It's Thursday night. As I sip on a Dogfish Head Punkin' Ale at my favorite beer bar, I soak in the fact that I'm two sleeps and one work day away from a most awesome vacation. On Saturday, in celebration of Tisha's (mumble)th birthday, we're fulfilling a lifelong dream of hers and heading to Russia. Specifically, we're going to visit Russia, Finland, and Sweden for two weeks!

Even more specifically, we're going to be spending a few days in Moscow, hopping a train to Saint Petersburg, spending a few days (including Tisha's birthday) there, hopping another train to Helsinki and exploring that fine city for a few days before hopping a ferry for a nice leisurely overnight cruise to Stockholm and revisit a city we enjoyed so much we had to go back.

I can't speak Russian worth a damn save for "Yes", "No", and "Thank you" (Da, Nyet, SpasEEbo), so I'm relying heavily on our phrase book and half of Tisha's college major. In Finland? Well, we're both just floating out there, as with Stockholm. Thankfully, English should be easy to come by in the cities we're visiting.

Russia's crazy. For the first time ever, we had to obtain entry (and exit) visas before going there. We have to register at our hotel when we get there. We can't overstay our visa, even by a minute, without incurring a fine. It's wacky!

I'm really stoked about this trip. It feels a lot like it did before our very first venture to a foreign overseas land 5 years ago. This will be our 5th time visiting Europe, and I'm almost as giddy and excited as I was our first time going. We've got a long layover in Stockholm for our connecting flight to Moscow (on the order of 4 hours), so our first "day" is pretty much entirely a travel day. By the time we hit our hotel in Moscow, we'll have been traveling for a little over 12 hours (our initial flight leaves around 4:30 Chicago time), and we'll be at around 5:30AM by our internal clocks. But, if the past is any indicator, we'll be stoked and excited enough to at least make it past dinner before crashing into our beds and having the sleep to end all sleeps.

I've been researching beer and beer bar destinations in the cities we'll visit, natch. I've got some good ones to try. I must say, our first visit to Stockholm produced some happy memories of good beer bars, including an awesome Irish pub enjoying a session. On this trip, we won't be in high tourist season (our first trip like that since 2007). We'll be escaping 75-80 degree Chicago Indian summer to 60s, 50s, even 40s where we'll be going. At Helsinki (probably even Saint Petersburg), we will be as far north as we've ever been. We like north. North is good.

So, yeah. We're both pretty stoked about this. Yay!