Taking the Good with the Bad, and hoping for Karma

Taking the Good with the Bad, and hoping for Karma: World Cup 2018 Russia

I’m writing this sitting on a high-speed train travelling at up to 220kph between St. Petersburg and Moscow, sipping on a Leffe Bruin beer after having a tasty light breakfast, this is the way to travel for sure. Today marks the day when we start the second part of our Russian World Cup odyssey by taking up residence in Moscow for the final stages of the competition.

The past week in St.Petersburg has been a continuation of the previous couple of weeks, with back-to-back football, either on the TV or lives at the stadium. We have been lucky to see some great games and soak-in the full World Cup experience, having seen Brazil just about squeeze past Costa Rica with 2 goals in injury time, and Argentina narrowly

defeat Nigeria to progress to the next round. I have also seen more than my fair share of games on TV, including England’s demolition of Panama, Germanys exit at the hands of the Swedes, and of course England less than convincing display against Belgium in a game that really didn’t mean much. However, like many things in life, there is nearly always a silver lining to every cloud, and our silver-lining is that England finishing second in the group mean that we will get to attend the Columbia v England Group of 16 match next week, so it’s not all bad.

In between times, Yates has been occupied acting as a tour guide and chaperone to his family that have arrived in the past week. I think Yates has probably spent more time at the airport in St.Petersburg than at the football stadium, either picking people up, dropping people of, or picking up missing bags, I

hope his family appreciates the hard work he has put in. Fiona & I have been left to our own devices and have had a wonderfully relaxed time touring the city and its many sites, attractions and parks, (and craft beer bars, Thanks Fiona). It really has been a great time for us.

Having the luxury of spending 3 weeks in the city, I think we have all found time to fall in love with St.Petersburg which is a city of truly splendid beauty & grandeur that genuinely rivals Rome, Paris or Barcelona. This may mean that Moscow may pale in comparison, but you never know, Russia has surprised us at every turn so far. I don’t know what I expected of Russia, but it has excelled in every way possible, the people are exceeding helpful  and nice, (exception ahead), the food and drink has been the equal of anywhere else I have traveled, and certainly

St.Petersburg was as far from the drab & dower perception of Russian cities as I can imagine. It just goes to show that you should never trust the media whose agenda is to downplay Russia at every opportunity or make the mistake of assuming that the country and people are reflective of the presiding regime. Russia is not Putin, and Putin is not Russia...! I can’t urge you more to visit this country and its people, it will change the way you see the world.

However, there is always a dark side to every bright side, and even though everyone we have met on our travels has been a credit to their country, there will always be an exception, and in this case, it is the AirBnB host we booked with for our Moscow apartment. Two days before we were due to arrive he contacted me to tell me he was cancelling our booking which had been in place for over a year, as

he had some guests in the apartment that were prepared to pay far more than we had previously agreed. This arse-munch was prepared to break our agreement for a short-term gain and leave us in the lurch to try and find accommodation for 8 people in Moscow during the final 2 weeks of the World Cup. Decency prevents me from using the language this sort of behavior deserves, but suffice to say that this guy should be ashamed of himself and that has done a massive disservice to his fellow Russians. Let’s hope that Karma gets this Knob-Jockey...!!!

The good news is that AirBnB customer support came to the rescue, helping us find alternative accommodation at short notice, and even helped with making up the difference in the cost, so hopefully, within the next couple of hours, we will see what our new apartment is like.

We have 3 more matches to

attend over the next 2 weeks, and we are now located conveniently close to the Moscow Fan Fest to be able to pick and choose which games to watch

there. Yates’s family are with us right now, but in a week or so it will just be me, Fiona and Yates, so we need to make the most the time we have left together. Let’s hope that Moscow is as friendly & inviting as St.Petersburg has been.... 

