A little taste of Europe

Before I start this post, I wanted to official apologize to any faithful readers. It has been a crazy time, I have been super busy and have decided to read or watch movies in my spare time instead of blog about my adventures. But I'm here now! I'll make sure to post weekly (at least) until I return home in a few weeks.

Obviously, a lot has happened since I last blogged. It would be way too hard and overwhelming to try and update on everything that has happened since the last post, but there was one thing I specifically wanted to blog about. And that is, my kind of European vacation! Ladies and gentleman, prepare yourselves for an adventurous story about food, karaoke bars, hostel creepers, and heavy backpacks.

St. Petersburg, Russia

We started our excursion on Friday, the 23rd of March and departed to the great city of St. Petersburg. We took the night train and arrived in the wonderful city in the wee hours of the morning. Nothing opens in the city until later in the day, so we had to sit around and wait for a few hours before walking into the city. The first view of the city was absolutely beautiful.

St. Petersburg and Moscow may be relatively close in proximity, both the "capital" city of Russia, but they are completely different from each other in every possible way. Moscow has the typical large city feel, complete with dirty streets and crammed with people with different backgrounds. You can't take the Russia out of Russia, but St. Petersburg would be the closest thing to Europe that Russia has. It's hard to really describe the difference between these two great and beautiful cities, but the best way I can compare them is like New York City and Washington D.C. Moscow is the NYC of Russia, whereas St. Petersburg is the DC. I hope this paints a clearer picture for you readers, but it's so difficult to describe.

We didn't spend much time in St. Petersburg; we had to be at our ferry ready to leave by 4 PM. While we were there, we visited the Winter Palace, home of the world famous Hermitage museum. I loved being in such a history-rich place and seeing the amazing art on display.

I don't really want to go into too much detail about St. Petersburg simply because we'll be returning there in a few weeks, where I can go into much more detail about this wonderful and amazing city. Stay tuned!

Helsinki, Finland

Our group was absolutely exhausted from all the traveling and going off of little to no sleep on the overnight train. We arrived at our ferry station a few hours early so we would have plenty of time to go through customs. When we payed the money for a ferry, I thought that we would be staying on an actual ferry boat, and I was kind of nervous about how we'd be able to sleep. Well, my fears were short-lived once I saw our "ferry". It was a cruise ship, the first cruise ship I had ever seen up close! I got pretty excited, because I had never gone on a cruise before but always wanted to. Which brings me to the beginning of my bucket list adventures.

Bucket List Cross Off #1: Go on a cruise

This cruise was much different than what I would expect a cruise to be, but I'm still counting it! First off, the water was completely frozen.

Second off, the food was absolutely not free. Super expensive, actually. Lucky for us we packed lots of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and some strawberry jam that our lovely cook Lena gave us. The third thing that was missing in our cruise was the entertainment factor. As in there was none. Lucky for us, we were all too tired to be able to do anything exciting anyways. In fact, we didn't allow ourselves to go to sleep until 9:00 at the earliest, so we tried keeping each other awake by playing Phase 10 and reading. We barely managed, but we did it! Our rooms were on the bottom floor, where the ice was being crushed by the ship, so it was super loud all night long. Thankfully, we were super exhausted and weren't kept up by the loud noises and slept soundly instead.

Our ship docked in the morning, and we arrived in the wonderfully chilly country of Finland! I got a stamp in my passport to prove it. Our first view was quite depressing; the cruise ship docked in a super boring area of the city where it was pretty dang cold. Not quite Russia cold, but still pretty chilly.

We walked around aimlessly for a little while, until we finally found the public transportation to get us to the city center. We road the trolley completely around the entire city in less than 15 minutes. Helsinki is the capital of Finland, and it reminded me a lot of Salt Lake. Except for the whole ocean being right there, but Salt Lake has a salty body of water, too!

I really enjoyed Helsinki. What did we do there? Well, basically nothing. Honestly, our vacation consisted of a lot of walking around and just soaking in the city. We didn't have any set plans; we wandered and went where the wind took us. Which is exactly how I wanted to spend my vacation, so it was absolutely perfect!

A little tidbit about Helsinki: they have the weirdest styles.

Notice the creepy way we took this picture. But seriously, what were these people thinking?! I am really hoping this is a fashion unique to Helsinki, and that it does not move to the US. Strangely enough though, the Finnish women were all beautiful, and there was not one Finnish man we saw who was even a little bit attractive. Kind of weird, eh? Maybe there are some attractive men somewhere within that country, possibly in hiding because they are a rare specimen.

