Saint-Petersburg - Lapeenranta (March 15-16, 2014) - Archive

Highlights: total distance 141 kilometers; 1 night couchsurfing; 4 silly fails; still highly satisfied

At some point, having done some 30-40 kilometer winter rides around the city, I thought that doing a small tour is quite feasible, and so I decided to go to Finland first. Forums supported this idea (many people are doing this), so I started to plan it.

First I posted an ad on a local forum to find a travel companion (this was my first trip and I hesitated to do it alone), and among many weird messages from guys thinking this was a good platform to find "romantic adventures" I met one girl who seemed quite nice. So I found a couchsurfing host and it was all set. The girl decided not to go. Cancelling the trip because of some unreliable people would be quite sad, I thought, so I decided to go alone.

It was a very long ride! First I took an early morning train to Vybodg (which took 2 hrs), and started from there. First problem was the weather: temperature was around 0, +1-+2, so the road was a bit wet. This was my fail #1: I didn't anticipate my shoes getting wet. This was the worst.

Pedaling itself wasn't bad at all, but it was quite hard for me going uphill: before that I only had experience riding around Saint-Petersburg, which is mostly flat. So the trip went like this: uphill = hate, downhill = happyness, flat = sad from wet feet. At some point I changed my socks and put some bags on my feet :)) This didn't help much.

On the way

I even tried to hitchhike for a while, with no luck, so I switched on hero mode and finally reached Lappeenranta. This was time for fail #2: I stopped to get my phone out, my frozen hands dropped the bike, and somehow my brake handle broke! (which was super sad because I only had a rear brake at that point (I had a crappy bike)).

Then, fail #3: my phone map didn't show host's address: only the street, which was very weird, long and seemed to stop in one place and emerge in another. It turned out that finns are not very willing to help late at night, some of them didn't even say anything. At least my phone worked, so I managed to arrange a meeting with my host.

My host, Antti

After that it was all pretty swell. Finns have saunas everywhere, even in student dorms. Cool. A bit unexpected was the fact that they are doing it nude. Ok. I decided not to follow this tradition.
So sauna, then finally drying my things, and a good conversation with an interesting host who was a young chemistry student, all made a good evening.

Student dorms there are quite cool compared to the ones in Saint-Petersburg. But ours are almost free, so I'm not complaining.

Next day we went to see the university campus, which was located in a picturesque spot near the lake surrounded by forest. With another sauna by the lake, of course.

LUT (Lappeenranta University of Technology) campus

Then it was time to go back and I failed (#4) once again: started too late. Brake handle (which was fixed with superglue, very stupid flirting with natural selection, I admit (hopefully no accidents), I learned from this and wouldn't do this again :) wasn't much needed. At first I thought I'd reach the border and try to hitchhike. But the weather was nice, it got slightly colder, so it was dry and a lot more fun. Very few cars and the road was well-lit.

So I decided to go all the way to Vyborg. However, after the border I realised my mistake: it was suddenly dark. Russians thought that having lights on the road  there was to luxurious I guess. It was scary and dangerous. I biked off-road for a while and then I encountered a man who asked me if I lost a flashlight. Weird, but there was a flashlight in the snow, which I took and became a bit more noticeable.

Soon I stopped to warm up at some store near the road and decided that it was time to hitchhike (16 kilometers left till Vyborg, but it got quite cold and I didn't want to go in the dark anymore). I was lucky, as an empty truck stopped shortly after I got there and I was able to hitchhike almost to Vyborg with my bike. 

Security at the train station in Vyborg were quite surprised to see me in the middle of the night, so they even gave me a key to the toilet (which was closed for the night). I missed the first train though (fell asleep) but got home safely with the second one.

So yeah, I failed a lot (and feel very silly now), I learned a lot, and overall it was a great trip.