St. Petersburg, Russia – 09/05 – General Thoughts on St. P

(Michelle) There is so much beautiful architecture in St. Petersburg and the city seems to be very busy and, other than the airport, generally upbeat. There is a small list of things I saw here that I have not seen in any other city so far on this trip.

1. Many people wearing big signs over their body along the main street. Since I could not read them, I am not sure if they were advertisement or political… Probably advertisement, but I’m really not sure.
   
2. Customer service – It tops the list as the worst we have seen so far. We really made a strong effort to speak a little Russian and we weren’t feeling the love. It was not just at the train station and with the apartment lady, we were also ignored at coffee shops and convenient stores as well. Not to say that there are not warm and hospitable people in Russia, as we had some wonderful experiences later on, but this comment is only in regards to people we encountered actually working in public service. Either they are all extremely disgruntled in general, or they really hate foreigners… or maybe it was us??


3. I was far from fitting in as far as fashion goes. That is generally true everywhere and is not special to being in Russia, but the fashion accessories missing from my wardrobe were different here than in other places. Missing items included, crazy hair dye, fishnet or print pantyhose, really high heels and Capri cigarettes. Some very beautiful women were making appearances with all of the above. I wish I had a photo, but it is rude to take pictures of people without asking first and that was something I had not learned how to say in Russian yet.
   

(TJ) Generally I really enjoyed St. Petersburg, despite some crap service from our hotel and the train service. You can definetly tell there are some people here who have some serious money. There was no shortage of Porche’s, Mercedes (all over the streets) and a Lamborgini or two that we saw. I think the people definitely like to flaunt what they have in clothing or cars. I also think that this may breed a bit of animosity by some people in the service industry who hate dealing with these people who just flaunt how well off they are.

St. Petersburg, Russia – 09/05

(Michelle) We went out today with Rebecca and Dan to check out some of the local sites. The first stop was the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera). An odd little museum that starts off talking about Eskimos, Native Americans (neither the Eskimo or Native American exhibits had any English), some African Tribes (translated fully in English), and some other rooms like that. Then you walk into the main exhibit of the museum, at least I assume it is the main exhibit as it was part of the original museum created by Peter the Great in 1714. It is a room of crazy deformed things, embalmed forever so we can all see the preserved freaks that Peter spent much time studying. A lot of two headed fetuses, both human and animal, and other odd items included. Peter worked with Dutch doctors to try to get the message out that “freaks” weren’t so abnormal.

Keeping the focus on dead historical bodies, we moved on to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, to see the final resting place of nearly all of the pre-revolutionary Russian Tsars (with the exception of Peter II and Ivan VI). The cathedral is actually in the Peter and Paul Fortress with other activities, but unfortunately they are all closed on Wednesdays.

We also took a stroll through the Summer Garden (the Garden outside the Summer Palace), looked at a market outside of the “Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood” and we went into the Kazan Cathedral. Compared to The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, the Kazan Cathedral is not spectacular in the same sense, but it is still a church that holds mass and we arrived just before the 6 pm mass. Women cover their head in the Russian Orthodox church, so I headed towards the rear to stay out of sight. The thing that struck me in this church was that there were no seats… Since this was the only church we actually went into in Russia, I am not sure if it the standing business was common (yes it’s the norm, TJ comment). There was also a lot of singing, but not singing like I am used to in recent US Catholic churches. There is no separate choir, but the mass is sung by the priest. I have heard a priest sing before (almost always off key), but generally it was only for certain specific parts of the mass. We only stayed for about 10 minutes, but he was singing in a rather monotone fashion the whole time.

