Four months, five hostels, six countries, seven trains, and 11 flights later – I’m home! It’s great to be back, and of course a little strange to understand everything on the streets and sleep in a bed.
That’s probably it for this travel blog, even though I was advised to continue writing in order to battle “reverse culture shock.” I think some good Mexican food will fix me up, though.
Today was our last day of classes and tomorrow afternoon I’m flying out of Russia! I’m heading to Budapest, Hungary and spending three nights there, then flying to Los Angeles on May 25. I’ve come up with a list of things, with the help of some friends, that I’ll be missing about Russia:
So you may think that these are all sarcastic and cynical, which is partly true, but there’s still a lot of truth to all these things I’ll miss. I’ve had a great time in Russia, and I’ve become so used to all its quirks. None of us came here to be in our comfort zones, in fact this country doesn’t even effect anything close to a comfort zone. I came to Russia – not Britain, not Spain, not Australia – and maybe I didn’t really know exactly what I was getting into, but it’s all been worth it.
I’ve already had to say goodbye to my host dad, and I know saying bye to my host mom tomorrow will be even harder! They essentially MADE my stay in Russia, and I knew it wouldn’t have been the same without a caring host family. Here are a couple photos with my host parents Andrey and Svetlana and one with the cat/queen Yassa:
The first week we were here CIEE staff told us “nothing goes according to plan in Russia,” and now I know exactly what they meant. It’s been real, Russia, and I hope to be back sometime in the future.
(Moscow: The Second Chapter) This past weekend was my final weekend in Russia, and I decided I didn’t want to spend it wondering aroudn Petersburg as usual. So, I went to Moscow! Nobody really wanted to join so I was having second thoughts about going, but in the end I didn’t let it stop me and just went by myself. Although I got bored from traveling alone at times, I got to do everything on my own schedule and I’m really glad I went.
Last time I was in Moscow most of the two days were spent on tours (I spent our third “free day” in Warsaw instead), so there was still a lot I wanted to see. When I arrived, the first thing I did was go to Red Square. I don’t think going there can ever get old – it’s just an amazing place to be, and this weekend I spent a good several hours just sitting at the gates.
I spent the rest of Friday exploring with no real concrete place to go. In the afternoon I made it to Moscow University, which is probably my favorite building ever. The view from up there is gerat too, and it allowed me to “take in” Moscow again. I got horribly lost trying to find my way back from the university – the closest metro station is literally in a forest with no paved street leading up to it, and it’s suspended over a river. Sure you get a nice view from the station… but come on, it’s the Moscow metro.
At the end of the day I went back to my hostel, which was actually quite bad. At least the other people in my room were interesting – two guys from Greece on vacation, one guy from Irkutsk (in Siberia) getting an American visa so he can work in Cleveland this summer, and a couple from Ireland backpacking around the world (I caught them at the very start of their trip, which is going to last 2 years, ending in South America… brave or crazy?)
After little to no sleep in the noisy hostel (I got to brush up on my Spanish listening to my neighbor on his webcam) I spent Saturday completing several tasks. The first mission to complete was the most important thing anybody visiting Russia must do: see Lenin! I walked over to the mausoleum on Red Square early and waited in line for 30 minutes before being let in. My host mom said in the Soviet days it was impossible to get in without waiting a couple hours – now his body’s more of a novelty. I’ll admit, I was creeped out. When you first see his body you want to think it’s a wax figure (and after years of restorations, it might already be one), but you know that it’s a preserved version of an actual person… this man that died 86 years ago is lying down in front of you. In ten years half of Russia’s communist party will probably have died out and they’ll eventually bury Lenin, so this was definitely a must-see.
I followed up my spooky encounter with a trip inside St. Basil’s Cathedral (you know, the building with the colorful swirly tops). There’s not much inside besides really old paintings of icons, and I didn’t take the time to read all the descriptions, but I enjoyed the views of Red Square from the top floor.
