After an amusing overnight train to St. Petersburg (see Moscow video), we arrived in the "Cultural Capital" of Russia. We started off with a city bus tour and got the lay of the land. The highlight for me was the Hermitage, the 3rd largest art museum in the world. The Hermitage was the tsars winter palace from 1762 to 1917 and the magnificent 1057 rooms are nothing but ostentatious and grandiose. We were there for about 3.5 hours and our guide whipped us through the "great works" of Monet, Rembrandt and Matisse. I could have used another day but was satisfied by being in the presence of such artwork.The travel agency, Aikamatkat Oy, coordinates these Russian tours f
or students and 
therefore they are not void of parties. One night we enjoyed a Russian dinner, with Russian performers singing and dancing, a lot of Russian vodka, and a lot of crazy spanish students. Another night we went on a river boat cruise complete with Russian champagne and vodka, many got sick after doing shots of vodka followed by champagne chasers, they call this the "Polar lights". We checked out the nightlife in St. Petersburg and the adventurous part of the evening came when hailing a taxi.There is no ove
rsight of the taxi business, in fact anyone can be a taxi driver to make extra money. So
, you simply hold out your hand to any car that drives by. They stop, you negotiate and hope that this ride will get you home with your 
money and your pride in tact. Luckily, we got home safe. However, there were a bunch of scams that other students experienced; the cops stopped the "taxi" and demanded money or a night in jail, and the "taxi driver" demanded more money than negotiated and slapped the 
A bus took us back to Finland and through the long border formalities (my passport was checked 4 times.) We said goodbye to our new friends from the Uni of Jyväskylä and headed home to Tampere.
An overnight train brought us to Moscow, where we joined another 110 international students from a few Universities in Finland. We walked out of the 
