Steph and I arrived in Rouen (cathedral painted by Monet; Joan of Arc imprisoned and burnt here as well) last night, at 10pm, after wandering around Paris with mon copin, who came over to spend the weekend with me in Paris (which by the way enjoyed the same dreary weather as Amboise did, but was sunny and gorgeous the last). Anyway, I’d had the foresight to book us into a hotel near the Rouen train station, but managed to completely screw up printing the map, so that we spent goodness knows how long walking down a boulevard in completely the wrong direction, walking back, then asking various strangers for help finding the place. I was fine the first time we passed the two hookers on Boulevard de L’Yser, but not so good when we passed them again – now three, with some dodgy looking male stragglers – on the way back.

But we got there in the end, and woke up to a fantastic fine sunny day in Rouen, ate our lunch of filled baguettes outside the boulangerie/sandwich shop outside a high school, just getting in before their lunchtime rush hour, then wandered around rather charming Rouen, which seems to have more than its fair share of imposing Gothic cathedrals. Fine day indeed, which again made me think, probably the one thing you need to like a place is the one thing you can’t choose, and that’s the weather.

This has to be the worst week in history for the month of March. I’m in the Loire Valley, and it’s so cold I could well be in Scotland. In fact the little town I’m staying in does remind me of Galashiels, except that it’s a bit lighter (or was when the sun came out briefly), a little more pleasant. A guy I met here, who’s from London, remarked that it looks and feels like England (poor guy, taking the week to see this part of France, and picking the week with the worst possible weather).

I’m staying, or have been as I’m leaving today, in Amboise, a picturesque little town that once upon a time used to be home for some very important kings, according to the brochure for the local chateau. I was going to stay in Tours, thinking I would be staying with someone from couchsurfing, but she forgot about it, then emailed the day before I was due to arrive to say she couldn’t. So it was Amboise, because it’s sort of between Tours and Blois (the two bases for chateau visits), and the hostel in Tours was kind of expensive, and the one in Blois wasn’t very near the train station.

Three chateaux in the same number of days – ridiculous when I think I may have said some months ago I wouldn’t bother ever again with castles! And yesterday I was cursing and swearing at myself for not sticking to it, when I couldn’t get a lift back to Blois, and had to resign myself to waiting 3 hours for the bus back at Chambord. And the Chateau de Chambord, which according to the guidebook, along with the Chateau de Chenonceau is unmissable, is in my opinion, very much so – or at least definitely not worth the 7 or so hours in total that it did take up. One zword of advice to anyone planning to do the chateaux here: the guidebook did get it right in that you really should just book yourself into an organised tour.

So I decided today I would not trek out to look at the chateau in Chenonceau; I don’t care if it’s the perfect fairytale castle. And anyway, if I come back here one day, which I won’t rule out completely as I can see it would be very nice indeed in nicer weather, I’ll need to have something to do then won’t I?

We’re leaving Helsinki today, and the weather has finally returned to fine. When we arrived here, it was fine and sunny, but quickly became grey, then snowed like crazy – Daniel our Finnish host said it wasn’t proper snow, because it was too wet, and wouldn’t cover the ground as it would melt straight away, but it persisted enough to coat things with white by nighttime.

Yesterday something happened that freaked me out. Between going to the Rock Church here, and heading to a sauna, Jane and I stopped at a public library to use their free internet. As I walked into the library, this guy standing at the doorway smiled, and I smiled back (he was kinda cute, but the smile was more a reflexive one), but then, he said hi and went to say something else, only I was striding at a brisk pace and it was too late to stop, and I couldn’t think who he might be, because I don’t know anyone in Helsinki, and it was all a bit strange. And then as I stood waiting at the desk, I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was coming towards me, and I started to freak out, and tried hard to pretend I hadn’t noticed him, fervently hoping he doesn’t approach me. I then headed back out to Jane to tell her something, and as I came back into the library, this guy leans out of a tucked away corner, smiles and asks if I want his number in the internet queue. I’m more than a little freaked out by now, and Jane calls me, so after the little reflexive smile back at him I manage nothing else as I rush back out. About 15 mins later I head back in, my number has been called, and I sit down at the free terminal, look up, he’s seated facing me on the terminal opposite and looks up at the same time. I must have a look of horror on my face, because he gives me a small ironic smile, and quickly returns to his screen. At this point I start to feel bad, but he leaves, speaking on his phone, while I’m still contemplating what just happened and whether I should speak to him.