After I somehow managed to blow $20 for lunch at Sbarro, I went souvenir shopping, which is considerably cheaper in Moscow than in Petersburg. I got a bunch of small things for myself and gifts for some of you dearest readers. I got some pretty cool Soviet pins from this old man for about $2, including one of Lenin that says “Always ready!” and another of Yerevan from the Armenian SSR. The rest of the souvenirs are surprises for those who shall receive them…
Later on I decided to go to Park Pobedy (Victory Park). In Petersburg, this is literally a park so I wasn’t sure what to expect in the Moscow version. Essentially, it’s not a park at all – it’s a long strip of fountains that lead up to a massive monument to Soviet victory in World War II. The monument is one of the nicest I’ve seen in Russia, there is highly detailed artwork carved on all sides naming off the twelve “hero cities” of the USSR and depicting scenes from the war. Behind the monument is the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, which is one of the interesting museums I’ve visited. The exhibitions are filled with anything WWII – propaganda posters, flags, uniforms, pins, and weapons from Soviet, Nazi, British, and American troops. There was a special exhibit going on for the 65th anniversary of the end of the war, which was mostly just art glorifying Stalin. The sheer amount of memorabilia in this museum kept in tact from the war is amazing, and there’s an entire room dedicated to a list of names of the USSR citizens that died in the war.
I went to the area behind the museum, which was mostly just a haven for roller skaters – the glorious smell of shashlik (shish kebab) was beckoning me, though. Some nice outdoor-grilled lamb shashlik went well with the windy weather that was concluding the ridiculously hot day.
Saturday night was known as Night of Museums for most of Europe, and Russia was participating. I went to a couple museums, which were open for free from 7:00PM til 2:00AM, but the lines were ridiculously long. No matter how obscure the museum was, a good number of the 12 million people in Moscow had the same idea. I wasn’t too upset that I couldn’t partake though, I’ve been visiting museums for the past four months and I think I’ve had my fill. Instead I sat around Red Square until midnight, it’s a really great sight when the sun sets and the lights go on.
I flew back to Petersburg first thing the next morning and spent Sunday watching soccer with my host dad – club Zenit from Petersburg won the Russian Cup! This week I’ve got final exams, a CIEE closing ceremony, a boat tour, and a flight to Budapest…
“Happy Victory Day!” This weekend Russia celebrated one of its biggest holidays – Victory Day, May 9, the commemoration of the end of World War II on the Eastern Front (May 9, 1945) and victory for the Soviet Union. For weeks the city had been slowly transforming into a celebration on the streets – every lamp post sported the Russian flag and the “Victory Banner” the Red Army planted in Berlin. The roads were also lined with orange and black banners, hammer and sickle emblems, and anything else you could stick the number 65 on.
Unfortunately you need to be invited to watch the main celebration in Palace Square and I’m apparently not important enough in this country yet to get one of those invitations. Instead I walked around the crowded streets of the city, getting stuck at every corner where a line of trucks and cops stopped people from going any further. From the looks of it on the street, Victory Day is an opportunity for veterans to display their honors proudly and get praises of gratitude from other elders, and it’s an opportunity for young people to get absolutely drunk at 11am.
After lunch I was too tired from walking to continue the celebration, but there was a veteran march down the main road in Petersburg and of course a communist rally (portraits of Stalin being toted down the street included). The day ended with a fireworks display at night, which I went to go watch. Our spots were pretty much directly under the fireworks so I don’t have any exciting photos to share, but it was nice watching the “salut” over the river in the slightly dim 10pm sky.
I’m pretty amazed how little time I have left in Russia – just 12 more days. I’m going to try and make the most out of these days, so forgive me if I fall behind on blog posts!
Last week for me spanned about 300 years of Russianness, which I’ll retell in historically chronological order instead of the order in which they happened, just for kicks.
This weekend I had the urge to leave Petersburg – I didn’t really care where to, I just didn’t want to spend another weekend roaming around the same parts of town. I opened up Google Maps and found an island sitting in the Finnish Gulf a little ways away from Petersburg’s center and figured that’s as good a place as any. After actually reading up on the island and its main city Kronstadt, I learned it has some historical value – it’s Peter the Great’s lovechild with the Russian navy, built in the early 18th century.
The bus ride out there was around 45 minutes, and it was nice having a view of the Finnish Gulf that wasn’t tarnished by fat, old Russians in speedos. Unfortunately the main attraction on the island is currently being repaired and looked like a circus and/or house under fumigation. But there were some other slightly interesting things on the island, including a statue of Lenin, which made up for it.
Plus, I got to improve my chi:
Next up on our timeline is the CIEE Ball! Our study abroad organization put together a ball for all students, teachers, and Russian friends of ours. The best part was that the ball was 19th century-themed, and we were given awesome costumes to wear. I got a costume called “Marquis,” but it looked more like a flamboyant British aristocrat in his pajamas.
