That being said, camping with the Russians gave me a run for my money. I packed for Moscow, planning for a few months in the city. My number one concerns were not waterproof, light-weight Gortex's, sturdy hiking boots, or quick drying t-shirts and shorts. Frankly my number one concerns were looking good and blending in with the populous. So when I packed my under-armor duffle I was only slightly concerned about being unprepared. I called my boss Sergei, who convinced me that the weekend would be great weather and they had everything I would need... nothing to worry about at all.
We buy the train tickets, go grab lunch, return to the train station, and get to our platform with fifteen minutes to spare. No train there? No problem! Russian transportation is never on time, it'll be there eventually. With three minutes to go we realize that the train has been moved to a different platform. Problem! We book it through the massive crowd who have all just come to the same realization as us and make a mad dash for the train. Sergei, being a smaller man than I, moves agilely through the crowd and gets on the train as the horn blows and looks out at me in the crowd as if to say "what could possible be taking you so long?" I lower the boom and blow through the crowd, barely making it onto the train as the doors slam shut. Potential tragedy avoided.
We get to the end of the train ride and catch the bus to the bus station "right near" our camp site. The bus ride is some what long and very sweaty, but it beats walking so who was I to complain. We get to the bust station, get off and begin the "quick" trek to the campsite.
Those of you with quick eyes and sharp minds may have noticed my use of quotes in the last paragraph. I know sarcasm and bitterness never come from my mouth, so you might find this shocking, but our camp site was in the middle of nowhere, not even close to the bus station. We got directions from at least six shirtless, overweight Russian men who knew exactly where we were going during the two hours we hiked around the Russian countryside. Sergei, outfitted with hiking boots and a framed hiking backpack pays no mind to this. Craig, outfitted in a pair of Sketchers and a duffle bag is a little more concerned. Finally we cross the correct river (yes that does in fact imply that we crossed the wrong river earlier) and immediately are faced with a fork in the path. No one had mentioned a fork after the bridge, only crossing the bridge and following the path. We see an Orthodox cross to the left, and nothing to the right. We go right... it just felt safer. The path gets increasingly muddy, so we too get increasingly muddy. Up ahead I see some folks with a car stuck in the mud... poor fools for driving up here, good thing they aren't my friends
Yeah turns out they are my friends. They are the other members of our groups, which means that we are impressed into service, pushing out the car. We push out the car and are now covered in mud, but thats fine because God has a plan for us. One that involves a tremendous thunderstorm starting halfway through putting up our tent. Unfortunately this gets up completely soaked. Fortunately it makes us considerably less muddy. This thunderstorm creates a great learning experience for me. While I knew basic weather terms in russian, this particularly violent storm gave me the opportunity to witness firsthand and learn the words for, hail, small tornado, tree struck down by lightning, flooding of the small river by our campsite, and mud deeper than waist deep. Obviously learning these words would not have been the same without the first hand experience to go with them.
So I survived getting to the campsite, but that was just the beginning. Stay tuned for my adventures at the campsite, and then the stunning conclusion of trying my best to get the heck out of there. Pictures will be posted later.
-Craig
