TEFL Adventures: Journey to the Edge of Russia (Also Known as Vyborg)

By the time this blog goes live, I'll actually be in Crimea. I'm currently with some of my students as they travel around Crimea on an educational study trip, and my role is the same as usual - create a foreign language environment so that they may improve their English skills and teach the occasional 30-minute English lesson. Once I get back to St. Petersburg, I'll make sure to let you know what Crimea was like, as well as show some pictures.

Since I'm traveling at the moment, I figured I'd share some details about my trip to Vyborg last month.

Vyborg, if you haven't heard of it before, is a Russian town that's 24 miles away from the border of Finland. To get there, it took 282 rubles and a 2.5 hour train ride from Finlandsky Vokzal (Finland Train Station). It's not particularly hard to get there, but since almost everything in Vyborg can be seen in a day, one must get up slightly earlier in the morning.

Located in the part of Russia known as Karelia, the town itself has changed hands numerous times throughout the past 300 years. Originally founded as a Swedish city, it was conquered by Peter the Great in 1710 and became Russian for a time. Vyborg, also known as Viipuri in FInnish, remained part of the Russian empire until 1917 when the empire collapsed and Finland declared independence. For the next 23 years, the town remained under the control of Finland and was the second largest Finnish city until the Winter War which saw Vyborg get annexed into the Soviet Union.

Finland didn't want to relinquish the city for good, so when Germany launched its offensive against the Soviet Union, Finland joined the side of Germany and proceeded to retake the territories it lost during the Winter War. Thus from 1941 to 1944, the town was reunited with Finland until the Soviet Union launched its counteroffensive. During September 1944, the town became Russian for the third and final time, and in 1947, Finland relinquished all claims to the area of Vyborg.

Apart from being highly contested over, another claim to fame for Vyborg is that Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian revolution, spent a couple weeks in Vyborg making preparations for the Bolshevik uprising.

Vyborg Castle

As I mentioned before, the town is fairly compact and most of its major landmarks can be seen within a day. It's most popular one is probably Vyborg Castle, which is situated on a small island in the middle of the river. Built by the Swedish in the 1290s, it now functions as a museum and people are able to climb up the castle to the dome area to get a view of the city. Luckily, when I went, it was fairly warm and mostly sunny, which is probably the ideal weather for this.

View from Vyborg Castle

Another major location that is also kind of cool is Vyborg Cathedral. However, whereas the famous Kazan and St. Isaac's Cathedrals in St. Petersburg are impressive to look at and walk inside, Vyborg cathedral is, well..., non-existent except for a couple walls. 

Vyborg Cathedral

I googled some old images of Vyborg Cathedral and it looked like a pleasant enough Lutheran church. However, the building was destroyed when the Soviet Union retook Vyborg in 1944. It lived a very short life considering it was built in 1893.

Vyborg is a city that isn't quite Russian but it's also not quite European. Walking through the town, certain roads are more cobblestone than paved asphalt, which, combined with the yellow-ish color of many houses, inspires thoughts of Tuscany, Italy or other European towns. Unfortunately, many buildings are in need of repairs in some way, but due to the town's small population and the country's economic crisis, it doesn't seem like there will be enough money to fix these places. And in times of crisis, people leave small towns for major cities, so from what I saw, Vyborg might be a slowly-dying European town.

Peter's Park

Continuing a bit farther away from the castle and the main center of the city, there were several parks. The main one I found was Peter's Park (named after Peter the Great). There's not too much there aside from some walls but it was still a pleasant walk. My mind might have imagined the location as being excellent for a scene in a war movie.

There are many more places to visit in Vyborg. There is a building built on a giant rock right next to the cathedral. Additionally, there's a short round tower that's also a restaurant. And the view of the river? It's fantastic. If I weren't trying to walk around to see all the different sites to see in Vyborg, I might have been happy enough with a simple picnic under the warm sun looking out into the bay.

The main detractor I found with Vyborg is that there didn't seem to be any attractive cafes that were relatively inexpensive. In addition to the snacks I brought with me, my main meal in town was a burger joint called "Hesburger." If you aren't familiar with Hesburger, it's, for all intents and purposes, the same as McDonalds or Burger King. The food was slightly better quality but nothing special. I still prefer Wendy's or Carl's Jr. as my fast food restaurant of choice. The problem is I still haven't seen Wendy's here in Russia, and Carl's Jr. is only starting to reopen its restaurants after having shut them down in January.