{"id":614936,"date":"2024-03-25T07:12:42","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T11:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/?p=614936"},"modified":"2024-03-25T07:12:42","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T11:12:42","slug":"threading-the-eye-of-the-needle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/?p=614936","title":{"rendered":"threading the eye of the needle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Precision Greetings!<\/p>\n

First of all, here’s the link to the latest gallery:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/balloonbill.smugmug.com\/Other\/St-Petersburg<\/a><\/p>\n

In my last message, I mentioned there was an idea for what I would do from St. Petersburg, but I wasn’t sure it would work out. Well, of course it worked out fine, but not quite the way I had originally envisioned it.<\/p>\n

The original idea was to take the overnight train from St. Petersburg to a place called Smolensk, which I did. It was wonderful to get to sleep on another train.<\/p>\n

At the same time I purchased the ticket from St. Petersburg to Smolensk, I also bought a ticket to go from there to Kaliningrad on another overnight train. That’s the part that was uncertain. I asked at the train station and also looked for information online as to whether or not I would be permitted to go on this train, but what I came up with was not definitive. It appeared that a transit visa was required of non-Russian foreigners to cross Belarus by train, to get to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, but it was impossible for me to get such a visa while traveling. There were a couple of past accounts online of people having made that transit without a visa, but nothing recent. Because I really like train travel, I thought it worth a try.<\/p>\n

In Smolensk, when my train was ready to board, I went to the car I had a ticket for. The conductor asked for my transit visa. Because I didn’t have one, she called the chief conductor. He said I couldn’t get on. When I persisted, he called for the railway police and the FSB. All of them together had quite a heated discussion, one of them arguing that I should be allowed, the others arguing against, because it would likely result in a big issue at the Belarus-Kaliningrad border, one that would come back to bite them. So, the final answer was no, I could not get on the train.<\/p>\n

After assessing my options, amazingly I was able to hop on a train going to Moscow and from there get a flight to Kaliningrad. As it turned out, I arrived in Kaliningrad only an hour and a half after I would have arrived had I gone by train. The biggest difference was that I had not only not gotten to sleep on an overnight train, but I did not sleep at all. The sleep deprivation made the journey feel even more dream-like.<\/p>\n

The red lines on this map show my actual route, while the blue line shows the train route I was not allowed to take:<\/p>\n

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Here’s the updated map of all my travels in Russia since early December:<\/p>\n

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Kaliningrad is yet another wonderful surprise on this trip. It’s amazing! It’s also very green and the first time for me to be totally without snow since mid-December. More on all this at some later time.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the full moon and everything!<\/p>\n

Bill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Precision Greetings! First of all, here’s the link to the latest gallery: https:\/\/balloonbill.smugmug.com\/Other\/St-Petersburg In my last message, I mentioned there was an idea for what I would do from St. Petersburg, but I wasn’t sure it would work … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=614936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614943,"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614936\/revisions\/614943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=614936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=614936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldtadise.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=614936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}