Carl Nilsson-Polias

St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, St Petersburg. Whatever it may have been called, it’s been here since 1703 (they had the city birthday last Thursday) when Peter the Great decided he wanted a great big cultural city that would act as a link to the West, via the Baltic, while also providing a fortified defense to aid in keeping those nasty invading Swedes out of Russia.

Raskolnikov killed an old pawnbroker here, in some book by Four-door Dusty Eski. And I’m pretty bloody sure that Anna Karenina lived here before making her way to the front of a train. But apart from a few wanky literary allusions i didn’t know much about St Petersburg before coming here. Oh, except for the entire history of the Russian Revolution … how many times have i had to study that?!

Two words: brilliant, immense.

I arrived at the train station with the knowledge that i had to catch the metro to a certain stop and then had to walk in a certain way (with legs splayed and a parrot perched somewhere on my anatomy) to get to my hostel. Seemed simple. I get off the train also hoping to be able to work out my next train ticket (to Tallin, Estonia) while i was there. However, inside the terminal there is almost no English signage whatsoever. I do see a sign that says ‘Information’ and head towards that wall but the information board is all in Russian (Cyrillic text). I go to the bank to try to get some rubles but there is no ATM and the cashier and i can’t quite get a conversation going that involves anything other than ‘I like your eyes’, ‘Where is the hair salon?’ and ‘This is the bus to Detroit, yes?’. So, i decide to walk around until i find an ATM, but realise that i don’t know what anything in Russia costs so i have no idea how much money to take out if i do find an ATM. Great! I follow signs that seem to be pointing to taxis, buses and the metro. I find an ATM and decide to withdraw 500 rubles (i get a 500 ruble note). I find the entrance to the metro and go to the Kacca (ticket booth) and try to give the cashier my 500 ruble note but she says ‘nyet, nyet’ and i get a little concerned. I figure i’ve done everything right but her resoluteness worried me. Anyway, i stand back and watch other people going through to make sure i’m on the right track at least. I wonder whether 500 rubles is perhaps too much and go back to the ATM to try to get smaller notes but it doesn’t have any. Nice! Then i see two backpacks with a SAS (Scandinavian airlines) tag on them. I say hi and ask if they speak English, they speak it surprisingly badly even though they are Norwegian but through my English, their English, my Swedish, their Swedish, my rudimentary Norwegian and their Norwegian we manage to work out that we’ve all just arrived, want to catch the Metro to almost exactly the same spot and that one of them, Anders, has been studying Russian for a bit and has a phrase book. So, he manages to get a multi-trip card. We try sharing that but the system obviously is hip to that old trick and won’t allow me or his friend (can’t recall the name) to get through. Anyway, in the end, i ask for a ticket in Russian, pay with a 500 ruble note and get 492 rubles back in change. 500 rubles is roughly equivalent to $25 but that clearly gets you a long way here. So, i had some friends to travel on the Metro with. And I make it to the hostel in one piece.

In a three-bed dorm, one of my room mates arrived 15 minutes after me. Martin, 24 year old accountant from London, is in St P with work mate Nathalie, 26, for more or less the same amount of time as me. Our other room mate was Johnnie, a market researcher from the USA, here with his wife who’d been in town for a few days.

I decide to go on an exploratory walk down the main drag, Nevsky Prospect, that afternoon. After walking down the street for almost an hour, all i’ve seen is shops, hotels, tourists and more shops. I figure enough is enough and head back home. I walked for almost three hours in total and covered only about ten city blocks. This place is huge! There are five million people here and the ‘city centre’ is an 8km square. There isn’t an ‘old town’ as such, the whole friggin city is the old town. I collapsed into bed.

Next day, Martin, Nathalie and I decide to go on a ‘Walking Tour’ so that we can get some sense of direction in the city, which is daunting. Our group had a few characters:

Geoff: American, mid 50s, short, overweight, fake tan, wears a cheap dodgy tupee, carried a gym bag with him until he dropped out, asked off-topic questions of limited merit and generally gave me the shits!

Leroy: American, mid 50s, tall, slim, no fake tan, wears a cheap dodgy trenchcoat, asked off-topic questions of limited merit and generally gave me the shits!

Beth: American, mid 50s, short, overweight, gregarious, highly intelligent, works as legal adviser at US embassy in Azerbaijan and has offered me a place to stay if ever i’m in that neighbourhood. Hmmm, maybe next year.

Our guide: Peter, local, perfect English, funny, incredibly knowledgeable, cynical about typical tourism spots.

Anyway, we covered a LOT of ground in those 6 hours. The student arts district, the mazes of courtyards and ruined apartment buildings (on the whole the city is still very dilapidated … film crews apparently love it as a set for WWII era films … but that is a big part of the attraction for me), the Summer Gardens and more. Along the way we got the history, the culture, local insights and tips for food and places to go that don’t involve Nevsky Prospect (and, therefore, also don’t involve pickpockets). We hardly saw another tourist the entire time. Martin, Nathalie and I continued walking around a bit afterwards and then caught a minibus back to the hostel.

