THE LAST STRAW: Advancing on Moscow is a protracted business, traditionally, as Napoleon and others found out. So when I travelled to the city for last weekend's soccer international, it didn't seem right to get there in three hours in an aircraft. Instead, in a moment of weakness, I decided this was a chance to visit my cousin, Brendan, in Helsinki, and continue the journey by train, writes Frank McNally.
It's a 14-hour journey. But if you stop off in St Petersburg, as I did, the trip only seems to take about a week. History students will recall that famous travellers on the route have included Lenin, who in 1917 returned from hiding in Helsinki to attend the revolution, which was being held in Petrograd. And with the famous account of that period - Ten Days that Shook the World - to read en route, I waved goodbye to Finland.
In a recent column, incidentally, I may have given the impression that, thanks to the plastic bag tax, the Republic had now joined the Nordic countries at the cutting edge of progress. This belief was further encouraged when I discovered that Helsinki's shopping district is currently being dug up.
Dublin is of course a world leader in hole-digging, but it was encouraging to see that even the Finns had room for infrastructural improvement. That was before I discovered that their scheme involves installing under-street heating. In retrospect, our plastic bag tax doesn't seem quite the triumph, I thought.
Efficient and incorruptible, Finland has its faults, however. Maybe it's the harsh climate, but the people are fiercely reserved. After a brief thaw in the summer months, during which spontaneous smiling is not unheard of, the Finnish personality freezes over again by mid-September.
In a poignant irony, I learned that the Helsinki shipyards make "60 per cent of the world's ice-breakers". None of these could start a conversation at a city bus stop, however (even in a heated street). It's a paradox that Finland is home to Santa Claus, a famous extrovert.
Which reminds me that, before leaving, I had dinner at a Lapland restaurant; where, deciding against "elk in bone marrow sauce", I chose "sirloin of reindeer" as the main course. It was served rare, in a shade not unlike Rudolf's nose. And it was delicious, although I can't look my children in the eye since.
But back to Russia: where to put it mildly, things are not as easy for visitors. Applying for citizenship in Finland is less complicated than ordering a meal in Russia (and less likely to involve showing your passport). Things were not helped by the fact that I arrived in St Petersburg with a severe sleep deficit, which was exacerbated by a long day touring the city's sights: including the Winter Palace, Dostoevsky's flat, and five different windows at the railway station ticket counter.
These windows all had signs, some of which probably read: "Do not join this extremely slow-moving queue if you want a ticket for the night train to Moscow". But since they were exclusively in Cyrillic - not an alphabet I was familiar with until last weekend - I had to queue by trial and error. And despite mutual incomprehension, I eventually secured a ticket from the correct assistant.
With blistered feet and frayed nerves, I needed sleep even more than I needed a crash course in Russian. So my heart sank when I found myself sharing a compartment with a very friendly businessman called Dmitri, who insisted on treating me to midnight dinner in the dining car, and wouldn't take "nyet" for an answer.
I could only eat something light, I said, so Dmitri recommended caviar. I also ordered mineral water. But it turns out that, under Russia's constitution, caviar can be accompanied only by vodka. So reluctantly, I had the vodka as well. And then Dmitri ordered more caviar, and more vodka, and after that the caviar and the vodka just kept coming. Dmitri's English, broken to start with, was soon in total disarray; yet after several plates of caviar it didn't really matter.
The following morning, I should have had the mother and father of a hangover. But, due to the strange interaction between vodka and caviar, I had the mother and father and the entire extended Russian family of a hangover instead. When I merged into the Moscow dawn, the city was shrouded in smog. Or perhaps it was just me. And watching the Irish team on Saturday night, I wondered if they'd taken the night train too.
The retreat from Moscow was no less exhausting, although luckily, I didn't meet Dmitri again. I arrived back in Helsinki on Tuesday with the book unread. And when I recover from the exhaustion, I might write a more detailed account of my short visit to Russia, subtitled: "Four Days that Shook an Irish Tourist".