Meeting point and time

Please take into consideration that its definitely not an easy task to reach the work-camp site yourself (alone)! Volunteers normally arrive to the work-camp site together.

At 8 a.m. in day of the beginning arrival your group, St.Petersburg, Finlandskij railway station, near ticket office #1. Metro station: Площадь Ленина (Финляндский вокзал) // Ploshad Lenina. Finlandskij voksal

Dont be late!

Our train leaves at 08:30. If the weather is fine, we'll be on Valaam in the evening.

We'll go the city of Priozersk (this takes 3 hours. We recommend to take with you a mat and sit on it during the trip), then we'll take a taxi to go to the ship. Then we will go by ship to the island, and it will take about 4 hours. Ladoga Lake sometimes resembles sea - it's absolutely unpredictable, every minute the weather could change, and big waves could appear... Sometimes volunteers wait on the shore for a good weather - fortunately, it was never longer than some hours! Anyway, you should take into consideration storms, when planning your departure (usually volunteers have different dates of departure), we advise you to leave the island 2-3 days before your departure from Russia.

Monastery ships (free of charge for you) go 2-3 times a week, but some volunteers prefer to return on the big touristic ships, where you will spend 1 night and in the morning at 8 a.m. you will be in St.Petersburg (50 euro).

One of the possible ways of returning trip - go from the island to the nice city of Sortavala (appr. 250 roubles, 2 hours), which is very close to Finland. In Sortavala you should take a train to St.Petersburg (it will take about 5 hours to go to St.Petersburg), but if you are late for the last train, which leaves at about 17.00, you will have to spend a night at the local hotel! All the train tickets are paid by the volunteers. Ticket from St.Petersburg to Priozersk costs about 220 roubles (5 euro) + 160-200 roubles (4-5 euro) for taxi.