This is part 3 of my journey from Kaliningrad to Teriberka : the Kola Peninsula AKA Murmansk region.
Click to read the previous :
part 1 : Kaliningrad
part 2 : Karelia
Day 15 : Kandalaksha and the FSB
3:20AM I fall asleep on the top bunk bed in second class kupe, compartment for women only. The Kola Peninsula means mines of all kinds, I didn’t want to find myself in 3m² with 3 men playing who can snore the loudest.
To survive a 12-hour sleeper train ride in Russia you need earplugs, some instant coffee Carte Noire Deluxe (26₽ at the Pyateroshka on the corner of the street, one of the most expensive, one of the least disgusting), and a good book.
My 2 travel companions who return from their annual shopping trip to Saint Petersburg finally exchange their names after hours of chatting. They each give me lots of good tips: the number of a private mini bus driver, alternatives to Yandex Taxi which doesn’t work in Kandalaksha, etc. We pass the polar circle at 50 km/h.
I received a special welcome in Kandalashka: the FSB came to pick me up right as I got out of my wagon. A tall friendly forty-year-old fully FSB-dressed officer was waiting for me. I was so not expecting it that I forgot to forget my Russian, my accent and non-existent grammar made him laugh. He took me to a very basic little office 20 meters from the tracks; there were 4 of them in total: a very young one who searched my phone, a 30-year-old who must have been the superior and asked all the questions, one who was there for the sake of it and the last one who came to pick me up from the train struggling with Google translate. 30 minutes of questions of all kinds, they were all very nice, we had a good laugh and they even offered to take me to my hotel by car (I declined the offer).
Walk on the shores of the White Sea before sunset, the sea is only white in winter when it is frozen and covered with snow. It’s very cold, I’m wearing all the warmest layers I carry in my bag: gloves, hat, merino underwears, big wool jumper and a windbreaker jacket. The 25 degrees of Kaliningrad are long gone.
The coast is amazing, the end of the day light on the peaceful sea is splendid!
Day 16 : Prohibited to go to Umba
Yesterday the FSB told me that I was not allowed to stop in Umba, a small Pomor village on the shores of the White Sea. I have, I quote, the “right to cross the village” on my way to Varzuga (obviously, there is only one road) but not to stop there. I need “special authorization” to be in the village and therefore to visit the museum.
This morning, after discovering that there were only buses twice a week to Varzuga, and of course not today or tomorrow, I decided to hitchhike there. Result: I was stuck for 3 hours outside the forbidden village, my phone turned off, crossing fingers that the FSB wouldn’t show up. Very nice people stopped to ask me where I wanted to go but they didn’t go far: “I’m going to Kholkoz, 5 kilometers away” a grandpa told me in his old Jiguli. I traveled 100 kilometers from Kandalaksha to find myself 30 years in the past, in the Soviet Union.
Back in Kandalaksha, leaning against a rock on the beach in the sun, I send an email to the FSB in Murmansk; after all, signing a paper doesn’t need to take an entire month, maybe they’ll make an effort.
I went to the Pyaterochtka near my hotel because I couldn’t find a real café; apparently in the Russian North the automatic coffee machine serves coffee and you pay at a separate also automatic register. They put this in France (or anywhere in a western country I believe), in 2 hours there’s no more coffee and no one paid. Spent the night in one of the kitschiest hotels I’ve seen in my life.
Day 17 : Apatiti & Kirosvk
I take an early train to Apatiti, drop off my bag at the hotel, I felt like I was annoying the receptionist. Took a crowded marshrutka to Kirovsk, a mining town and famous ski resort on the Kola Peninsula. I remember visiting a very good museum 9 years ago, I want to see it again. The city is better than I remember, at least it’s bright during the day. I don’t get that people go skiing there in winter, in the dark, or rather under giant spots that light up the slopes …
Lunch in a nice little restaurant, the waitress was great, it’s so rare that I’m always surprised when it happens: reindeer pelmeni with cranberry sauce, Arctic berry mousse for dessert and a sea buckthorn mors. Everything was excellent, food is great in the North!
Visit of the mineral museum, there are rocks everywhere, it shines, it’s beautiful, free and well explained, we learn a lot about the history of mining. It’s really well made, that’s why I liked it so much last time.