(TJ) The Kunstkamera should be a must see on any tour of St. Petersburg, it was what I imagine it would be like to go to Barnum and Baily’s house of freaks. I was pretty surprised that these pickled things had kept for so long. Apparently it’s a secret embalming formula that has been lost to time. Russians have a talent when it comes to preserving dead things and putting them on public display. The curiosity room also had some rarities such as unicorn horns, mermaids and alien bodies (just kidding). There was also a room devoted to Peter the Great. It had various outfits and some of his personal effects. I think he had trained in the Netherlands as a shipwright so we saw his carpentry kit and also saw some metal that he had forged since he also trained as a blacksmith. They also had his death mask which was interesting to compare to the various portraits and movies. The anthropology portion of the museum was also very interesting. The display’s on Eskimo’s other Indians was impressive and very old. I’m not sure how they got all this Eskimo and Indian garb and tools and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. They had all sorts Eskimo harpoons made of whale bone, capes made of seals, rain ponchos that were almost clear made from what I have no idea and the Eskimos themselves (don’t worry they were manaquins not stuffed Eskimos). The only complaint for this portion was that it was all in Russian, how dare they!, we could only make hypothesis on what some of the stranger items were used for. Actually, my other complaint is the pricing structure, foreigners pay double the local price, so it was like $10 to go in. It was worth it, but $5 would have been better.

Later in the day everyone wanted to see the Church of the spilled blood that I had already seen (attached is a picture of us in front of the spilled blood church). It was still cool to look at the second time around. On our way back we stopped at the Kazan Cathedral. This church was built to honor Russia’s victory over Napolean. I’d call the church rather dark. On the walls are bejeweled portraits of Christ, disciples and saints. Most people buy candles and walk around the church lighting candles and praying to these pictures. Despite it being built to honor the victory the only thing that I could find in the church that related to the victory were the captured battle standards that were in one corner of the church that have probably been there for 190 years.

St. Petersburg, Russia – 09/04 After the train tickets

(Michelle) By the time we left the train station, we went to get a little lunch at a guidebook recommended café called Bliny Domik. Bliny is a Russian staple that I cannot really distinguish from a crepe, but I like anything in the pancake family so I was enjoying my bliny. TJ had some sort of hardier Russian dish that he liked.

After lunch I was not feeling so hot (even though the food was good). I decided to forgo any sightseeing and take a rest. TJ took a stroll around the city on his own. After my rest and having a good comfort food meal from Subway, I was feeling better. (The photo is a random church across the street from the restaurant we had lunch at).

That night, we hung out with our roommates with a few drinks and cards. Rebecca knows the same card game I used to play with my family called ‘Oh Hell’ (Nadirah and Nathan – this is the game we taught you guys in France). So we played that for a while. We may have also played some President, A**hole. It was a late night

(TJ) Once we had made it through the initial train debacle I was able to wander the streets of St. Petersburg since Michelle’s stomach had enough of Russia for one day. It’s a great city to just be able to stroll around. The architecture is great, around Nevsky Prospekt all of the buildings must be at least 100 years old if not older. This part of town reminded me a bit of Amsterdam since there are many canals all over the city and a bit of Berlin. I say Berlin because many of row houses looked similar, 4-5 stories tall with symmetrical windows on the street facing side, structures of brick with a painted stucco with stucco columns and other exterior embellishments. The difference between the two cities is that the houses in Berlin are in state of disrepair for the most part where as in St. Petersburg the majority of the houses were in good condition.

The first major landmark that I ran in to was the Church of the Spilled Blood. What a great name, why don’t more churches have dark names like this. The church commemorates the site where in 1881 one of the czar’s was assassinated. I just saw the exterior of the church and it’s quite cool to look at. It has the onion domes that you would typically associate with a Russian church. The part that was cooler was the mosaics on the exterior that depict scenes out of the bible. I have attached a photo of the mosaics.

I next walked along the river and ended up walking around the Winter palace, former home of the royal family and current home of the Hermatige museum. I also took a ton of pictures of the exterior of the Hermatige and the mammoth square that in the front of the Winter Palace. It quite a site to take a look around, the architecture combined with the scale is amazing, check out the pictures.

