The trip to "Ladoga"

This past weekend certainly had a bad start, which caused me to have my "I HATE RUSSIA-5 minutes"! As you might know, some AIESECers had planned to go to lake Ladoga on Friday evening with two cars to spend the weekend camping in the forest. I was on my way to the meeting point (well, I was just having a little pee break in the toilet...) when I got the really exciting phone call from Yulya, who informed me that there was only one car going and it was already full! Yay! One driver had refused to drive Friday evening! Couldn't he have thought about it when we asked him the evening before??? However, all the people had the alternatives to go by train in the evening or by car the next morning. Zhenya and I decided to take the train, which in the end seems to have been a good choice: Simona (who was one of the lucky people in the evening car) told me ALL about the difficulties they had meeting everybody, going to the supermarket to buy the food and finding the way... So, Zhenya and I arrived about 20 min earlier than the others in the car :-) although we had left later. Note that the train station was called Komarovo which means mosquito...

Russia is a big country and in contrary to Germany it is no problem to park your car somewhere in the forest, set up a tent and make a great campfire. I m okay with that, especially with the last part :-) Ignoring the murdering crowd of mosquitos, we had a really nice fire and lots of even nicer drinks :-)
I even managed to sleep for several hours before I woke up with my feet completely frozen. Poor Tyoma and Vitja had not slept all night long, but had gone fishing (for the result see the pictures below). Of course, after a week of exams, stressful weekend plannings and a night without sleep it is rather difficult to concentrate on things... It turned out that they had closed the car with the keys and all the food inside! We were especially unhappy about not being able to have breakfast!!! So one girl, who was the driver of the morning car, took Tyoma to the "Datsha" where his father was, get the keys to the appartment in the city, take the 2nd keys for the car, return the keys to his father and come back to the lake. :-)

To give you a full picture of camping in the forest, OF COURSE, there are no toilets (but millions of hungry mosquitos) and no water besides the lake. No problem :-) I happy to state that I m not a spoiled city chick!
I forgot to mention that it was not lake Ladoga where we went, they had changed the plan at some point without telling me :-) But it was a nice place, so, who cares!?

I passed out Saturday night in my comfy city bed for about 10 hours though! :-)
Yesterday I finally started my "culture-program" in St. Petersburg! Masha took me to the "Kunstkammer", the first museum in the city, which hosts the "chamber of curiosities"... no comments, but see the pics!


Lake "Shuchye" (It is meant to mean "Hecht" in German)
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Ania at the campfire


Zhenya doing his morning exercises


Anna enjoying the clean air :-)


Vitja trying to clean his feet


Simona brushing her teeth


Galya and Yulya on a boat trip


Zhenya still busy with the morning exercises :-) (and NO, Zhenya, you can not make fire by just pointing at it!!! It was MY work!)


Lesha preparing firewood


Anna, Tyoma and Ania finally preparing lunch


Lesha, Vitja, Tyoma and Simona waiting for the "shashlikiy"


The first fish is ready! Yummy!


In the chamber of curiosities


Kunstkammer