St. Petersburg, Russia

Of all the places I thought I might visit I honestly never thought I might make it to Russia! The idea wasn't mine but was recommended to me by my friends Kara and Emilie fairly early on in the second semester. I did not hesitate but immediately said that I would join and I'm glad I did. The ten day road trip to Russia was with a Finnish travel company called Niinimäki. Kara, Emilie, me and six other exchange students from Lund travelled to Linköping and then got on the bus which went by ferry from Stockholm to Turku. From here we bussed to St. Petersburg where we waited forever at the border crossing because the Russians had implemented some new fee and more paper work (they really like stamps!). When we arrived in St. Petersburg it finally became clear where we were. We had only seen countryside for the last 10 hours but the city was absolutely gorgeous! The Neva River flows through it and there are also many canals.
This photo taken from my hotel room shows St. Petersburg at night. Below is a pic showing the St. Peters Fortress. Ice was melting from a large lake north of the city which is why there were random pieces of ice floating down the river, yet still people were bathing in the river as you can see if you look closely.
Another one of my favorite places to see was the Hermitage museum. It was as beautiful from the inside as it was on the outside. It was actually just as interesting to see the architecture of the building as the artwork inside.

The photo to the right shows one of the many trams in St. Petersburg. We were told that this city has the most extensive tram system in the world with over 400 km of tracks in the city alone. The subway system is also really interesting, it was about nine stories down (or so it seems) had the fastest escalators and the most intricate stations I have ever seen. Despite all of this we still opted for the taxi (ordered by holding a hand out in a street which causes a vehicle to stop in less than 30 seconds) more often because it was soo cheap! A ten minute ride only cost like 9 dollars and I would like to point out that I have never driven in a cab so fast and crazy.
Finally a bit of educational sightseeing! This is a statue of Mendelev and the periodic table he derived all those years ago, both a source of intrigue and misery for me! There was a lot of construction going on on the main street because they were preparing for the G8 summit meeting.