RUSSIA / UKRAINE MARATHON TRIP JULY 2017 - PART 1

Saint Petersburg: 7/5/17 – 7/10/17

Church of the Savior on Blood

Once again, I got it in my head that I needed to do a marathon in a foreign country.  This time I chose Russia!   I honestly didn’t realize how difficult planning this trip was going to be.  After deciding on running the White Night’s marathon in St. Petersburg, I found out just how difficult it was going to be just to get IN to Russia!

Here’s a little background information.  As an American, you just can’t have a passport and fly to Russia.  There are a lot of steps you have to do beforehand.  First, you definitely need a passport.  However, your passport needs to be at least 6 months valid PAST the date that you plan on being in Russia.  If you’re going to Russia in July and your passport expires in August, you won’t get in.  Second, you need an invitation letter.  There are many companies that will send you one.  You basically contact one of these companies, tell them you need an invitation letter, tell them the days that you plan on being there, tell them which hotels you will be staying at, send them around 60 bucks, and they email you this letter in Russian ‘inviting’ you to stay in the country as their ‘guest’.  However, it’s your job to make sure that everything on the invitation letter is correct.  If something is wrong, they can keep you from entering the country. And you should make sure that your invitation letter extends a few days before and a few days after you will be in and out of the country.  I read that if flights get canceled and you end up being in the country longer than your invitation letter says, even if it’s not your fault, they won’t let you leave.  Once you have your invitation letter, then you need to fill out a visa application.  The application asks you about everything under the sun:  Where do you work?; What are your parent’s names?, What countries have you visited in the last 10 years?; Do you have health insurance? Where did you go to school? What are the names of your last 3 managers?  It’s crazy.  Once you have that filled out and the application is approved, then you put this entire package together and you have to ship it in the mail.  That was the most nerve wracking thing ever!  I send along my passport and Gary’s, head shots for the visas, all this personal information and a cashers check for almost $1000 to some company that I found off the internet that claimed to process our passports and get our Russian visas for us.  I thought for sure we would be screwed.  BUT, this company was legit and a few weeks later I got a package in the mail with our passports and our visas inside.  In total, I probably spent a good 3 months reading and researching about how to get into Russia with no problems.  The difficult part was finally done!

And if you ever want to go to Russia, I used Invisa Logistic Services, LLC. For the visa processing and “All Russian Visas – An East West Link Company” for the invitation letter.  Both places got us all the correct paperwork to get in to the country with no issues.

Saint Petersburg: 7/5/17 – 7/10/17

We left Grand Rapids airport around 10am on July 5^TH and landed in St. Petersburg mid-afternoon on July 6th.  Everything went smoothly.  It was probably my longest flight to date.  The only thing that happened to both of us during the flight was that our feet swelled up really bad and that had never happened before.  Once we landed in St. Pete’s, it really wasn’t bad getting our luggage and getting through customs.  The only thing that was noticeably different was the fact that there were a million Asian persons everywhere.  It must be a very popular destination for touring!  I don’t mean that to sound racist, but it’s true.  We got our luggage and then I tried to use my phone to hire an Uber to get to our Hostel.  I couldn’t get a good signal and we were tired and ornery, so we ended up bargaining with one of the taxi guys that stood right at the airport exit asking you if you need a ride.  We negotiated $50 American dollars.  I thought that seemed fair, since it was about a 45 min drive to our hostel.  Little did I know later on that Uber would have charged us about 10-15 bucks for that distance.  Ah well, we were stupid American’s throwing our money around!  That was the only time we paid that much for a taxi.  Every other time we used Uber directly and it was super cheap.  Sometimes only a couple of dollars including tip!

Foreign flights are the BEST!!!

OMG I'm actually in RUSSIA!!!

The lobby of our hostel

We had a bidet! fancy! haha

Our Hostel in St. Pete's

First Full day in St. Pete’s 7/7/17

Basically, we walked and walked and walked.....Our first full day in St. Pete's we walked 13.7 miles.

Sustenance!