I spend the night in Apatiti, my hotel is shabby. The place for the fridge is empty, I hadn’t seen it, so I put my dinner (Olivier salad and Medavukha drink) outside behind the window while taking a shower in my mini Soviet bathtub. My room has a view on the Khibiny mountains with their snow-capped peaks. It looks like the Scottish Highlands in November, gorgeous !
Day 18: the bus driver forgot me
7:04AM, I jump on the Adler-Murmansk train (both extremes: from the Black Sea in the subtropical climate to the Barents Sea in the Arctic). Train of babushkas, passenger’s average age 70 years old. They must all be returning from a long walk in the Karelian forests, next to almost every bunk bed there are buckets filled with lingonberries. The provodnitsa (who seems to believe I’m totally fluent in Russian) kindly wakes up a young guy on the upper bunk, he doesn’t respond, she gently shakes him again like a mother waking up her teenager to go to school: “young man , your stop is in half an hour”; he doesn’t give a d*mn.
Arrival late morning in Olenegorsk. It’s raining heavily, I’m waiting for my bus to Lovozero at 1:30PM. while drinking a gross coffee from the station’s coffee machine. 2PM. no bus in sight … the driver literally forgot me. There is no bus station in town, but a simple bus stop/”stantsia“; if you want the bus to pick you up at the train station you have to call and inform the driver; of course it’s not written anywhere. A lady who works at the station arranged everything for me; my Russian must not be that bad, to my great surprise she understood all my explanations. Russians are great!
Arrival at 7PM. in Lovozero, capital of the Russian Sami people. The owner of the guesthouse is not there, but a mid-thirty Russian man also on a trip opens the door for me. There’s in general very little chances of meeting someone with the same enthusiasm for “unusual” destinations as me, and yet, my roommate for the evening tells me about his visit the day before, to Severomorsk, the headquarters of the Russian navy fleet in the North Sea and a ZATO town closed even to the Russians; I’m adding this to my bucket list!
Day 19: Lovozero, capital of the Russian Sami
“Capital” is a big word, it’s a small town or rather even a big village by Russian standards. It’s empty. We don’t see many people in the streets, kids are running on the road since very few cars are passing, dogs are walking alone, yet a few things are different from the usual landscape of a classic provincial town: statues of reindeer, some buildings have the shape of a tchum, a bus stop in the shape of tchum, a communal laundry line at the bottom of the Soviet buildings in the colours of the Sami flag in the shape of reindeer antlers … little details here and there are giving clues.
It is too late in the season to hike to the sacred lake of the Sami (and I don’t have my camping equipments anyway), Seidozero (Seidi = large 3-legged rock – Ozero = lake in Russian), so I will only go to the Sami museum in Russia. My roommate from the day before accompanies me, he is shocked to discover that I have to pay more for my entry ticket than him because I am a foreigner. Of course none of the signs are in English. A little disappointed, the museum is 1/3rd on the Sami, 1/3rd on the Komi (I didn’t understand what they were doing there) and 1/3rd on the Sami/Komi during the USSR … I was expecting something a little more interesting.
Early in the afternoon, I hitchhike to Murmansk, I can’t be bothered to wait for a possible bus which will perhaps forget me again. In 1 minute Yulia stops. Mother of 4 boys, she goes to Murmansk 160 kms for her weekly grocery shopping : “I’ve always lived here, I like wide open spaces, I don’t mind being far from everything, in summer we go camping with the children, in Teriberka, Kirovsk or Tersky.”
Day 20 : Murmansk, the largest city in the world above the Arctic Circle.
Stroll through Murmansk, this weekend is the city’s birthday, there are lots of activities in the center, northern food stalls, street artists singing the latest American songs, concerts in the central square. There is a security perimeter around each event, police and security gates/metal detectors with police checking bags. If only France took Russia’s example for security!
Lunch in a restaurant that serves Pomor cuisine, the hostess is horrible, like the one at the restaurant yesterday. Sometimes I have the impression that, as a woman in Russia, when you arrive alone in a slightly more “upscale” restaurant (where the meal starts at ₽1000 (€10)), meaning without a man ready to spend all the money he has on his MIR card for us, we are simply poorly welcomed.
Walk in the city, the buildings are super colorful to prevent inhabitants of Murmansk from getting depressed during the polar nights, the Lenin icebreaker museum is closed for repairs (or perhaps they are in the process of rehabilitating it to add it to the Russian fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, who knows), the views of the port and the Kola Gulf from the Alyosha giant statue are awesome! I’m very happy to have come back here another time than during the polar nights, it’s much more pleasant.