We had some dancing lessons for the ball, so I learned some dance I won’t attempt to spell and also the polka. By “learned” I actually mean “watched and poorly imitated,” but that was true for 90% of us anyway. There was a professional photographer at the ball so there will be many photos soon to come, but for now here’s a photo of my regal self and my two serfs:
Now as a stark contrast to my 19th century adventure, we arrive at the 20th century on April 22, Vladimir Lenin’s birthday! The largest statue of Lenin in Petersburg was reopened at “Ploshchad Lenina” earlier last week after being gone for about a year due to someone throwing a bomb at it and exploding a hole in Lenin’s butt. I knew that there had to be something going on around the statue to celebrate his birthday, so on the morning of the 22nd I looked into it and saw there’d be a meeting of Petersburg communists there. I decided to go because really… how often do you get to go to a communist rally?
There were more people there than I expected, although the turn-out was still pretty bleak for an entire political party. The communist parties in Russia are all extremely weak now and are normally associated with older people (and rightfully so, 70% of the people at this rally had white hair). There was a small group of university students there which I was about to approach until I saw that their flag proudly displayed an AK-47.
I got to talking with an old woman who was a little disappointed when I revealed I’m not Russian and can’t vote for her party. I didn’t really have much to say to her but it was interesting listening to her views, even though they were a bit intense. She was convinced that everybody at the rally was pitiful and all they wanted was more money. She said that Russia doesn’t need Putin, Medvedev, or even Lenin – they need Stalin! He really got things done! She was clearly looking for some support on her call for a new Stalin, which I couldn’t really agree with or comment on, so she just resorted to repeating “I am right! I am right…”. The meeting ended with a presentation of flowers at the foot of Lenin’s statue.
And so ends my journey through time. On Friday classes are cancelled and instead we’re going on a weekend trip out of Petersburg to the city of Pskov. Monday is also a day off, so I foresee a lovely long weekend ahead.
Today I unintentionally took a photo that looks a lot like one I took in my first week in St. Petersburg, and it turned out to be a good before-and-after shot showing how much two months has changed the city:
So remember how I mentioned that St. Petersburg magically changed sometime during my spring break? Well, it has surprisingly kept up that sort of weather, and I’m beginning to understand how living in this city can be tolerable.
Never have I considered 30 degrees to be warm and 50 to be hot, but I guess I’ve adapted! The canals and rivers have water flowing through them now, and the sun shines for most of the day.
The days here are getting longer, and “white nights” (when the sun is out past midnight) are approaching. It’s not 20 hours of depressing weather anymore and once they open up more parks around the city, relaxing outdoors might almost be… pleasant!
I’m finally back in St. Petersburg, and it’s definitely a good feeling to be back. It’s just nice to be in a familiar area after about a week outside my “comfort zone” (I use this term loosely because Petersburg can hardly be considered inside any comfort zone). I’ve written a lot about my week’s journeys, and I tried to break it up with photos to not completely bore you…
We caught the night train at 11:00 on Thursday March 25 to Moscow from Moskovskiy vokzal in Petersburg. I knew that the trip wouldn’t be too pleasant – nothing about a seven hour night train appeals to me. I roomed with three others in a cramped coupe and ended up trying to sleep around 2:30, fully knowing that I would get no sleep and would end up having a loooong day in Moscow. I just don’t sleep well on transport.
When we got into Leningradskiy vokzal in Moscow, the first thing we did was drive to our hotel. I think it took about five minutes on that bus for me to fall in love with Moscow. It’s a difficult love to explain because the city is really dirty, its pedestrians are thuggish, and there’s very little culturally historical about it. All of that refreshed me though, Moscow was a great contrast to Petersburg, and it came at the perfect time.
The architecture was one of my favorite parts – some people were calling it socialist realism, I’m not really sure if that’s an official term but it fits. Tall, concrete, gothic-looking buildings tower over the Moscow landscape, seven of which are topped with red stars. Almost every official building has hammer and sickle and star emblems decorating the outer walls. I’m not sure if these kinds of things were too expensive to remove, but a lot from the USSR remains in Moscow and it gives the city an extremely soviet feel. Statues to Marks, Engels, and Lenin scattered throughout the city also contribute to that.