The Thick of It: World Cup 2018 Russia

The Thick of It: World Cup 2018 Russia

As anyone would know who has read my World Cup Blogs before or ever attended a World Cup Tournament as a fan of football, the group stages are a gruelling marathon of endless football games following on one after another, after another, until you almost can’t remember what you have seen, when you saw it or where... Well, we are back in the thick of it again, scheduling our time around matches we are attending, games we want to see on TV, and the

occasional meal or two, and personally, I love it... I don’t love the ever-increasing tiredness or the semi-arduous treks out to the stadiums, or the boring 1-nil games from teams that should do better, I love that, for 6 weeks in June & July every 4 years, I am encompassed in the buzz of it all and involved in an event being watched by more than half the population of the world. Obviously the time-off, the travel, and the immersion into a different country, culture & cuisine help fuel the passion, without the high drama that is World Cup football, you could find yourself asking yourself whether it was really worth the hassle....

Over the first week of the World Cup we have attended our first 2 matches at the Saint Petersburg

Stadium; the first a slightly laboured win for Iran over Morocco involving an own goal in the last minute of injury time; the second a magnificent 3-1 victory for the World cup Hosts Russia over Egypt on a cold, wet blustery evening where the only thing keeping us warm was the thrill of the game itself. In between those 2 matches, I have personally seen at least part of every other game except for the 2 games that were being played while we were in

transit to the Stadium, which by my calculation is at least 16 games on TV, so no one can question my dedication when it comes to the World Cup, right? Whilst Yates has been busy with friends & family, Fiona & I have spent some quality time together, between games obviously, and have tried to chill-out as much as possible around this gorgeous city of St.Petersburg.  Yates & I did manage one night of debauched drinking when we met a couple of Australians at a bar during the Germany v Mexico game, that became an endless round of vodka shots and verbal abuse, for which I paid handsomely in the hang-over stakes, but other than that it has been quite civilised.

As we enter week two of the tournament there is little relief in sight in the short term... We are off to watch Brazil v Costa Rica tomorrow to be followed by Argentina v Nigeria next Tuesday, and in between those matches we need to be in a position to watch both the England & Germany games and many others coming up over the same period. It’s always like this in the group stages, thank God that it slows down a touch once we get to the knock-out stages, by then we will have transferred to Moscow and have a whole lot of new sightseeing to fill in the gaps between games. 

Wish us luck....

Watch out Russia, Here We Come: World Cup 2018 Russia

Watch out Russia, Here We Come

The alarm woke us at 3:30am and within 30 minutes we were checked-out of our hotel and half-way across the road to the departure lounge ready to start the 1st leg of what would be a 24-hour journey to the Northern hemisphere. Check-in was smooth and efficient and before we knew it we were boarding the A380 aircraft and settling down for the 14-hour journey to Dubai. 

I love planes and flying, there is always a frisson of excitement and adventure whenever I get to do it and as far as I am concerned the longer the flight the better, although Fiona disagrees. This time I plugged in my noise canceling headphone, shut out the drone of the engines and the snoring of nearby passengers and managed to watch 5 movies and grab a few minutes of shut-eye before we arrived at our roasting-hot connection in Dubai. Our boarding time for St. Petersburg was less than 2 hours so by the time we had gone through security again and found the gate, we really only had just about enough time to check our  Facebook & Instagram before boarding started all over again. The half-empty flight to St. Petersburg was a leisurely 6 hours jump, (only 1 movie this time), Fiona got a whole row of seats to sleep in and I managed to get a couple of hours sleep before we were touching down in the Russian Federation for the first time ever. 

Everything went like clockwork again, straight through immigration with no issues at all and just a short wait outside the airport for a free shuttle to take us to our hotel for the evening. We were so tired and jet-lagged, our bodies felt like it was the middle of the night but it was only early evening, we only had time for a quick cup-of-tea before we both fell into a deep sleep for about 12 hours.

We awoke somewhat refreshed and had a leisurely breakfast before we got back on the shuttle to the airport where we would be meeting Yates off of his flight from Zurich. He arrived on time and was soon through immigration & customs, he found us easily in the terminal, and within an hour we were in an Uber heading into the heart of St. Petersburg. Everything had been going so well to this point....., what could possibly go go wrong..?