St. Petersburg, Russia – 09/04 The Train Tickets

(Michelle) We started the day by trying to get train tickets for our journey through Russia. Based on research we had done in advance for buying tickets in Russia, we were aware of the fact that there was no chance we would encounter anyone who spoke English, so we wrote out in Russian exactly what we were looking for. We entered the building to find about 20 different windows, all with long lines, and we couldn’t find anything that distinguished one line from the next… How do we know what line to stand in? The only sign that had any English on it at all was the information line, so we thought that might be a good place to start. After waiting in line for about 15 minutes (and experiencing our first line cutters… this would be a constant theme throughout the country) we got to the window and handed her our paper (which had written in Russian “do you know where we can buy the following train tickets….”). The woman said nothing and just shook her head no. ???? Ok. So we backed away to reassess. There were two information windows so we sneakily got into the other line while sort of hiding from scary info woman number one. We handed this woman our paper and she used hand gestures to (what we thought) indicate that we had to go downstairs to by these tickets… Now we are getting somewhere. So TJ and I walk around the building looking in every corner for a way to get downstairs. We soon realized that there was no downstairs. So perhaps her hand gesture was really just Russian for buzz off. We reassessed again. Looking in our guidebook for any possible assistance, it mentioned that there is usually a separate office that will charge a few more dollars per ticket but you avoid the lines and sometimes they can speak English…. Interesting.. We see a room that appears to be this place. There was one person inside who spoke a little English, but she just pointed us to another woman who didn’t and then she ignored us. This new woman was able to help us purchase tickets by taking what we wrote and pointing to various things on her computer screen – like times of departure and seat type. She could only sell us the first leg of the train trip, St. Petersburg to Moscow, but at least we got that.

(TJ) After a while you just had to laugh at the situation for buying the train tickets. You wait in these long lines and people are talking to the ticket agents for 25-30 minutes, what in the hell are they talking about. Meanwhile you’re eyeing the customers around you suspiciously waiting for someone to try to cut in front of you. Then you start thinking about why you are waiting again. Where is the person currently at the front of the line going such that it takes 30 minutes to buy a ticket? It’s A to B; here are the options ….pick! It is the worst ticketing system that I have seen anywhere. Added to the wait time is the nice trick of when the ticket attendants would take 15 minute breaks and just disappear while there is 40 some people in line for their window or they would just close up shop with 40 people in front of their window. Sorry tuff sh*t you chose your line unwisely. The customer service does not stop there; it just begins when you get to the front of the line. You could write anything in Russian and they just look at you and tell you to go screw yourself. The real question is how they are going to do it when you get to the front of the line. Are they A.) going to look at your paper and point in a general direction, typically the wrong location but sometimes the correct direction with a hint of condescension B.) going to pretend that you do not exist and look for the customer behind you, or C.) will start to communicate and someone else will rush up, cut in front of you, curse you and just start shouting at the ticket agent before you cold cock that person and proceed to buy your ticket. This is pretty much standard operating procedure for Russian train ticket booths. Generally it you will go through all three (A through C) before you are able to make your purchase. By the end you immediately purchase a bottle of vodka and begin drinking before you leave the store.

