Adventurous Road and Happy New Year from Helsinki!!!

On 30th December's night me and my friend Kostya left our apartment in Moscow to pick up Zhenya and Yana and begin our way to St. Petersburg. The adventure started right away. As we sat in the car, we realized that the door on the driver's side totally refused to close and was simply not working at all. So of course it was good 20 minutes of panicking, and I totally thought we'd have to cancel our trip for the most stupid reason.
Then we got the door working (apparently it just froze for a while), picked up our friends and were on the road to St. Pete.
Well, the weather conditions made us go way slower than we planned, so were a bit behind the schedule. Then half way to St. Pete we stopped at the gas station - only to realize that one of the tires was damaged and could blow up any second. This was a total bummer - if you don't know, according to the law, when crossing the Finnish border your vehicle has to have 4 tires of the exact same brand and in the same exact condition. So that meant - if we damaged one of the tires, we had to find an additional tire that was an exact replacement of the damaged one. We now were looking for Michelin tire.
Needless to say, we spent half of the day on 31st driving around Russian villages (and roads there are in the most horrible condition) looking for a replacement.
On top of that most of the places are usually closed on 31st - in the end we found one guy who offered us to buy a tire of the same type, but not of the same exact brand (which could potentially be a big problem at the border).
Then we stopped for an hour in St. Pete to get a light dinner in the middle of beautiful Nevskiy Prospekt. The weird thing was that we spent about 40 minutes looking for a currency exchange place (!) - apparently there are none left in St. Pete.
As we were departing from St Pete, it was already 6 pm, and we were all a bit on the down side, as the chances of us getting through the Finnish border before midnight were getting smaller and smaller. I even asked people to bet on facebook on whether we would make it through the border before 12 am or not))))
We stopped to get gas twice on the way from St. Pete to the border. One of the ladies warned us that it could potentially take us up to 2 days to get throught the border, as the New Year Eve is the busiest time for traveling. Then another guy told us that we could probably get through in about 1,5 hours. So the information was quite controversial.
In the end, we got to the border around 10 pm, and now for the main part - it took us about 7(!) minutes to get through both Russian and Finnish customs. No one even bothered to check our tires and no one even asked us to fill the customs declaration.
So we met New Year on the road to Helsinkli, and instead of champaign just cheered with mineral water and chips))))
Finland has 1 hour difference with Russia, so we got to Helsinki downtown just in time to meet the New Year for the second time watching fireworks with the rest of the crowd.
I guess the driving rules are somehow different in Finland, because as we were driving, people around were giving us very odd looks. Once we stoppe at the light some random guy from the car behind us all of a sudden got out, ran to our car, and started slamming our front door and yelling smth at us in Finnish- so I guess we were doing smth really wrong))))
The funny part was asking drunk people for the directions to our hostel and trying to find the way around Helsinki - I totally felt like one of those people on the Amazing Race show - when they run around looking for directions.
Today we are taking the day off driving and just enjoying Helsinki and ourselves. (btw, good hint for future travelers: the combination of 4 travelers proves to be perfect, when 3 of them can take turns driving - this way you don't feel exhausted and tired in the end).
Apparently, there is some sort of dry law in Helsinki - they only sell alcohol in bars, and you can't buy any alcohol except for beer in the stores (!).
I guess that is supposed to keep people from drinking too much. Not really, judging by those drunkards that I personally saw yesterday on the streets around here.
Happy New Year, everyone!
We are spending another few hours here in Helsinki, then driving to Turku tomorrow morning and then taking a ship to Stockholm. Our next stop is SWEDEN!!!!
ps. I do have lots of pics, but will post them later due to the lack of time now.