Welcome to Russia!
Trip Start
May 02, 2007
1
35
70
Trip End
Ongoing
Loading Map
St. Petersburg,
Russia
Sunday, September 30, 2007
St. Petersburg is a grandiose city of enormous proportion. Beautiful big buildings inhabit entire blocks and walking around is a tiring affair. The metro has a lot to be desired; in the core of the city there are only three stations, all spaced far apart. In fact, ALL the stations in the system are far apart. It is not really worth it to use the metro to explore unless you have to travel big distances, and trying to figure out the bus system without speaking Russian isn't viable, leaving walking the only realistic option. The metro here is also the deepest in the world - all the more reason to stick to foot as you would spend half a day just going up and down the amazingly long escalators. But there is so much to see with the buildings and all the romantic Venice-like canals and rivers that we didn't mind one bit. Car traffic is heavy and many are pre-catalytic converter, leaded fuel burning machines. As for language...it's all Greek to us! Well, Russian, that is...we imagined there to be a little more English than there is.
01.From the airplane
Locating stores or restaurants is tough since they hardly use an English equivalent in their signage, so it becomes a matter of comparing symbols, and in the end we gave up on many missions. Like most cities, once you leave the busy area (here it is Nevsky Prospekt (Avenue)) the English speaking diminishes - not that it is abundant in the first place. We went to a restaurant where they offered us a menu in English, but they failed to hire staff who could speak the language, or at the very least give the Russian translation next to the items. We tried to cross-reference a Russian menu but they didn't match up (we did end up eating though). It was interesting to go in a church and watch mass. There are no benches anywhere; the people just stand around and watch the priests go through some sorts of rituals (we didn't see any preaching either). The ladies cover their heads with scarves (Yvonne had to settle for her hood) and they worship fervently, constantly making the cross, bowing their heads, lowering to their knees and touching their foreheads to the ground, and kissing all sorts of objects around the church. In one church I was approached by a man who told me to take my hand out of my pocket and hold it by my side. We'd heard all about the Russians and their vodka, so were a little surprise to find that beer is the drink of choice here. The little markets and kiosks are stocked with beers from around the world and men, women and children (or, at least very young adults) stroll around the streets at all times of the day - including early morning - swigging from a bottle like it was apple juice.
02.From the airplane
Arriving in St. Petersburg on the plane was easy, but trying to get to our hostel was another story! Once we left the airport, we knew we were in for a challenge when all we saw was Cyrillic writing and bus stops with no signs. We had to watch for a while as people milled about and came and went in buses. Once we figured things out a little we hopped on a bus that took us to the metro station. We had our first experience of being ripped off - the lady who collects fares charged us for three tickets. When we realized we tried to talk to her again but she just ignored us. Welcome to Russia! Just before our last metro stop an old Russian man behind me tapped me on the shoulder. He said something I couldn't understand and then grinned. He had a smile like a crocodile - yellow, rounded teeth interspersed by black spaces. I just nodded and smiled in response. The one intelligible word that came out of his mouth was "American"? We said no, and replied "Canadian", to which he responded "Ahh, Canada" and then made a "cuckoo" gesture, twirling a finger in a circle around his temple. We weren't exactly sure what he was trying to get across. Were we crazy to come to Russia? Did he think Canadians were crazy? Was HE crazy? We'll never know (although the latter is the most likely).
In four days we got a decent feel for the city; but you could easily spend a week here and barely scratch the surface. We did a lot of wandering around and took in quite a few of the major sights. The Church on Spilled Blood was a highlight with its towering multi-colored onion domes.
03.Horse Tamer
There are lots of parks here and being here in the fall made it all the more beautiful. The Summer Gardens were especially pretty with their stone statues and busts littered throughout the grounds. We checked out Peter and Paul's Fortress, the former KGB headquarters (just from the outside!), the Bronze Horseman (Peter the Great, dedicated from Catherine the Great), Mars Field and St. Isaac's cathedral (apparently one of the biggest domed buildings in the world), among other things. The Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology had a memorable exhibit called the "kunstkamera". Peter the Great thought he would educate the highly superstitious people, so he collected and preserved samples of malformed fetuses in glass jars. It is a pretty disturbing display, to say the least, especially right after lunch. We reserved the Hermitage near the end of our visit. It is a gigantic museum housed in the grand Winter Palace, the former royalty's residence. The collection is unparalleled anywhere in the world, but we still couldn't help being a little bit disappointed! Not by the building and its rooms themselves, which are magnificent, but by the rather shoddy displays of what are surely very important historical artifacts. The lighting was horrible, making huge glares on the paintings so you had to stand off to the side or look at it from far away to see what it actually was. Also the glass on many display cases was poor making the contents look distorted, and many had smudges and looked like they hadn't been cleaned in a while.
04.Near the Winter Palace
The biggest letdown though was that the state rooms were closed. But, we won't complain too much because we actually got in for a discounted price. We were approached in the courtyard before the ticket office by a lady claiming to be a tour guide operator. She explained we could go in as part of her group, because she had a couple of extra spots, and it would only cost us a fraction of the cost. We were skeptical of course, but we made sure we were inside and past the ticket check before we handed her any money. We dealt with the Russian train ticket office for the first time also. Our Trans-Siberian guidebook has good templates to copy some text down and hand to the non-English speaking staff. The teller laughed (to our relief) when we handed her our note - a roughly transcribed copy from the book (writing Cyrillic is tough!) - but she was graceful in issuing our tickets to Petrozavodsk for the next day. Our last day in St. Petersburg was spent doing, what else, more walking. We found a beach...yes, a real beach! We didn't expect to see the ocean again until Southeast Asia but there we were, sitting on a log, watching shirtless locals play beach volleyball and looking out into the Gulf of Finland. It was quite bizarre to us! Not to mention the fact that it was now one day before October and we were in northern Russia. We've been quite lucky with the weather actually. Our first day was a bit gloomy, but since then it's been sunny and very warm - t-shirt warm. Actually, sandals warm! Our last act was to return to the hostel to pick up our bags and trudge our way to the train station. We booked an eight hour overnight train to Petrozavodsk - a last minute addition to our itinerary.
Comments
Crazy Ones
Hi Carlo Yvonne. I just saw Pilot Guids on the Weekend with the Crazy guy Ian Wright, ironically he was in Russia and St. Petersburg. Used to be called Leningrad but the folks there voted to rename the City back to its orignal name after the fall of Communism. Great pics! Great reporting too Carlo. I can't imagine running around in a city where very few speak English. Good thing the weather is decent. Good time of year to go there. My family and I are getting ready for Holloween here. Went to the Pumpkin Patch with my 4 year old daughter's PreSchool Class. Lots of fun. Lot of Pumkins rotting though due to all the rain we had this summer. Happy Thanksgiving you Crazy Canucks! :)