I don't wanna cheat and just fly to Russia and still haven't given up the plans to cycle across France and Italy, and also would like to keep the non-dodgy Slavic parts(if there's such a thing) of Europe for an other travel and the list just goes on and on why the only one route left is through Scandinavia. As the Immingham to Brevik ferry is around £900, it is Norway to pay that. So... England to Russia: Ferry is just too expensive and I wanna avoid France as a stop. Most obvious option is Amsterdam as a first stop. London Amsterdam train is around £35 with Eurostar. Two capitals are on the list already. Hustle wise capitals are good stops as often the destinations of direct trains but I could save some £££ if I avoided to stay in them. Also I don't really like the Rijksmuseum or any other touristy place, so capitals are really just to keep things simple. So there'll be a few more, the next/an other one is Copenhagen. When I was a kiddo my Mom read me a book, I mean this certain one and it was played in Copenhagen. Since that I've been having this inviting feeling to the city, I'd like to see it. Eventhough we'd think that in Germany everything is fine and precise, I gotta say they are world class wankers when it comes to trains. The service is just shit, it is barely possible to travel more then 200km without a change and it is just expensive af. I mean it isn't surprising if we have a look on their car industry and roads, but it is my Dutch comfort. Anyways... Firstly I tried to purchase the tickets separately but it was just not working so I bought it from Rome2rio. It is a very useful application, I used this app basically for everywhere. It shows different alternatives between two locations. It even shows the Chinese train times and everything. And even while I'm writing this I just checked and realised that I could have purchased my Trans Siberian ticket through that app for £139(70 quid less then I paid) for 9500km, the world longest railway line. No regrets we lost more in Trianon and the only thing I wanted to say is that the app is brilliant. The next stop is Stockholm the app just found me the cheapest option. £34 for the 522km distance. From Stockholm I was gonna get to Turku (Finland) on the ferry but when I was looking for the tickets I accidentally discovered that there are some (Åland) Islands on the Baltic sea right between Stockholm and Turku. And why I like islands - no wonder I ended up in England - I have to visit these ones. I'll travel from Stockholm to Mariehamn at the night - I mean I'm not even sure if there will be a night that north just one day after midsummer - and from there to Turku and hoping to arrive to Helsinki at the same day. Have to mention here, that the Turku-Helsinki line was a bit difficult: I had a look on the map of Turku. I found 3 train stations on it. Every single one had a name. I checked the train on Rome2rio and even there Turku had different stations with different names. But when I wanted to buy a ticket it directed me to VR.fi(finish train lines) website where Turku means Kupittaa station and Turku Harbor was the one I was looking for. In most app if I just go for the name of the city it lists every departure from all stations of the city. The whole thing cost like 11€. If I didn't fuck up for the first time it would be like 9,5 or 10. Learned for a life from this expense. (Probably not...) The Helsinki - Saint Petersburg line was more user friendly. Didn't have too many options to make a mistake, just purchased the ticket for 39 euros. Because the train crosses the Finnish-Russian border, during the purchase the website asked a few more information, but everything was smooth. Saint Petersburg-Moscow was a bit more tricky. I got directed to rzd.ru, Russian railway lines. The website had English version but for searching for tickets had to type the Russian names of the cities: Sankt-Peterburg to Moskva. When I set every details for the purchase just realized that I have to register to continue and I lost all the data. Had to start it over. rzd.ru was the only page that required registration. I couldn't exactly describe the feeling what I had, but even I could get a train from Saint Petersburg to Moscow in 3h 50m I got one that takes a bit longer than 9 hours. Some Anna Karenina flashback it was. They were traveling on train once I had this posh feeling that I'd do this culture trip. I was confused... But still saved 3 quid for 5 hours... I'll be on no rush anyways. I'll have to spend four days in Moscow till the next train to Vladivostok. So the whole Europe trip will be something like: 17/06/2019 London 17/06/2019 Amsterdam 19/06/2019 Osnabruck 19/06/2019 Hamburg 19/06/2019 Fredericia 19/06/2019 Copenhagen 21/06/2019 Stockholm 24/06/2019 Mariehamn 24/06/2019 Turku 24/06/2019 Helsinki 25/06/2019 Saint-Petersburg 25/06/2019 Moscow And at the 29th departing from Moscow and Arriving to Vladovistok at the 6th of July.