St. Petersburg, Russia – Nevsky Prospekt Apartments

(Michelle) Before getting to St. Petersburg, we searched hostelworld.com for hostels in St. Petersburg but reading the reviews for the hostels made them all out to be a little (or a lot) sketchy. There was, however, a different option listed on the hostel website that was something called the Nevsky Prospekt Apartments. This was a company that had various apartments throughout town (mostly off of the main drag of Nevsky Prospekt) that you could rent for as short as two nights (we were staying for 3 nights). The price was about $30 more in total than the cost would be for the two of us at a hostel, but on the upside, they stated on their information page that they registered visas for free.
In Russia, for any town you visit for 3 or more business days, you have to register your visa and allegedly it is really hard for a foreigner to figure out on their own, so most hostels/hotels will do it for you. Some offer it for free and others offer it for a cost. We learned later on in our trip that is likely illegal for them to charge you because they are also required by law to register you, but as an outsider, I’m not really sure how you fight that battle. Because it sounded nicer/more interesting and because they offered free visa registration, we decided to splurge a little and booked with them.
So when we arrived at their main office to check in, she gave us a map to the apartment, the keys and the codes to get in and then asked us if we wanted them to register our visas…. For $25 each. What? Your ad on ‘hostelworld’ says you register visas for free. She then explained to us the loophole in the language they used on the website, which was total bullsh*t and we tried to argue for a while, but we were stuck at this point, so we paid it.
So we left their office, and trekked down Nevsky Prospekt (taking a random bus on the way) to find our apartment. We didn’t pay the extra for a private apartment, so we knew that we would likely be sharing the apartment with at least one other person. When we arrived, we met our new roommates, Dan and Rebecca from New Zealand. They were really nice and the perfect roommates for us. They had been there a couple of days and didn’t think they would get any roommates… the reason being that the other bedroom (our room) didn’t have a BED in it. It was a couch that turned out to be a pull out couch of sorts, but not really as there was no mattress (just really hard cushions), the cushions didn’t fit together (so you fall between the cracks) and there were no pillows. Any of the sketchy hostels would have had a much better “bed” than this. In addition, our roommates were paying less than us and they had a proper bed in their room. So we decided we needed to discuss this with the management. We were supposed to call her anyway at some point to arrange a meeting time for checking out, so we were counting on the phone working. Of course, the phone did not work at all. So we went back down to the office to inform her that the phone wasn’t working and to tell her that bed situation was pretty ridiculous. Smiling the whole time (as she did when we were discussing the visa registration issue – she is truly a work of art) she told us that nobody else had ever complained about the bed before and she really couldn’t do anything for us. Since we had to pay up front, there was nothing else we could do either.
Our woes with the crazy apartment lady were unfortunately not quite over. Two mornings later we woke up to find the electricity off. Dan found that out after he had already started prepping for breakfast (beating eggs in a bowl, etc.). Since the phone was fixed, we were able to call to enquire about the electricity. She was going to send an electrician over right away, so the four of us went out for the day to do some sight seeing. Of course upon returning that evening there was still no electricity and no sign that anyone had even been there. So we phoned again to enquire. After 30 minutes of trying to call, she finally answers the phone. When we mention to her that the electricity is still off, she says in her characteristic upbeat voice with a hint of surprise that we were even calling, ‘yes, the electrician couldn’t fix it so they have to send somebody else tomorrow’. We explained to her the number of reasons why that wasn’t ok (does that really need to be explained). In addition to how much we had paid to stay there (expecting a certain level of service with that price, like basic utilities), we also were losing the food we had bought that we would not be able to eat. When I explained this to her, she said – “can’t you just go to the nice deli on the corner?” Well, yes we could, but the point being that we already spent money on food and are you planning to pay us for that? Of course not. So she finally offered to move us to new apartments. She didn’t have anything that the four of us could go to together, so we had to separate from our roommates. For us, we ended up in a decent upgrade one bedroom place, but unfortunately for Dan and Rebecca – they ended up with a place that had some issues of it’s own.
Dan and Rebecca came over to our new place for dinner and some card games later on and we had a lot of laughs about the Nevsky Prospekt Apartments experience.

(TJ) I hate Nevsky Prospekt apartments, it’s the opposite of customer service, with a smile. I recommend them just so you can have true understanding of how different expectations are in some parts of the world. You want a bed, with sheets?, but you only reserved a room, no? Electricity, come now we must not be too greedy, you’re only paying 60 Euro’s? Free Visa service, no no no you don’t understand what that means, don’t you understand English? Fortunately I had some Vodka to handle the situation like a Russian and fought the urge to break it over her head.