Day 21 : Teriberka, my Grail
Yesterday I met my Lovozero-roommate, he rented a 4wd UAZ Patriot (can’t be more Russian!) to go to Dalniye Zelentsy, a village even further and more lost in the middle of nowhere than Teriberka. He droped me off at road junctions in the middle of the tundra. I hitchhike the rest of the route. They have been fixing the road to Teriberka road for months, and now it’s only open for 40 minutes 4 times a day. One must arrange its trip according to that; There is a bus from Murmansk, but it leaves at 6PM., when it is already dark.
1:30PM., arrival at Teriberka, my grail! I’ve been dreaming of this Pomor village on the edge of the world for years, not for the village itself, since we are far from the pretty postcard-style Norwegian red houses, but for the national park by the Barents Sea: Arctic ocean + tundra = an absolutely amazing Arctic landscape!
It’s raw, it’s cold, there’s little vegetation, the only birds present are huge seagulls, there aren’t really any insects since it’s already too cold for the mosquitoes. The temperature is 1°C, but the feels like temperature is -6°C. The wind is freezing, we can’t even feel the sea spray. Simply WOW.
Fun fact: the tourists here seem exclusively Russian and Chinese. There are Chinese couples absolutely everywhere. A myth in the Middle Kingdom says that if a baby is conceived under the Northern Lights it will be a healthy baby boy. So these Chinese couples travel thousands of kilometers to get laid under a colouful night sky. Chinese romanticism 2.0.
Day 22 : Teriberka, the village
There are 2 villages in Teriberka: Lodeynoe, the “new” Teriberka and Stary Teriberka, the original old village in the bay. I slept in the only hostel, located in the new Soviet village, the place is so sh*t that I don’t want to stay another night.
I have breakfast with a view of the sea, and miracle, there is no wind, I warm myself in the sun while drinking my instant coffee. Walk in the old village of Teriberka and it’s a mess: half of the roads are not paved, everyone builds what they want, how they want, the hotels almost block access to the beach, the trash, old vehicles and boat wrecks pile up there… Teriberka has been a fashionable destination in Russia since the film Levithian, the village even hosts the “Teriberka festival” every summer, with 15 000 participants in 2023. They really putting the cart before the horse in my opinion.
Day 23 : Last day above in the Arctic
One last coffee with my new friend from Lovozero to share stories of our last days, him in Dalnyie Zelentsy and me in Teriberka. I regret a little that I didn’t go with him as he suggested. My visa is too short, it truly bothers me.
I take my train at the end of the day to Saint Petersburg. My 3rd class common wagon is full of young men doing their military service. I am surrounded by soldiers in uniform. I did well not to bring my marinière, a very popular french stripes top.
One of the guy flirts with one of the only 2 young girls in the wagon (the rest are babushkas). He gift her a box of rations saying “from the Russian army”. Russian romanticism in 2024. She preferred to giggle with her friend than to give him her number; his friends weren’t laughing. A real soap opera this train journey.
As for me, I keep quiet, if one of them finds out that I am a foreigner I will have the whole regiment on my bed. The thirty-year-old superior lets me pass with his best smile, I only respond with a nod.
Day 24 : The train
I spend the whole day on the train, I sleep, I eat, I read, I eat again, I sleep again. I should have bought more sukhariki and chocolate.
The provodnitsa is a real b*tch. It’s rare but it happens. The landscape passes by the window, the trees grow and become more and more green and leafy, we go from late to early autumn in 1400 km. The seasons in reverse.
10PM I arrive in Saint Petersburg, noise and traffic jams everywhere. It’s a bit of a shock after the calm of several weeks in the taiga and tundra of the North.
I feel like I’m still on the train even though my bed is perfectly static.
Day 25 : FSB & Vyborg
When the FSB doesn’t come to find me, I’m the one who goes looking for them; I applied for a border permit so that I could sleep in Ivangorod, visit the castle and cross the border the next day. At 10AM. I ring the FSB office of the Leningrad region: “your permit will be ready on Tuesday” – “What? but I applied for it 2 months ago and my visa ends on Wednesday, I can’t be here and there at the same time!”
Result : no permit. I’m still going to visit Vyborg, the most Scandinavian city in Russia. I comfort myself by eating a cinnamon Krendel. The smell of the local pretzel is everywhere in the old cobbled streets of the ancient Finnish town of Viipuri.
