The Erasmus Experience 122 unforgettable days in Finland

Russia – Part 3 – Illness

Monday morning began with a hangover and a hearty breakfast in the hotel buffet. We piled on to our bus and left for FINEC, the St. Petersburg state college for Finance and Economics. We were given a tour of the campus, a large round building in the city centre, which I could only truly describe as "average" on the inside, and "crumbling" on the outside. We sat through a talk on the history of the University and the city, and went for a free lunch in the cafeteria next door. FINEC offered us a few students for us to split into groups and talk to, who showed us around the neighbourhood and took us for tea in another cafe nearby.

By the time we started to walk towards ENGECON, a city centre university, I was in no real mood to do anything, feeling incredibly tired and lethargic. I thought it was my hangover coming back to bite me, but later on, when pretty much the entire tour group came down with a bad flu/cold I realised I wasn't alone. The ENGECON talk, and their informational material for our group, was appallingly bad, and gave us all a very poor impression of their university. The title of their pamphlet "Economical education for the progress of Russia" came across as slightly Borat-esque, as did a lot of the very badly written english contained within! On the up side, they brought us into a class of Russian students who hadn't been informed of out arrival, and were really enthusiastic about speaking english to everyone in our class. We visited a small Bliny (Russian pancake) restaurant and then I got the Metro back to the Hotel with Jinsoo, Olli and some others. Slept immediately and hoped for the best for the next day.

Tuesday began with a bit more intense nausea and the very strong desire to stay in bed, but instead we all piled on the coach, and travelled out to the outskirts of St. Petersburg to visit Arcadia, an internationally operating software development company. My spirits were raised somewhat by the lovely snow that was falling very heavily all over the city that morning, making the filthy abandoned buildings all over the industrial areas look marginally less shitty. Arcadia was quite interesting, having started business in the worst of the economic chaos of the early 90's, and grown with a large base of international customers.

Later Tuesday afternoon we took the bus across the motorways connecting the factories, past towering smokestacks billowing pollution into the grey sky, and to Itella NLC, a subsidiary of the Finnish postal company. I assumed that a giant warehouse would be more interesting than a normal sized one, but I was sorely disappointed, both by the fact that it isn't, and that the presentation skills of the staff were extremely sub-par.

Tuesday night was some dinner, straight to bed. Jinsoo and I were getting worse by this stage.

Wednesday could have been the best day were it not for the illness, starting early at 9.30 we first went to Novaya Era, a company which manufactures electrical power distribution systems for marine and military applications. The tour was excellent and the staff were great, but that couldn't prevent me from vomiting half way through the tour, and not feeling too hot for the rest of that morning. Ruuki was second, a Finnish-owned steel products company, and I never thought that a factory whose job is mainly about bending and cutting steel plates could be so interesting. The tour was actually great and made me feel a lot better, before we travelled on to the Baltika Brewery. Next...