St. Petersburg, Russia – 09/03

(Michelle) Our flight left Istanbul at 2am and arrived in St. Petersburg at 6:15am. We were the first flight in that day, there weren’t many people on the flight and the airport in St. Petersburg is pretty small. Add in a completely overcast morning and a remote location where only 2 shady looking taxi drivers are waiting outside having a cigarette in front of their 1980 standard issue communist taxis and I thought… Could this be anymore of the exact scene my crazy imagination would have dreamt up before arriving here. How often does that happen?
We were planning to save on what was sure to be a “foreigner” priced taxi ride (probably around $35) by taking the bus (around 50cents). Following our LP guide, we waited by the sign the book said to wait by for the proper bus. After about 30 minutes, no bus came to our sign, but we had seen a whole bunch come and go one sign over. They all have to be going into St. Petersburg, right? So we just get on a random bus. The bus did not, however, go far enough into the city so that we could locate our position on a map and pretty soon we were at the end of the line for this bus and we had no idea where we were. I think we pretty much witnessed all of suburbia St. Petersburg get up and at em’ for a Monday morning at work, which was somewhat interesting.
At this point, the bus driver is trying to tell us (in Russian) where we need to go to get to the metro. We give him the “I have no idea what he is saying nod and smile" and start walking where he was pointing. Somehow we managed to get on another bus that happened to pass by a metro stop. Yes! No matter what language barriers there may be, we have yet to find a train system that we can’t quickly figure out on our own. It is now about 8:30 and while we know which train and direction we would like to go, there is no way we are fitting on this train during Monday morning rush hour with our big packs (the crowd’s pushing and shoving starts well before you even get to the tracks). We decide it’s best to just wait out the rush in the McDonald’s upstairs. While TJ rushed up to order his food with the point at the sign method, I was eager to start practicing some basic Russian and was very proud that after 20 minutes of practice beforehand, I successfully verbally ordered my zavtrak.
So about 11am after pretty much 2 hours of sleep on the plane, we arrive at the office building for the “Nevsky Prospekt Apartments”. I’ll write a separate entry on that whole experience (it spans several days). After our apartment business was sorted out (or not sorted out as the case may be), we went to a coffee shop to try to plot out our entire train ride throughout Russia. Our apartment was very close to the biggest place you can buy train tickets in St. Petersburg and while we doubted it was possible, we were hoping we could buy more than one leg of the trip at this location and we wanted to be prepared for the possibility. This was a fruitless effort because after getting barely any sleep the night before, I could not possibly read the guidebook to decide where I wanted to go. My eyes started to glass over and I nearly passed out on the table. So it was nappy time.
Since we had a kitchen where we were staying, we wanted to take advantage of it - St. Petersburg and Moscow are expensive cities. After a short rest, we attempted to cruise some of the local grocery stores for supplies. We probably went to 5 different places. They were all small convenient stores, no fruits or veggies, and the food there was very bizarre. Even if it was stuff we would have possibly liked, it’s not like I could read the cooking instructions written in Russian (TJ comment… how dare they!). We managed to choose a few random things and a few bottles of Russian vodka and headed back to the apartment.

(TJ) I have to admit on landing in St. Petersburg the scene outside the terminal was definitely reminiscent of your stereotypical surroundings for Soviet Russia. It was raining, there were a few people outside all of whom were smoking/drinking, no one was smiling and there was a bitterly cold wind blowing. It was just the kind of welcome that I’ve been dreaming about all of these years. As you read, our bus and train experience went ever so smoothly, why have any reliable public transportation link from the airport? Screw ‘em if they have enough money to fly, let the taxi drivers pillage them at will. Welcome to Russia, where we don’t give a damn and you’ll pay anyway.

We are still in Vietnam

Do we have any readers left? We have been delinquent on posting. We are writing again and will have some stories from St. Petersburg and Moscow in the next day or two. It has been fun writing about Russia as I could relive the interesting experience that we had there.
We are still in Vietnam and will be for the next couple of months. We are working on a number of things here. I am taking Yoga and Tai Chi classes, while TJ has been running out in the bush (in an organized running trip, not on his own) and also participated in a weekend long Ultimate Frisbee tournament. Also ,we have been working. TJ teaches English classes for two different companies and I am tutoring individual students on their English homework.