We got on the train missed the previous day and after one change at Sestakai we arrived in Vilnius with evening upon us. We check in to a hostel about two minutes from the station with very fetching 80s décor and beds like you get in Japanese airports that you get into long ways. We were meant to stay with a couple from the hospitality website the following night but after finding out that the night train to St Petersburg ran only every other day we decided to depart from Lithuania that evening.

Vilnius had been described to us as "as the city of many churches" and that is exactly how it was. We departed for St Petersburg and found that as well as having our visas and passport we had to fill out a migration card and a form for our entry and exit from Russia. The transacting into big bad Russia was surprisingly uneventful with the only problem being that we had filled out most of the Russian form wrong but with corrections made we gained a quick stamp in our passports and that was it.

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