we had spotted from our recent elevation. The only remaining feature was Bastion Panzerlaks, which was part of the powerful "Horn Fortress" (its bastions, seen from an elevation, looked like horns). The rest of the fortress was torn down in the 19th century.

Fat Catherine

    The only area left to explore was the fortified medieval town of Vyborg, located opposite the castle. This part of the town was still referred to as "the Old Town" and retained much of its medieval character. Several towers in the Old Town used to be part of the town fortifications, built in the late 14th century - early 15th centuries and expanded in 1547-50. The most famous was definitely the Round Tower ("Fat Catherine"), which now stood on the Market Square. The tower was built of large stones and was strong enough to hold canon on several levels.

Decaying Vyborg Street

    An amble around the market hall left me open jawed. There was an incredible amount of just pure lumps of fat for sale, and bits and pieces of animal carcasses that would probably be used for pet food in the UK. Perhaps that is what people did with this stuff. Dan was pleased with the market since he purchased some souvenirs at knock-down prices compared to similar items in St Petersburg.
    We returned to the train station to purchase express train tickets. The previous decomposing occupants had all been swept away by this time. The Russians are known for their rude aggressive public front, but the woman at the counter took some beating. We made our enquiry and she responded with a simple "Nyet!" She was adamant that we would not travel back on the express train. After checking the train details again, we went back to a different clerk; again, "Nyet!" We now had 2.5 hours to kill until the next slow train, and then 2.5 hours on the train. Our hopes of meeting up with Alan and Rex for a final Russian meal together were rapidly evaporating.

Tree in Vyborg Park

    Deciding to use our time wisely, we looked to eating in Vyborg so that we could at least have a drink together in St Petersburg. We found restaurants that were all closed, found one open but didn't seem to want to take our order, and eventually retired to a fast food place for a couple of slices of pizza.
    This was a disappointing end to Dan's stay in Russia, his last meal being lukewarm slices of cardboard pizza. It was a real shame.
    To kill time, we wandered through a town that was run down: potholed streets with even more potholed pavements, surrounded by decaying buildings, the smell of damp and rotten brickwork pervasive. Even the people seemed run down and decaying, and lack of eye contact between Russian people was more noticeable in this outpost. The station was purely functional. Crossing the roads appeared to be taken at a saunter, with waits in the middle of the road; jay walking ruled whereas in St Petersburg one could get fined on the spot for it. But the waterfront was of interest, and I was transfixed by a couple of full size replicas of Viking ships on the promenade.

Replica of Viking Ship

    The time came to catch our train back to the city, lurching through the vast forest, with rather less sales people than earlier. However, there were still two individual ticket inspections.
    On arriving back in St Petersburg, we found the metro by the mainline station inexplicably closed. We ended our nightmare return journey by taking a cab back to the marina. The taxi drivers were always friendly and tried to engage in limited chat.
    We arrived back in time to meet up with Rex, who had visited the city through the day with Alan, who had attended a church in the city to sample the music. Alan had by now settled down for the night, so the rest of us retired to the bikers' bar next to the marina for our final celebratory drink in Russia. The bikers usually drove their machines up the narrow path by the bar and parked on the riverside patio. There was never any problem, the bar was clean, served good beer and vodka, and the music, mostly English, was played quietly.
    The bar was also serving food, so Dan and I made up for the spartan pizza slices we had eaten earlier. So all turned out well in the end, and we stayed in the bar until they closed at 00:30. The short stroll back to the boat took place in what seemed like a permanent sunset. I was pleased that Dan had a pleasant end to his stay after all.