So, I want to know, was I wrong to freak out? Maybe he was just a nice, friendly guy, and I probably made him feel like a creep. I’m not even sure why I freaked out, and didn’t want him to approach me – I think maybe I was afraid he was meant to be meeting someone, and that I’d confused him when I smiled back at him, and how was I going to explain it? And maybe I’m just too shy, and I did think he was kind of cute. Maybe disinhibited with a couple of drinks I would’ve reacted differently. So if any guys are reading this, please don’t be put off approaching girls by reactions like mine, because the girl might just be hopeless, like me. But maybe try not to come across like you’re a stalker, jumping out of hidden corners and approaching her only when she’s by herself. That’s the thing isn’t it? Maybe nice shy guys more often come across like creeps than sleazy slimy guys, because they are nice and shy, just like bad liars are more likely to be picked as liars than good liars.

Jane and I are in Helsinki now. We’re staying with someone from Couchsurfing.

The last couple of days in St Petersburg we had so much fun! The trip to the Vodka Museum wasn’t at all what we expected. The original museum had shut, so we ended up in this rather expensive souvenir shop, that had taken upon itself the task of filling the gap in the market left by the proper museum. We did get our tasting of 4 different vodkas, and a little folk show, and I have to say, the girl that did it did a great job. It was only Jane and I that were there for it that day, and you would think the singing and dancing might’ve fallen flat on its face, but this girl managed to keep the energy up, and we ended up participating and having fun (the vodka shots probably helped).

The Museum of Erotica was also not what we expected – the museum was a collection of sex-related collectables displayed in the waiting room of an STD clinic, where the nurses wore sexy nurse uniforms. And the 30cm embalmed penis? Gross – really gross.

And our night out? Couldn’t have been better. We started in a little bar Fidel where a little band dressed up in moustaches and glasses added great atmosphere, then went next door to Dacha which was all kitsch decor and random music. There I met two boys who made such valiant attempts to converse with non-Russian speaking me – the one who looked like Orlando Bloom (in Moscow we met a dead ringer for Ashton Kutcher) and told me my boyfreind doesn’t have to know had slightly better English than the one who first started talking to me – despite both boys said they found it very hard, their English was so poor. They then took us to another joint where we had fabulous bread sticks dripping in garlic oil and covered in finely shaved cheese – my mouth is watering just thinking about them – dragging along Galya, a Russian girl Jane had made friends with who spoke the best English, and with such a good accent.

The next day we got up very very late, rushed to the Russian Museum to try and get in in the few hours we had before it shut. I’m glad we did – seeing Monets and Picassos and the like in the Hermitage is all well and good, but you do see work by those artists quite often. The Russian Museum had art by Russian artists, and I’ve got two new favourites now, Vrubel, and Nesterov. Their paintings and drawings show incredible skill in how realisticly they pull off faces, the contours and shadows, and emotions on them, but are so incredibly romantically beautiful that they look like they belong in a book of fairytales.

And then the ballet. But not without a near-disaster. We were told at the door the tickets we had weren’t for that theatre, and weren’t even for that night but was for two nights before. Jane and I were stunned – but we’d asked for tickets for the Hermitage theatre, for that night, and we’d assumed the little box-office in the Hermitage Museum was the box office for the Hermitage Theatre. Sorry girls, the tickets were definitely not the right ones (and no they weren’t when we did look – it was in Cyrillic but we could see the 15 for the 15th of March), and that night’s show was sold out. So we went outside and stood around for half an hour, hoping to get scalped tickets, before Jane went back up and asked if there were any returns. And yes apparently there were (although afterwards we wondered about this – we were ushered in and squeezed in at the side of the theatre, where the musicians in the small orchestra – it was a small theatre – kept their instrument cases).

