While I’m working on getting my travel pages up, I thought I’d tease with a few humorous anecdotes from my travels.
Today is Saint Petersburg, Russia.
I visited Saint Petersburg in June, 2010, having just missed all the craziness that resulted from the eruption of Bob, the Icelandic volcano. The train tour ran from Copenhagen to Moscow via Stockholm, Helsinki and Saint Petersburg.
The day after our tour arrived in Saint Petersburg, I was looking for an ATM to get some Russian currency and the hotel staff directed me outside to the next building. Now, this hotel was on a narrow block so that it had an entrance to the lobby from two parallel streets. I should have went out the right door. I went out the left. Three others from the tour came along as they were looking for an ATM as well.
We walked to the next building and found a machine with a screen and a place for a card, but no key pad. The writing was all in Russian. One of my tourmates tried to put in her card but it spit it back out and didn’t give us any English directions.
Getting a little worried, we went back inside and ran into Diego, our tour director, and told him we couldn’t get any money from the ATM. He gave us a strange look and said no one else on his tours had had problems. He asked us to show him the ATM.
We walked outside and to the next building, stopped by the machine and showed it to him. He was laughing so hard, he had a hard time getting out the words:
“This isn’t an ATM. It’s a machine that sells condoms.”
No. That’s not the currency in Russia. 🙂
LOL, hilarious!! Now I know where you got the name for your gb!!
LOL. Thanks. Yes, Bob is so much easier to pronounce and spell than Eyjafjallajökull. I’m hoping they’ll teach me how to pronounce it right when I visit Iceland next month. 🙂
Yes how hilarious Lesleyanne. I will be going to all those places, & looking forward to leaving Adelaide. So cold here. You enjoyed going to Russia.
You’ll love Russia. And it’s getting hot there. Already in the mid-20s in Moscow.
Too funny!