Entering Russia

Last time I wrote about Latvia.  Tonight I'll start talking about the time in Russia.  It was an amazing time that I still struggle to explain.  Looking back I have so many experiences that it seems surreal. 

We left Latvia and boarded the coach early right after breakfast.  This was the first of many long bus rides.  It was going to take us all day driving to reach Va Liki Luki a small Russian town where we'd sleep that night. 

This was the hardest day of the trip.  It was the day of the biggest changes.  It was the day of bumpy roads that made myself and others motion sick.  It was the worst hotel of the trip. And almost the worst food. :)

We reached the border around 2 p.m. and our tour manager briefed us on the procedure.  We'd have eight checkpoints to go through, the border is a neutral space in limbo between countries. About a kilometer wide.  There were trucks parked along the border for miles leading up to it.  They were waiting sometimes for weeks to enter Russia. We were told to expect about three hours to get through.

The Latvian part of the border took us no time and then we entered the Russian side.  Most of it was taken care of by our bus driver but eventually we all had to get off the bus and go through passport control.  One at a time we had our passports and visas inspected.  Then they wanted to inspect our bags so we had to get them off the coach.  Then they wanted the dogs to sniff them.  Then they wanted to inspect the bus with the dogs.

I don't know if it was all standard procedure, but it all felt pretty arbitrary. 

Then we hit a problem.  Everyone was fine except the bus couldn't come.  The Russians explained it like we could just leave the bus and walk to Moscow.  lol.  It was because our driver had been to russia with a bus a few weeks earlier and had left through a different border which they didn't have records of.

It was basically a bureaucratic nightmare.  The Russians didn't know what to do.

All told we spent 7 hours sitting at the border.  I still don't know how they figured it out, or if we just were told to go. lol.

Va Liki Luki was a strange place.  It was a small town that doesn't get tourists.  We got lots of suspicious looks.  Most of the buildings were built in the seventies, along with most of the cars.  The buildings were really run down and it was a bleak place.