World Cup Trip

It’s been a while!

Bori and I went on a big trip for the World Cup this summer. The 2 Nigeria games that we went to were in Volgograd and St. Petersburg. Before, after, and in between, we got to explore Moscow, Minsk, and Istanbul. I think this video says it all 🙂

We had a layover in Moscow for a whole afternoon, and one of Bori’s old classmates from UMD lives there and showed us around.

By the time we got back to the airport and on the plane to Volgograd, we were delirious from lack of sleep and walking a million miles in Moscow.

This is where we first experimented with Russia’s version of Uber. They don’t wear seatbelts and they text while driving. I felt SO safe……-_-

Being in Volgograd, the most random Russian city that I’ve never heard of, during World Cup season, was honestly the closest thing to World Peace that I’ve ever seen. Same thing in St. Petersburg for our 2nd game. People from all over the world representing the country they support, and all this camaraderie regardless of country relationships or even soccer rivalries. People wanted to take pictures with us in our Nigerian jerseys, and there was an immediate bond when we saw other strangers rocking the same jersey.

Crazy story about the last photo above. Bori went to high school with that guy, and hasn’t seen him in a decade. We happened to see him on our flight between Moscow and Volgograd. He and his Russian girlfriend live in Beijing, and yet we all ended up at the same place at the same time. What are the chances!

So everything in Russia was expensive due to the World Cup, so for the few days in between the 2 games we were attending, we wanted to get out of Russia and go somewhere cheaper. And that’s how we ended up in Minsk!

The green house in the above gallery housed the first conversations about the “big ideas” of communism. We also saw the apartment of Kennedy’s assassin lived. We knew next to nothing about Minsk and Belarus before making the trip, but it was an interesting place with very kind people – definitely worth the visit.

Next we headed back to Russia, this time to St. Petersburg. This place felt more classic European than Moscow and Volgograd. Since it’s a much bigger and more popular city than Volgograd, naturally there was a noticeably larger World Cup presence.

Bori was a creeper and found out which hotel the Nigerian players were staying at, and we went there to stalk them and take photos, which you’ll see below!

After our World Cup shenanigans were over, we made one final stop to Turkey. We chose Istanbul because most of the cheaper flights between St. Petersburg and DC had layovers there, so it didn’t make our airfare more expensive to stop there for a few days.

Although we immediately got ripped off during our ride to our hotel (ugh), we absolutely loved Istanbul. We got to go inside some beautiful mosques, we did walking tours and learned about history and current issues, walked up the Galata Tower for views of the city, and did a boat tour down the Bosphorus Strait where Europe was to our left and Asia was to our right.