Nice segue into St P’s transport system. For a city this big and spread out (most buildings are 3 or 4 stories only) they need a good public transport system, and they have it. Buses, subway, cable buses, trams, minibuses, official taxis, unofficial taxis, and trains. Most of these look like they’ve been in operation since Stalin’s days but the minibuses are my personal favourite. They seat about 12 people in what is basically a Ford Transit van. They pick you up and drop you off wherever you want along their route and they arrive every minute or so. They cost 14 ruble a pop (less than a dollar) and hardly any tourists know how to use them so they are a great way to feel like you’re actually living in the city rather than just visiting. The driver will usually be driving, watching out for people on the kerb hailing him down, accepting payment from customers, working out the change, handing over the change and remembering where people want to get off all at the same time. Brilliant! If you get a seat up the front, you end up handing payment and change on for all the other people in the van, which is a very good way to work on your intuitive language skills. It’s always suprising how much one can understand from intonation, facial expressions and little hand gestures when you know the context of the situation. So far my Russian doesn’t extend beyond ‘hi’, ‘good morning’, ‘good evening’, ‘thank you’ and ‘can i buy a metro ticket?’ but that’s been good enough so far and that’s without a phrase book. … Get the Lonely Planet guide if you’re going to come here, i’ve had to make friends with people who have them (but you might not be as charming as me, ha!).

So, Martin, Nathalie and I have formed a bit of a gang, so i’ve had people to do things with all the time, which is nice, as i’d otherwise be a very small, very scared little man alone in a big city. There are a lot of Yanks, Brits and Aussies in the hostel and everyone shares tips on St P, Moscow, Finland and the Baltic states because most are doing the same itinerary in a slightly different order. The current third member of my room is Mike from Sydney. He says he’s a DJ and he’s obviously managed to make money out of it from working in London but i’m immediately sceptical of anyone who has a job involving only initials (perhaps that’s because mine would be WANCA … Waiter At the National wine Centre of Australia). Anyway, he’s already been to Tallinn and Riga and has been really great with giving me some maps and tips for places to go to.

The Hermitage was as amazing and spectacular as i’d hoped. the building itself is awe inspiring and enormous (over one thousand rooms). The exhibitions are also just as remarkable … four rooms of Matisse, two for Picasso, two for Monet, two for Cezanne one for Kandinsky, one for Gauguin, several for Japanese art, halls of Ancient marble statues, prehistoric finds, glassware, ceramics, jewellery, Renaissance art, Romantic art etc etc etc … Simply the most beautiful place i’ve ever been to. I took a shitload of photos, so you’ll see what i mean, words don’t do the place justice … nor does two whole days, you need at least a whole month in there to fully appreciate it.

The tap water in St P is wrong. Giardia (spelling?) makes it good for washing with but nothing else. You even have to brush your teeth with bottled water. To top this off, the entire country’s hot water system (it’s centralised) has been switched off from June 1st to 3rd for servicing. This happens every year during the summer. My hostel doesn’t have a backup system, so i’m either going to exarcebate my cold (minor thing, mum, don’t fret) with cold showers or get smelly (or smellier). Plus, the hostel has no laundry and the city has only one laundrette, on the other side of town, so i’m hanging out for Estonia … and hoping that they have a better relationship with the concept of ‘washing machine’ and ‘hot water’.

Alcohol is ubiquitous here. Every second Russian man you see in the street is walking around with a beer bottle. A decent bottle of vodka costs 70 rubles (about $3.50) so that might explain the decline of the Soviet state.

Today we went on a day-trip to Peterhoff. Wondrously serene gardens, apart from the bussed-in tourists, and huge fountains, plus a few ridiculously opulent palaces thrown into the mix. Hitler wanted to throw a big New Year’s eve party in these palaces during the siege of St P in WWII but Stalin bombed the place just so he couldn’t, add to that the destruction those naughty Nazis did to the rooms and it’s been a long, expensive process to restore the place from photos, paintings and anecdotal evidence. For fundraising there were several small musical ensembles fitted out in 18th century clothes playing music in different corners of the garden, which was good, though even the most ardent Nino Rota fans would have been somewhat bemused by one of the trumpet duos’ rendition of the Godfather theme … seemed somewhat anachronistic and out of place to me. Today was a beautiful summery day as well, so it was the perfect day for a relaxing stroll and hydrofoil trip out of the city on the Neva.

The metro stations here are brilliant … seriously deep under ground and clad in marble and granite, with ornate columns, masonry and metal work. Some have some very agit-prop constructivist Soviet gear as well, for those of you doing art history.

Food. I wasn’t expecting much and i haven’t been disappointed. Fresh fruit and vegetables are a rarity on any menu and tend to look a little worse for wear at stalls and grocers. However, ‘bliny’ (Russian crepes) are a great gap-filler and ‘pelmeni’ (Siberian ravioli) is very tasty and cheap … four of us had a big dinner at this great little pelmeni place for 250 rubles (less than $4 each). Tonight, we went a bit upmarket to a restaurant highly recommended by Lonely Planet. The place had a great ambience with subtle decor, modern artwork and a duo of pianist and violin (thumping out some very cool solos over some jazz standards) and the food was very good too.

As you might have guessed, i love this place. You need time to get used to the very particular way that things work here in Russia and you need time to see everything around, but it’s well worth it.