Saturday, May 7, 2011

what a ride....

So after travelling through Russia and Kasachstan with the Marinsky Orchestra by train and plane for over 2 weeks, visiting 13 cities we were taken from the train today at 6 am in the morning by white russian border guards on our way to Vilnius/Lithuania because we had no transit visa for White Russia.
So we missed the concert at Vilnius and experienced a little odyssey getting back to Moscow via Kiew.
Standing on the railway track with all our equipment in the middle of nowhere we felt kind of lost, we then took a train back to a small city on the Ukrainian border and then made it to Kiev in another 3-hour train ride where we eventually found a taxi to the airport. Cramped into tiny seats we finally reached Moscow at night.

What a strange and bewildering country this is, the old authoritative system on the one side represented by guards and police officers, the helpful and open hearted russian people on the other side.