Firstly, I had the wrong address for our AirBnB apartment and got dropped off on a nearby street but just not the right one. Fully loaded up with all of our bags, (and remember Yates doesn’t do ‘travelling light’, he has as much baggage for himself as Fiona & I did between us), we wandered aimlessly up and down the street trying in vain to find the entrance to an apartment building that wasn’t there.  Phones out, Google maps open, checking email, once, twice, and the AirBnB app, and finally, I see my mistake and we have drag our increasingly heavy baggage around the block to the correct street and find the missing doorway.... Phew..., found it. We get to the 5th floor and knock on what I think is the right door, no answer.... I check again and see I am knocking on the wrong door, and start knocking on the right door,... still no answer...!! We pressed bells, knocked loudly, looked for keys under mats, still nothing. Phones out again, this time to call the hosts contact number, no answer.... 

For about 45 minutes we were sitting forlornly at the top of a stairway, the faint whiff of cat piss lingering in the air, wondering if we were going to have to sleep there for the night. Yates finally had enough and contacted AirBnB directly who told us to go to a local coffee shop for an hour while they chased the host down to get us into the apartment.  "Sod the coffee" I went straight for a beer while we waited around the corner in the quaintly named "Clean Plates Society" cafe, having stilted conversations with a CSR on a different continent, who finally managed to contact someone who could only speak Russian and then had to find someone to translate. By the time it was sorted out I was both struggling with my jet-lagged and slightly pissed mind as we made it into the apartment, only to find that the cleaner was there and would need 3 hours to prepare the place for us... Grrrrr..... Well, at least we could drop our bags off and head around the corner to a craft beer bar and enjoy a few more beers while we waited....  7 hours later than expected, we finally took up residence in our 5th-floor apartment in the historic centre of St. Petersburg.... It had been a very long and tiring day....

Now there is something I need to warn people about who may find themselves in St. Petersburg in early summer, the sun doesn’t set until around 10:30pm and even at that time, it is not what you would call ‘dark’. However, that’s not what I am warning you about, the warning is that the sun rises at about 3:30am, and when I say rises, it comes up like a rocket and is as bright as midday by 4:00am... We awoke the next morning to bright sunshine in a clear blue sky streaming through our curtain-less windows, (huh?), thinking it must be at least 10:00am only to find it was only 4:00am. Luckily we still had our eye masks from our recent flights which we hastily put on, but even so, it was hard to get back to sleep. Even now, a week later, it has been hard not to wake up ridiculously early, which was not helped by our massive jet lag.... Oh well, first world problems I suppose...

Since we arrived we have been finding our feet in St. Petersburg which is a remarkably beautiful and strikingly cosmopolitan city, the equal of London, Rome or Paris, with a cool vibe and a growing buzz of excitement around the start of the World Cup. Staying in the city over a week before our first live game has given us some time to first overcome the jet lag, but also to get our bearing and to see some of what this great city has to offer. If you like stunning imperial 18th century architecture, a palace on every corner, heaps of world-class museums and charming tree-lined streets leading to large open squares or parks, or stumbling across the occasion canal, then St. Petersburg is the place for you.  We have visited many of the recommended tourist sites, done a guided canal trip around the city, visited the world famous State Hermitage Museum, and found some great restaurants, (Russian, Indian, Irish, Georgian & Uzbek, American, so far), and a oddly large number of craft beer bars....

This has been over 3 years in the making to get to this point and we can’t wait for the World Cup to kick off tomorrow. We have a table booked at a favourite bar to watch the opening game between Russia & Saudi Arabia and on Friday we are off to see our first live game of this tournament, the ‘high voltage and potentially electrifying’ fixture between Iran and Morocco at the St. Petersburg Stadium. If you find yourself watching this game keep an eye out for us, we will be the only ones waving the New Zealand flag...