03-Feb-2009 – For the first time, I travelled with my wife to Russia. As it was her 40th birthday, she decided not to be at home and to leave the kids and all relatives back home in Germany and to spend four days in beautiful St. Petersburg with me. And what was my first thought? Is there a confluence nearby? And yes, there is. But when I read the reports of Captain Peter and the following visitors I gave up my plan because it appeared impossible either to walk through the cold water of the Baltic Sea or to rent a boat in the middle of the winter. So, I explained my wife that there is a confluence but impossible to access during our flight to Russia. From the airplane I already recognized that large lakes in the Baltic states were completely frozen.

After three days walking through the beautiful and very cold city of St. Petersburg we decided to rent a car for the last day and to drive around a bit and to visit the outskirts in the north of the city.

After passing the last very large apartment buildings, the countryside looked very much like in Finland. After some kilometers, we left the big road and found a way to the coast along small wooden houses. The GPS showed directly towards the confluence and we stopped the car at the snowy beach only some 350 m away from 60°N 30°E. It was amazing: in front of us the entire bay and the Gulf of Finland as far as we could see was completely frozen. I was very surprised that it would be so easy to get to the confluence, I was very happy! We walked under a wonderful blue sky over the ice and of course had no problems to find the Zeros.

That was my 5th confluence within one week in 5 different countries as I visited confluences in Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Germany along 50°N the week before.

We stood there for a while, enjoyed the silence away from the busy city and continued our trip to Kronstadt before we returned to St. Petersburg later on to arrive at the airport in time. We left Russia at the same evening and everybody had to listen to our story when we found 60°N 30°E on the frozen Baltic Sea...