One of my favorite things I did in Helsinki was visit Fazer Chocolate! Apparently it's super popular, even though I had never heard of it until we got there. Fazer is most popular for their chocolate eggs. I don't know how they do it, but they take a real live chicken egg and somehow insert their chocolate inside it without the egg stuff inside. The egg is perfectly clean and not cracked at all, so it truly is a mystery as to how they accomplish such a task. Kris and I each bought an egg and took video of us cracking it open, which you can watch if you really want to.

Stockholm, Sweden

By far, my favorite part of our vacation was Stockholm! I fell in love with the city as soon as I stepped onto the land. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

To get to Stockholm, we took another ferry/cruise. This one was much bigger than the previous one, although the food was still totally not free. Our ship was nine or ten levels, and we were on the absolute last level of the ship. In fact, our room was below the area where all the vehicles are stored. Our level was called the anchor deck, because half the "level" was where the anchor was stored. Basically, if our cruise ship were to crash into an iceberg like the Titanic did, well we would have been the first to die. Luckily, no such thing happened and we were safe.

This cruise ship was a little better on the entertainment factor. Kris and I were in a crazy hyper mood, so we country-danced and square-danced and were being the typical obnoxious Americans.

This picture basically sums it up. But, it gets worse. We found out about the karaoke bar on the ship, and decided that we were going to do it! We got to the karaoke bar, which was completely different than how you picture karaoke clubs. The people there were all singing the worst and most depressing songs ever. The mood there was completely dead and I felt like I was going to fall asleep. Actually, us girls brought our books and journals because they were much more entertaining than what was supposed to be our entertainment. Everything was boring, until Kris and I got on stage. 

Bucket List Cross Off #2: Sing Karaoke

Unfortunately, the video of us singing our lovely Spice Girls is not loading correctly on to this here blog. I apologize profusely and will keep trying. If you really, REALLY want to watch Kris and I make a fool out of ourselves on stage, then shoot me an email and I will send it to you. Let me just say though, we were for sure the highlight of everyone's night and were the most entertaining thing they had probably seen all week.

We were pretty tired after singing our lungs out, so we all went to bed after the karaoke adventuring. As I mentioned earlier, we were on the very bottom floor of the cruise ship, so the tickets were super duper cheap. Which means, the really classy drunkards were on the bottom floor with us literally screaming and partying all night. Needless to say, sleeping was pretty difficult that night.

The moment we arrived in Stockholm, I fell in love with the city. What was it about the city that made me fall so much in love? I have no idea, but I did. I want to go back again! And again. And honestly, if I was given the chance, I would live there for an extended amount of time. I've loved cities before, some of my favorites being New York, Seattle, Beijing, and Moscow, but none of the cities instantly felt like home to me like Stockholm did.

Yes, this picture kind of sucks, but this was the first view I had of the city. Have I mentioned that I love it? I look at this picture, and the rest of the pictures I have, and I feel homesick for this magical and beautiful place. I am honestly praying that I'll have the opportunity to return there again.

Stockholm was the first really European city I have ever visited. Which brings me back to my bucket list!

Bucket List Cross Off #3: Backpack in Europe

Yes, it's kind of a stretch, but I don't care! I'm counting it, and I'm crossing it off of my bucket list.

There are two really sad things about Stockholm that are worth mentioning. First off, the exchange rate. Everything was super duper expensive! It was a terrible exchange rate and it was the death of my wallet. The second sad part of Stockholm is that my camera deleted two of the three days worth of pictures I took while I was there. :( I'm pretty bummed about it, especially since it was my favorite stop, but I'm really hoping I'll be able to make it back again so I can take more pictures to make up for it.

Our hostel was pretty interesting. Hostels are the very definition of sketch, and there were all sorts of weird people who were staying there. We shared a room with a really cool Australian girl, and a schizophrenic Norwegian woman. Our company was not boring and kept us pretty entertained. There were a lot of other people at our hostel, and we met people from all corners of the world. There was our friend from Missouri, we met a group of French boys, people from Australia, Nigeria, and Russia.

What was there to do in Stockholm? Like I said earlier, most of our vacationing involved walking around and wandering wherever the heck we wanted to.

Stockholm was unlike any city I've ever been to, so I don't even know what I could possibly compare it to. I guess you'll just have to visit it if you really want to get a taste of it! Which, by the way, I would totally recommend.

Call us nerds, or freaks, maybe crazy, but we went to The Hunger Games. And it was AWESOME!!! Sadly, I do not have the pictures because they were somehow ruined, but the memories are just as good. I loved the movie and was very pleased with the way they portrayed the books into the film. I'm excited to watch it again, and if any of you who are reading this haven't seen it, WATCH IT!!!

