За Родину! (Тo the Мotherland)

The bus ride to Helsinki took about 7.5 hours. Had we not included the frequent cigarette breaks, it probably would have taken 6. And without the border crossing, 5.

The first sign of remiss was at Russian passport control. One of the girls in our group, Radhika, didn't look enough like her passport picture for the border guard. After 15 minutes of questioning, the guards finally decided that she was not in fact a Russian trying to sneak out under the guise of an American student going to Istanbul for "spring break" and let her through. We ambitiously decided to celebrate leaving behind the Motherland with a 100 ruble ($3) bottle of champagne purchased at the duty free store in no-man's-land and popped it immediately following the Finnish border crossing. This celebration turned out to be too ambitious.

After arriving in Helsinki at 5:30 am, we were too lazy and tired to actually see any of the city, so we sat in a cafe for several hours and took in as much as we could from there, most notably, a parade:

Sitting in the cafe also gave us the opportunity to enjoy civilization: clean bathrooms, polite waiters, real coffee, and sandwiches with two slices of bread rather than just one.

Next stop: Helsinki airport. It became apparent that our celebration was premature when our 1 pm flight was delayed until 5 for mechanical reasons. As the delay was lengthened and lengthened, we realized that there was only one explanation for this: we had angered Mother Russia in our celebration of leaving her. And the solution? More duty free alcohol. This time we drank за родину (to the Motherland) in an effort to reverse our luck and were able to depart a mere 12 hours behind schedule.