Veronika Wild

"Had one Vodka, then one more…” but maybe not as many as I would have liked Friendly staff at the Soul Kitchen St. Petersburg has a lot of hostels as it’s only a short hop for most Europeans (I’m so jealous!), but there were Australians here too. It was good hearing a bit of news from home. Australia was having elections and we now had our first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I didn't realise that I missed it, but it was fun to have a casual group of people to go sightseeing with and with whom you could converse without having to struggle with the language.  On the BBC news on TV – I heard that it was now 38oC and that there were four hundred fires burning in Russia. Putin was shown photogenically arriving in a helicopter and helping to douse the flames. This hostel also had free internet and free international phone calls, if you could ever get near the phone. One young man asked me how long I’d been travelling. After I replied, “Probably since the 70’s,” ...

Another Night - Another Monastery - Hope this doesn't become a habit! My bed in Rostov Veliky was in a monastery too Lake Nero looked inviting but... After a hot and sweaty bus ride, it was a long walk to the Kremlin. A young girl called Katya helped carry my bags and walked me all the way. I was really grateful because by now both my foot and my back were hurting. I was glad that I had sent my boots and winter clothes back to Australia! I mentioned to Katya that I was looking forward to having a swim in shimmering Lake Nero. "I wouldn't," she said. "It's much too polluted!" Rostov Veliky was even older than Suzdal having been first chronicled in 862 ( Lonely Planet , 2006: 217).  The guest house in the old monastery here proved friendly and didn’t charge the earth and so it was a great place to rest.Though many of its churches were in the process of renovation and plaster was crumbling here and there, there was plenty of evidence of Rostov's p...