The candy in Sweden was delicious. Russian candy is pretty good, but they don't know how to make delicious gummies. Sweden has perfected gummy candy, and it burned a hole in my pocket. You know the candy, Swedish Fish? Well, I finally ate real Swedish Fish!

Bucket List Cross Off #4: Eat real Swedish Fish

If you traveled all the way to Sweden simply for the candy, I promise you that it would be well worth it. I LOVE this candy! I hope I get some more of it some day in the future.

The best thing we did while in Stockholm was visiting the temple. The temple was rather small, but of course it was remarkable and words can't describe how it felt to be able to go back to the temple after not seeing one for months when I had previously lived minutes away from the Manti Temple. I was so grateful that we were able to visit, and I hope to be able to visit more temples in foreign countries in the future.

Leaving Stockholm was terribly depressing. I loved that city and could have easily spent the full vacation there, even if were mostly just wandering around. The day we left it was raining, which was pretty cool cause it felt like nature was mourning our loss, or something. :)

Goodbye Stockholm, I shall miss thee! Until we meet again.

Talinn, Estonia

After a heartfelt goodbye to Stockholm, we flew for an hour to the wonderful country of Estonia! Prior to my arrival in Moscow a few short months ago, I had never even heard of Estonia. Did you know it existed? I was seriously amazed that I had no idea what it was, but I was going to be visiting there! I love traveling, so I was excited to go to a place so obscure that is not very well known.

Honestly, I don't even know what to say about Estonia. It was the absolute most random country I've ever been to, or probably will ever go to. There really was hardly anything to do there, unless if you're the total party type who likes to drink at all hours. Outside of our hostel window was a night club where people were literally screaming until 6:00 AM. Sleeping there was terrible.

What else is there to say about Estonia? We were there for two nights and once again we mostly just wandered the streets. Talinn is a medieval town full of lots of interesting history. We were able to go through the underground tunnels, which is probably the most exciting thing you can do there. It was a great place, I loved feeling like Robin Hood was about to jump around any corner.

My favorite part of Estonia: THE FOOD!!!!! I splurged a lot, ate a lot of delicious sour cream and cheddar chips, pastries, and anything else I could get my hands on. I love delicious food, and it was delicious! Part of the reason why it was so good was because it was so cheap. Isn't it interesting that food tastes so much better when you buy it for cheaper? The best cafe we visited was a medieval cafe in the city center which sold elk soup and pie. Sounds weird, right? It might just be my favorite meal I've had in the past three months.

Estonia in a nutshell: interesting people, great food, and a medieval good time.

Riga, Latvia

Riga was the last stop on our lovely excursion. We got there by bus. Isn't it crazy to think that you can travel to another county after a four hour bus ride? I think that it is so cool!

Latvia was pretty great, but to be honest, we were all exhausted from traveling and were dead from all that we had been doing that we were done with traveling. It was a pretty great place for sure, but I don't remember too much about it, except to say that I've been there. And I do have a few pictures to prove it, but not very many at all.

The one thing I will never forget about Latvia was our wonderful creeper. He actually wasn't wonderful at all, and totally gave me the heebie jeebies. I have no idea what his name is or how old he is, but I'm guessing that he's probably around my dad's age. He told us he was from Sweden, which is basically all that I know about him. It's great waking up to him in his underwear, which were whitey titeys, if you were wondering. I was the last of us girls to wake up, and all the other girls decided to go and eat breakfast. I was still in that stage of sleep where you're not asleep or awake, but you're pretending to be asleep in the hope that you do fall back asleep, when the creeper stood up, walked to the door, didn't go outside, but locked the door. I quickly looked around me, gathered my surroundings, and realized that it was him and I alone in the room together, and he had just locked the door. He was sitting on the bed, reading a book, so I quickly woke up completely, grabbed my passport, and ran out the room as fast as I could. I don't think I was really in any danger, but he creeped me out and I am so glad we were only there for a day. Do you remember the movie The Lovely Bones? The murderer on that movie looked just like our Swedish creeper. Gross.

After 9 days of vacationing, wearing the same outfit every day, using questionable showers, eating sandwiches and drinking little water, we finally went on our way back to our lovely school in Moscow. I love traveling, I am so grateful I was able to go on this adventure and I am looking forward to the many traveling adventures I will have throughout my life.

Sorry for the novel, but this should make up at least somewhat for lost time.