And it was worth it. I can understand now why Swan Lake is such a great. The prima ballerina was amazing – how can someone move so much like a swan, and do so many turns on one foot, and be so still – and her leading man fitted the role (the prince as well as lead dancer in a classic ballet) so well, and there were moments when I gasped, and moments when I swear I was holding my breath. And we both walked out with such a buzz. Our week in Russia was complete.

I think I’m still struggling a little to reconcile the image I have in my head of Russia being full of princesses, and sumptuous palaces, a la French courts (I did find out that apparently a long time ago, pre-revolution I’m assuming, upper-class ‘educated’ Russians were expected to speak French fluently, and basically I think the royals were French wannabes – Peter the Great built his palace to look like Versailles, Catherine the Great was a fan of Voltaire, etc), with the Russia we’re in now. I don’t know why Soviet Russia doesn’t figure as first in my preconceived notions of what Russia is, given it’s a more recent Russia. It’s mind-blowing to think how many different identities Russia’s been through, when you put Soviet Russia next to French court Russia, next to the previous, more Asian, khafkan (spelling?) wearing Russia, which would’ve had more similarities with the Far East/Byzantine empire.

Anyway. Yesterday was a much better day. The weather was nice and sunny, and we started our day with some blinhy. We made the same classic mistake I always make with crepes – we both ordered a savoury and a sweet one each, and were so full when we’d finished both that we were almost sick. But boy were the sweet ones divine.

We then went to the Hermitage – palace/museum/art gallery – and spent the whole day there. I think we managed to see enough to feel like we’d covered the place, without completely exhausting and overwhelming ourselves. We also booked tickets to see Swan Lake at the Hermitage Theatre this Saturday night, so I’ll be able to tick off seeing Swan Lake, and seeing Russian ballet! It still doesn’t quite console us though for the fact that a cabaret club called Hulli Gulli (Lonely Planet: infamous cabaret show with wild and foul-mouthed MC… strip shows, saucy comedy, and magic acts, and penis-measuring contests…) shut about 6 months ago. I was all geared up for that to be the highlight of my stay in St Petersburg :(

And then we finished the day off at the cutest little Russian restaurant – Na Zorodvi’e I think it was called. I had something called ‘herring under a fur coat’, which was a salad of salted herring, beetroot, pickled cabbage (I think) and shavings of ?cheese to start – good, but I couldn’t finish it – and a fish pie, also good, but I also couldn’t finish it (I don’t know why salmon tastes so good raw but is absolutely foul when cooked). Also tried kvas, this drink made from bread which is really difficult to describe – it tastes spicy like mulled wine, but thicker and sweeter – maybe more so like malt loaf?

Today we have a Vodka Museum tour to look forward to, and then a quick trip to the Erotica Museum – I’m not expecting it be much different from the one in Amsterdam (or Paris, or Prague, I’m sure – for some reason every city seems to have one), but I do want to see the 30cm grey embalmed penis of Rasputin. And then maybe more drinking!

And then tomorrow most likely the Russian Museum – hopefully will be able to get my Russian history sorted out a bit more – and of course the ballet in the evening!

We did a walking tour today, thinking it would be a great introduction to St Petersburg, but were sorely disappointed. It was boring – the tour guide was a quiet arty type, and had just come back from a month in India, and I don’t think his heart was in it, there was a Canadian in our little group of four who had the most annoying accent, we were all freezing losing-sensation-in-all-extremities cold, and it was long – so I think we pretty much lost the whole day, and ended up really tired with not much else to say for the day. The only thing was, it was interesting to note, that the other girl in our group who was from Norway, said Russia reminded her of Egypt.

