What Not To Do When Crossing The Russian Border

We have a proverb in Romania that says: “Even drunk people have their own God.”  
After this adventure I definitely believe that travelers have their own God too. ​

One of my biggest adventures yet began in St. Petersburg, Russia - a place not easy to get to. You need a visa, you have to fill out a lot of documents and you also need an invitation from a hotel.

Despite all the hassle involved, I was on my way. I took the fast train from Helsinki and quickly realised how lucky I was to be able to travel here. The moment I stepped off the train in Russia, on a hot Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t quite believe that I had actually made it.

They say that St. Petersburg is a “live museum” and I have to agree, it really is. This city is by far the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen. The beautiful Hermitage, the Neva river, the church polished in pure gold, the longest boulevards I’ve ever walked, the shops with Matryoshka dolls (dolls representing the Russian king and queen)... there wasn’t a single thing that I didn’t like about this city.

But I soon found out that getting into Russia was actually the easy part. The hard part was getting out!

Crossing the Russian border ​

I took the 11:15pm bus heading for Estonia and around 1:30am, we had to stop at the Russian border for passport control. The guards took my passport, pulled me away from the queue and called a police officer to come over to us. There was another woman named Maria from Estonia who was also pulled aside and - thank goodness - spoke Russian and English fluently.     

When I had applied for the visa in my home country, Romania, I declared that I intended to stay in the country for only two days. Well, it turned out that two days meant you had to leave the country by 12am on the second day, otherwise you have problem. The problem was not that I had to pay a fine, the problem was that the men from the Russian authorities didn’t speak English at all and couldn’t understand a single word I was saying. Maria translated for me that the two of us (she was in the same situation) had to take our luggage out of the bus and wait for another bus that was coming two hours later. She also told me that we needed to buy another ticket for that second bus which would cost us about 30 euros each. I told her that I wasn’t prepared to pay for another ticket and wait two hours for another bus and suggested instead that we should speed up the process and ask the bus driver to wait until we were finished. No such luck, the bus driver was not willing to wait.

No, don't leave us!

It was tough having to watch the bus leave without me just because my visa expired 1.5 hours too early. We had no Rubles, only Euros which the authorities didn’t accept so we had to walk about 500 metres across a field to grab cash from an ATM. It was very cold and we had to battle strong winds. After we got the money, we returned to the border to collect our luggage and passports. We had to write a declaration saying that my visa had expired because we didn’t realise we would cross the Estonian border after midnight.

The document was written in the Cyrillic alphabet so Maria had to translate what it said so I knew what I was signing. After we finished the procedure, the Russian guards accompanied us to the border. We had to walk about 1 kilometre on our own, through the night carrying our heavy backpacks to get back to the Estonian border. I yelled at Maria, telling her to run as fast as she could so we wouldn’t miss the next bus. But she had to carry a lot of luggage and was moving very slowly so I took one of her bags and started running.

We crossed a bridge, ran past a castle - the night sky looked beautiful but we didn’t have time to admire the view. We finally managed to get to the Estonian border where the Estonian guards were laughing at us. One of the officers showed me a wooden door I had to walk through but in my hurry I smashed into a glass door that was right in front of it - I didn’t see it as I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I could hear laughter behind me but at that point I didn’t care.

We finally made it - well, almost

When we got to the bus station there was nobody there. Not a single car. We found one person from Estonia who assured us that the next bus was coming at 3:20am which meant we had to wait no more than 20 minutes. We had just sat down when a police car pulled over next to us, blocking us from a big bear that was roaming around free. I thought: “This is the last thing I need right now! Being chased by a bear!”. Who would have thought after all the ordeal and running between borders I would now come face to face with a bear!? The officer asked us what we were doing and after we explained to him what happened, he asked us to get into his car so he could take us to the right bus station where our bus was already waiting for us.

Since I left my family home, I’ve found myself in the back of a police car on three different occasions. However, it was never because I did anything wrong.

I can’t put into words how much joy I felt the second I stepped onto that second bus. My face was red and my knees were shaking from exhaustion and all the emotions I felt. The passengers were laughing when Maria and I explained to them what had happened to us and we apologised for making them wait.

Lessons learned

We have a proverb in Romania that says: “Even drunk people have their own God.”  
After this adventure I definitely believe that travelers have their own God too.

There are three lessons I’ve learned from this journey:

1. When you apply for a visa, add an extra day to the duration of your trip, just to be safe.
2. Don’t spend all your foreign currency when leaving a country, you never know what you might need it for in case you are held up somewhere on your way out.
3. Hold off with your souvenir shopping until the last day of your trip. By then you’ll know how much all those souvenirs are worth and what you should be willing to pay for them.

This trip is one that I won’t easily forget…
Until my next adventure, I advise you all to keep traveling to wherever you want!

Author - Ana Pascu

I'm currently work in a office day job. But if I got a job that required me to travel... I won't hesitate to leave it all behind and go.