We accidentally found this mosaic garden

 Weird story about this garden....so I was using google maps to find our way around the city and find points of interest.  I see this mosaic garden on the map and I thought it would be cool to check it out.  But, we can't find the exact driveway / road that gets us to the garden.  As we are wandering around trying to find this garden, a local asks us if we are lost or what are we looking for.  I point to the garden on google maps.  He shakes his head yes, and then uses a key to open a door along the street and then gestures for us to go inside.  We walk inside and he just closes the door behind us.  I thought for sure we were going to be mugged or killed.  We cautiously follow the driveway and it winds around to the mosaic garden!

Inside the Church of the Savior on Blood

Church of the Savior on Blood

Vendors selling the iconic Russian hat behind the Church

KFC - Russian Style!

This is where the race begins and ends. In the palace square, behind the Hermitage Museum

The Palace Square

The line to buy tickets and get into the Hermitage Museum was hours and hours long.  It was unbelievable.  We were going to skip the museum all together, but for just a few more dollars, we could purchase tickets online and walk right in!  Thank goodness!

The line of people wanting to get in to the Hermitage Museum

This Peacock clock is a huge deal at the museum and people literally flock like birds to see it.  I don't mean to sound racist, because I am sure this is just a cultural thing, but trying to get a picture of this clock is practically impossible.  Hoards of Asian people just push and shove and use their Ipads as battering rams to shove you out of the way to get pictures and videos of this clock in motion.  It was the craziest thing I have ever experienced.  The pushing and shoving and cutting in line by Asians was a reoccurring theme throughout out time in St. Pete's.

The Peacock Clock

Crouching Boy by Michelangelo

Return of the Prodigal Son - Rembrandt 

We saw a lot of people getting married because it was July 7th (7/7)

The Bronze Horseman

It seemed very common to be able to order Venison in restaurants

This Vodka museum was connected to the restaurant

One of the things I found to visit in St. Pete's was this Cat Cafe.  It's a real cafe where you can order coffee and pastries but they also have cats that you can pet and visit with.  We walk in and look around and see zero cats.  I meekly asked one of the workers if there are in fact cats here.  She says yes and to follow her.  She kind of laughs and says that the cats are in this 'magic' closet.

She tells us to get in the closet, she shuts the door and tells us that we have to say "meow" 3 times.  We get in, say "Meow, meow, meow".  Then she tells us to push on the back of the magic closet.  The back of the closet opens up and we are in the room with all the kitties.

Once we step inside the cat sanctuary, a guy approaches us and asks if we would like to hear about all the kitties that they have.  Of course I say yes!  He proceeds to tell us about the different breeds of cats they have, their names and the history of the cat.  I was super excited! 

This guy was a Maine coon and he was a huge pile of puff!

I love that this one had 2 different eye colors. And he had to wear a thunder shirt to help him keep calm.

Best day ever!

After the kitty cafe, we continued to walk around St. Pete's and explore.  Since it never gets dark, we just kept walking around until 10pm or so!

We only walked 13.7 miles the first day! :)

Because it really doesn't get dark, the hotel has very heavy curtains so you can block the light out.

7/8/17 - Day before the race!

Their breakfasts are very unusual.  They don't really have breakfast items like we do.  This was called 'noodles and sausage'.

Packet Pick-up for the big race!

Map of the course through St. Pete's

After picking up my race packet, we went to the Faberge Egg museum!

The museum had the Faberge Eggs and other pieces from a Royal family

Store front along Nevskiy Prospekt - the main tourist shopping district

Kazan Cathedral on Nevskiy Prospekt

All the woman wear scarves over their hair in the churches. And people stand in line to kiss certain Saints pictures.

I met up w/ a friend of mine from my Master's classes at Grand Valley - Her name is Dina and she is from St. Pete's.

After another long day of walking, we wanted to check out one last Church. 

OSHA would have had a hayday with this place.  There is no way we would have been allowed to walk to the top of the cathedral if this place were in America.

We only walked around 10 miles our second day!

Sunday, July 9th - Race Day!