So. I can talk about how I can sort of read Cyrillic, albeit like a 5-yr old, slowly sounding out each of the letters. And it really can be a slow process, because it can be hard to not stuff up and read the Roman alphabet sounds for letters like р н с в

ресторан = restoran = restaurant

телефон = telephone

сувенир = souvenirs (I think I’ve got the Cyrillic spelling wrong though)

ленин = Lenin

москва = Moscva = Moscow

санкт петерсвург = Saint Petersburg

маффин = muffin

параграф = paragraph – is there a film coming out called paragraph 78?

дабы чижвургер = double cheeseburger (not sure I have the Cyrillic spelling entirely correct either for that one)

McDonalds (once! we only ate there once!) was a good place to learn Cyrillic – loads of names for things were just their names in English, but written in Cyrillic.

One way I do not recommend doing Russia is with a UTI. While it hasn’t been very cold here, it has been cold enough to make you feel like you need to pee all the time – on top of having to drink lots of water to try and flush the infection out – and we’ve found out public toilets are not exactly plentiful in Russia. And anyone who’s had the bad luck to have suffered a UTI knows it redefines ‘urgent’ – when you gotta go, you GOTTA go. Who woulda thunk that in the whole complex of the Kremlin, the only toilets are in the Armoury (which you have to get separate – timed – tickets for?

That’s another thing that strikes similarities with Turkey – you’re not supposed to flush toilet paper down the loo here. Also, when we were at a market yesterday (we’ve since been told by some locals that the suburb we ended up in whilst looking for this market that was in the Lonely Planet, is a dangerous area – and we still don’t know whether the market we went to was the one in the Lonely Planet, in fact, we’re seriously doubtful it is) – the toilets there were the ’squat over a whole in the ground’ kind. Not that was the only thing that reminded us of Turkey (Jane thought so as well, and Jane’s seen a lot more of Eastern Europe than I have) – some of the music we’d heard, and some of the ‘traditional’ food was very much reminiscent of Turkey.

Anyway, today, realising the tablets I got over the counter at the airport in Munich weren’t going to cut it, I finally went to see a doctor, at the American Clinic. However, instead of finding the place filled with American students (I found it on a website for students in Russia, after googling English-speaking doctors Moscow), the clientele were mostly Russian, the majority being tall skinny pretty young women – models having abortions paid for by their politician boyfriends, I wonder? High-class escorts having their monthly STD checks?

So here’s hoping the antibiotics wipe those bugs out of my system. And I swear I will never forget to pee after sex.

I’m in Moscow with Jane! It feels really Eastern European (big grand old buildings) but also Asian in a way (shabby shopfronts, signs I can’t read, reminded me of Turkey – I think Prague was different in that the writing still looked European, thanks to the same alphabet maybe?). Or maybe I’m just too tired. Jane and I got up in Paris at 6 this morning spent something like 9 hours in transit (metro, bus, 2 planes, 3 airports, and a cab – all this after spending the whole of yesterday on buses and trains) finally got to our hostel around 7.30 – 8 pm, checked in, went out and had dinner, and it’s now 10.30 pm. Never mind that it’s actually only 8.30 Paris time, 7.30 UK time, it feels like 10.30 to me. Two days of sitting on our arse after a week of gruelling physical exercise on the French Alps can’t be good for you.

The week of skiing in Tignes – Val Claret, 2100m – was actually really good. Doing it through the UCPA (an organisation run by the French Ministry of Sport) made it all very simple. Accommodation, equipment and lessons all sorted. Food sorted. Except the standard of the meals kind of took a downhill turn mid-week and didn’t quite come back up – by all reports though, this was everyone’s worst UCPA catering experience (reports from a few people who had done it at other resorts). I personally was blinded by the dazzling array of cheeses that came out almost at every lunch and dinner, so was never properly too miserable about the food.

