I normally have an iron stomach but here in Russia...

Whenever I travel I always have certain things with me in my bag. I had a bad reaction to some food in Egypt (Actually, me and all of my friends did) so having the proper pills in my suitcase was enormously helpful. So, since then I always travel with Tums & Imodium, no mater where I go. I wasn't concerned about eating in Russia, because since Egypt (which was over 10 years ago) I haven't had a bad reaction to food in any country I have traveled in. And if you follow this blog, you know that I will eat just about anything whether it's from the side of a road or from a food cart on the side of the street. My stomach troubles started in St. Petersburg and after trying several different dishes, I finally had to realize that Russian food just wasn't going to sit well with my stomach so I had to do what I NEVER do-eat American fast food on vacation! Being ill on vacation isn't fun, and it can cast a shadow on the adventure so I tried my best to not let it bother me and thankfully my friend was really nice and was willing to walk slower and take taxis when I needed to.

We had somewhere to go which was a bit of a metro ride from the center of town and I didn't think it was a good idea to take the metro so we hopped in a taxi (would you want to be on the metro when your stomach is bubbling?). When we told the taxi driver where we wanted to go, he shook his head and was telling us, well, from what we could guess cause we don't speak Russian, that he wasn't going the way we wanted to. We both kept saying, "PLEASE!!" in Russian (the app I bought on my phone taught us how to say that) and I think he looked at me and realized I wasn't feeling well and felt sorry for us. So he let us get in and he starting driving. He drove for about 15 minutes and took us to a metro stop. We really didn't understand what was going on until he got out of the car and started talking to another taxi driver. He then motioned for us to get out of his car and get in the car with the other taxi driver. Okay. So we get out of his taxi, hop in the taxi with the other guy and he takes off. Now, this is where it gets interesting.

Our 2nd driver must have wanted to be a racecar driver when he was a child because seriously, he was going so fast my friend and I immediately put on our seat belts and were holding on to the door because we were sliding around in the backseat. Then our driver started racing with other cars on the road. Literally. He would take off and was weaving in and out of traffic, driving ridiculously close to other cars while trying to pass them, and driving at breakneck speeds while I'm in the backseat with one hand over my stomach, the other over my eyes, trying not to let the contents in my stomach end up on the back of his seat. We were in his taxi for 30 minutes...30 minutes of being tossed about like waves in a very rocky ocean and since we didn't know where we were going or had no idea how to say, "Hey! Are you taking the long way?" in Russian, we couldn't really do anything about it. And I was too fragile at that point to even think about getting out of his taxi and getting into another one. Oh, did I fail to mention he was blasting his music, which was some type of Russian rap/rock and actually turned it up even louder as he was racing through the streets of St. Petersburg?

We finally made it to where we were going and I was never so happy to get out of a car. So with my stomach gurgling and my ears ringing, we paid him and couldn't get out of the taxi fast enough. Unfortunately it took about another day for my stomach to calm down but thankfully it did. I had every intention of trying as much Russian food as possible but I had to listen to my stomach and not put anything else in it that wasn't either bought from the store and eaten at our apartment or made from Subway or McDonald's. Go figure. So what's the moral of this story? When you travel, ALWAYS have as much medication with you as you can carry, even if you never had issues in your home country because you never know when something might make you ill and you do not want to be in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, trying to figure out what you need to buy in the pharmacy. So trust me, pack some Imodium and Tums in your bag, you won't be sorry.