Our hotel was only about 2 miles from the start of the race, so we got up and ran/walked to the start of the race.  I figured that would be a good warm up for me.  Once of the things that we kept noticing was that they had a lot of security around the race, but it all seemed fake.  For example, there were areas where you had to walk through metal detectors to get inside the race area.  However, it wasn't secure like at an airport.  There were other entrances where you could just walk around the metal detectors.  Or some people were walking through them, they were beeping, but no one stopped them.  It was really strange.  Another thing that was funny, was the race pacers had balloons tied to them with the KM/hour written in sharpie on the balloon.  I didn't know my kilometer per hour pace, so I just went to the back of the pack behind the last pace person.

Pre-race jitters and I'm pretty sure I was thinking why the hell am I doing this??

The race started off without a hitch.  Because of nerves, when I saw the first set of bathrooms I decided to stop and go.  The bathrooms were on a bus.  I ran to the door and some lady pointed to the sign that said that you had to pay to use the bathrooms.  I just about fainted!  I thought, Oh my God how will I be able to go to the bathroom if I don't have any money!  The race was entirely through the city, so there were no woods or trees that I could possibly squat behind.  There was a British couple that were upset about having to pay for the bathroom too and they shouted in the strongest British accent that you can imagine "ooh the 'ell carries money durin' a race???"  Luckily, all other bathrooms were just port a johns that were free to use.  Thank goodness!

The first water station surprised me too.  There were just a couple of people standing there handing out whole bottles of water!  Since it was the first water stop, there were too many runners for the people to keep up with, so runners were tearing into the packs of water to get a bottle out.  I grabbed a bottle and took a couple of swigs.  But, since I can't really run with an entire bottle in my hand, I just tossed it.  What a crazy waste of water and plastic!  

The race thinned out quite a bit after the 10k runners broke off from the pack to head back to the finish.  As the race progressed, things went just fine.  I do like to be able to run through neighborhoods and feel like I get to see more areas then just what the tourists see.  I stopped at every single port a john because I was so scared that I there were no places to run and hide and pee in between the rest areas.  

I only took one picture during my whole race.  I had to because I don't think anyone would believe me otherwise.  So, the picture below is at one of the rest stops.  The port a johns are in the background and the food tables are in the foreground.  Normally, any kind of food would be handed to us by someone wearing gloves or the food would be in individual cups or something.  People in Russia must have no germ phobias.  The food presented on the tables were just in piles on plates.  There was a pile of raisins on a plate.  There was a pile of sugar or salt cubes on a plate.  And as people exited the port a john, they would walk by and grab a fist full of raisins.  Then, they also had bottled water and pop available.  The pop they had on the tables were in 1 liter bottles.  I watched people take a drink out of the bottle, then place the bottle on the table for the next person.  The same with the water.  I grabbed a water that was still sealed up and took a drink.  I just could not bring myself to eat or drink anything that had already been touched by someone else.

You can see the guy in the foreground place the liter of pop back on the table.  It was already opened when he took a drink!!

After 42 kilometers and 5 hours, I finally finished the race!!!

My medal!

After finishing 26.2 miles, we had to walk about 2 miles back to our hotel.  I was so stiff and sore, but we slowly made our way back.  After a nice shower and a long nap, we decided to go to the train station where we would board the train to go to Moscow. We wanted to get an idea of how long it would take us to get there, where we would go in, etc.  Again, the security there seemed tight, but also fake.  At the front of the station where most people were entering, it looked like airport security.  You put your luggage and belongings on a conveyor belt.  Your stuff would be screened by someone as you walk through a metal detector.  We observed this and thought, ok that's where we need to go.  However, we noticed that some people were going into the station via a route that went outside and around the building.  There were no gates or anything indicating that you couldn't go that way.  So, we walked around just to check things out.  We ended up at the boarding platforms without going through any security at all...the exact same platforms that the people actually going through security would end up at too.  We figured since we already had our tickets, we would just take the route that went around the building to avoid the whole security issue all together!

So, the next morning we packed up to leave St. Pete's and head to the next part of our adventure...MOSCOW!

The escalators are so fast and steep!

This guy was selling spinners - I couldn't believe that even in Russia these things were popular!

The metro in St. Pete's definitely has that Cold-War-Soviet-Era feel and look.

After walking to the race, running a marathon, walking back to our hotel and walking around the train station, my final steps for the day were almost 58k!