A short summary of the week:

Saturday – in transit – made better by the fact that we started off with a cooked brekkie in first class on the Eurostar, and that the rest of the journey was my first ever TGV ride, and then arriving in the evening in Bourg St Maurice all decked out in Christmas lights – with cute deer, snowmen and stars sculpted in glowing lights standing on the tiny roundabouts, driving up the mountain to Tignes, winter wonderland well covered in a thick, thick blanket of snow.

Sunday – general checking in and my first ski lesson. My ski instructor Gerard establishes that I understand a bit of French – I laughed at something he was saying to the French in our group – and so the rest of the week does occasionally, very kindly, speak to me in French. Unfortunately he never corrected my horrendous French – in fact I doubt you could even call it that!

Monday – by the end of the day our little group has skied down the nursery slopes – if you can call sliding down the mountain in a snow plow the whole way skiing. Apres-ski, I talked a few of the others into going to a stretching class – only to find that it’s actually an aerobics class followed by stretching. It was hilarious – think that Fat Boy Slim video with amateurs in a dance hall – two very comical boys from Strasbourg that we’d met the night before were there, and kept bumping into everyone (that was actually the average standard of the class); the instructor only spoke French while everyone I dragged to the class spoke barely any; and there were a couple of jokers, boys decked out in fluoro underwear over their tights, sunnies, one with a blonde wig, livening up the class. And a roomful of people incredulous they were actually doing more exercise, muscles aching as they were after a whole day of skiing.

Tuesday – all my muscles are screaming in pain by the end of the day, the worst being my right knee which burns as I ski in the afternoon, and which I’d twisted a few years ago on my first ever – and only, until this week – skiing excursion to Mt Baw Baw. Nevertheless, the apres-ski activity that day is ice-skating on Lac de Tignes, and you can’t say no to ice-skating on a lake in the Alps, can you? So off we went – for some reason it ends up being a small group of mostly Aussies, we must all just be such suckers – to find the lake was not in very good shape at all. They let us go out on the ice, but a few steps into the ice – yes, steps, and yes, into the ice – we realise just how soft the ice is. In fact so soft that, we are told after we get off the ice, earlier that day, the ice-cleaning / smoothing machine or whatever it’s called, had fallen through the ice, and had to be fished out with a bulldozer.

Wednesday – we had the morning free, no lesson, and had planned to go out together out onto the slopes (we were all in different classes, some people doing snowboarding, and ze boy wanted to take me out to Grand Motte – the peak in Tignes, where you can apparently see Mont Blanc, and look out to Switzerland and Italy), but were too sore and exhausted when we finally did get up that we promptly canned that idea. Instead, we headed out to a little spa, sat in their hot jacuzzis, enjoying the view of the mountains on that clear sunny morning, tried the sauna, the steam room, and had a play with all the different showers, all for 13 euros. And boy did we all feel the better for it.

Thursday – still felt a little lacklustre, and he in particular was not keen on going to his lessons that day. So the two of us headed up by ourselves and did a few runs – I had mustered enough confidence by then, where on Wednesday I was still abit too chickenshit, even though Gerard had taken us out on a blue run on Tuesday afternoon. I stack it I don’t know how many times, and he stacks it twice, thanks to me. Apparently – and I don’t mean this sarcastically, because I know he can do red runs, and we were only on a blue one – he was watching me worrying I would stack it both times. And apparently I can be quite amusing on skis – I caught him laughing at me after my skis, having a mind of their own, nearly carry me off as my body is desperately trying to stop. In the afternoon I have my last lesson as I’m leaving a day early.

Friday – Jane and I leave, and head for Paris. We arrive in time to go out and have a nice traditional French meal, and a wander along the Seine in the Louvre – Les Halles area (our hostel being very centrally located).

And that takes us through to today. We’re so tired we didn’t even change enough money at the airport, despite the fact that we took ages to get sorted at the airport, and take a cab into town, which costs about 100x what public transport does. But takes half the time. Hopefully by tomorrow morning we’ll have recovered – we don’t have much time in Moscow and St Petersburg, and have lots to see and do!