The entrance prices to Vyborg Castle are excessive for foreigners (+2000₽ vs 600₽ for locals), I buy a ticket to visit the territory of the castle only, and give myself the local discount by buying a ticket with my best accent. The kassa-lady saw nothing.
Days 26, 27 : St Petersburg weekend with my favourite Muscovite
Noon at Moskovsky station, I go to pick up my long-time friend from Moscow, we spend the weekend together: concert, restaurants, museum, guided tour in old Leningrad and lots of laughs. A great weekend where I spent way too much cash. It’s going to be tight to finish the last few days in Russia.
Day 28 : Heading to Pskov
I change my initial plan which was to cross the border at Ivangorod and leave from Tallinn. I decided not to change my last euros and to make do with my last 1700 roubles. 600₽ for a train to Novgorod, then I hitchhiked to Pskov. What a day, I met some fantastic people including Sergey “you will say hello to France!” and Vladirmir “but not Putin eh!” who insisted on showing me around the Pskov Kremlin, gifting me a bell as a souvenir and dropping me off right in front of my hostel.
I like to spice up my life by making it more complicated than necessary, so a question/idea crosses my mind before falling asleep: “Is it possible to cross Europe by buying bus tickets directly from the station at the last minute?”. So here is my new travel plan for the next few days. I have no desire to be rhown back to reality after a 2-hour plane : bad daily worldwide news, or the pessism of my compatriots. Funny enough, my mind is at ease in Russia.
Last check at my emails: I received an email at 7PM from the FSB which said “Your permit for Ivangorod is ready”…
Day 29 : Last day – border crossing
A lovely Russian woman drops me off at the Shumilkino border checkpoint, in the middle of the forest after giving me an apple bolochka (a kind of bun). Damn, I didn’t plan to be 10 kms from the real border crossing point.
The soldier checks my passport and apologizes in advance because he cannot ask the vehicles to take me; no worries sir, I’ll do it myself. A car arrives, a couple in their fifties; He’s a good egg, she’s horrible: “Niet!”. He doesn’t say anything, gets out of the car to make room for me in the back. I try again once we’re on the way, “Can I cross the border with you?” once again he doesn’t answer and she says sharply “Niet.”. Is this marriage consensual or is Mr Mute here against his will? I thank the husband and cross the pretty empty border on foot.
The FSB lady asks me “where have you been?” me “in Saint Petersburg. Her question is not very precise, neither is my answer.
It’s midday, a Latvian granpa named Vilnius takes me 25 kilometers away; he loves Russia as much as I do, he has just visited friends he has known since his military service during the USSR.
Second car, my driver’s name is Dags. I just wanted him to drop me off in Riga wherever it suited him best, but he told me “don’t worry, you’ll be at the Riga bus station at 4PM max”. He bought me 1 Latvian cottage cheese cake “for right now” and 3 others “for the bus ride to Warsaw”. That’s why I love hitchhiking so much, people get out of their way for me even though I just want them to take me where they’re going.
At 4:30PM.I eat my cake at the Riga bus station, a bus ticket to Warsaw in hand. You have to pay 0.40€ to go pee in Latvia, no doubt I’m back in Europe.
Days 30 and 31 : From Riga to Paris by bus
The good thing about buses is that they are usually on time and you can see the road. I find it curious that most of the passengers on the bus are Russian speakers …
We cross the Suwalki Corridor in the middle of the night; For the past 2 years the Western media has been stuffing our heads with this invisible corridor that few people can place on the map. They are doing repairs there, the road is a super track full of potholes : are these anti Russian/Belarusian tanks installations? Because it will be complicated to get NATO forces across given the state of the road.
Early in the morning, arriving in Warsaw, I buy a Flixbus ticket to Paris, leaving in 3 hours. I buy a coffee, a sandwich and access to the toilet with my last Złotis. I discover that Warsaw is the new Kiev (Kiyv!), all these Russian speakers around me are in fact Ukrainians. I thought they were so proud of speaking Ukrainian in Ukraine.
Surprise check at the German border. I haven’t watched the Western news for a month, and discovered that checks have been reintroduced at the Germans borders. Will France once again follow “the German model”? Some people freak out in the bus, I hear “schengen visa, expiry date, residency permit” several times. Me and my European passport got a quick look and “Danke” from the handsome German cop.
French border, no control of course but a loud honk from the driver shouting in Polish. Welcome back home.