After breakfast at the Holiday Inn we took a city tour in the bus. We went to the typical tourist stop of Red Square and some other spots like Swan Lake and Moscow University. The university’s main building is amazing – it’s this freaky star-topped building sitting on a hill overlooking all of downtown Moscow. I wouldn’t mind going to school there.
After the bus tour we had some free time and decided to spend it exploring the city and its insanely extensive metro system. We took the metro to Oktyabrskaya station, where a statue of Lenin would most definitely have to be standing (and it was). After that we went to a Georgian restaurant for dinner, where I had some great dolma!
The next day in Moscow was dedicated to a visit to the Kremlin. We went inside the Kremlin’s walls and got tours of its various buildings including the church where all Russian tsars were crowned. The Kremlin is surrounded by red star-topped buildings, so that of course made my day.
After the tour and a trip to a Russian art museum, we rested up at the hotel. Although our flight to Warsaw was on Sunday morning, the cheapest and easiest way for Dan, Zoltan, and I to get to the Moscow airport required us to leave the hotel at 11:00pm Saturday night. Our flight was at 7:00am so you can imagine the wonderful night we had in the airport. Luckily Daylight Savings Time got rid of an hour for us. Sunday morning we got onto our plane all glazy-eyed, and our official travel week began.
I spent most of our one hour forty minute flight to Riga, Latvia asleep. The only thing I remember was the stewardess waking me up to ask something in Russian. I was so out of it all I could bring myself to say was “Ya ne ponimayu” (I don’t understand) and with that I ended up with a disgusting sandwich in front of me. I was still in a daze when the food was being taken away because I spilled black tea all over my jeans. When the guy next to me came back from the bathroom, he sat in a different row.
We landed in Riga and regret quickly sank in for me. The view from above was so depressing. On the tarmac we were poured on by rain. I was imagining everybody else in the warmth of Greece and Egypt and immediately asked myself what I was doing here. Luckily we found a pizza shop where we bought a monstrous pepperoni pizza at 9:30am – that kept me out of spiraling depression for a bit. In the airport terminal we met a Polish guy named Adam who was really interested in telling us everything about Warsaw, including its nightlife and women. That wasn’t the last of Adam though…
After picking up our luggage and getting some Polish zlotychs from the currency exchange, we walked outside the airport with absolutely no idea what to do next. All of a sudden Adam shows up and decides to get us to where we need to go. We violated the first rule of mothers all over the world and followed this guy. We got on a bus that would go to the center of the city – when I asked Adam how we pay for the bus, he said that if someone asks for my ticket I should speak to them in Spanish and they’d go away. The look on Dan’s face at that moment was priceless, we were all realizing that Adam was a very weird person. After the free bus ride, we took a free tram ride and a free metro ride. I asked Adam to help us get to the train station so we could buy tickets to Vilnius – we wanted to go to our hostel too, but we had enough sense to lie to him in the airport and say we didn’t have a hostel yet. During our free metro ride, after Adam called the accordion player of a minority ethnicity a thief, we decided it was time to ditch Adam. I suggested to Dan that we jump out of the metro car at the wrong station right before the doors close, but there’s no way we would have pulled that off correctly, and Zoltan probably would’ve been stuck with Adam still. When we got out of the metro and Adam had no idea where he was going, I told him we didn’t want to follow him anymore. He didn’t seem to distraught about it, he completely understood and walked off into the distance alone. We decided he was most definitely a serial killer.
The sense of freedom we felt when Adam left was pretty sad, we were acting like slaves. Later upon reflection though, we decided that without this serial killer we would’ve had no idea how to get to our hostel. At least he showed us to the metro – I already knew our hostel’s stop and we got there in 15 minutes. This was the first hostel experience for all three of us, and we were all really impressed. The hostel was very clean, the staff was extremely accommodating, and it was perfectly located in the center of Warsaw.
After settling down in our room we went out for a walk to some monuments and then lunch. At lunch we quickly realized how absurdly cheap this country was. The American dollar goes far in Poland, especially for food! After lunch we walked around the old part of town, all squares and cobblestone streets. It was Palm Sunday, so there were a lot of celebrations going on. We essentially kept exploring until dinner, which was none other than Polish sausage! The terrible airport sleep earlier made us exhausted at this point, so we got back to the hostel and slept for 12 hours.
When we woke up after that glorious sleep, it was Monday and we had some business to get down to. First we had to buy our ticket out of Warsaw for Wednesday and we also wanted to take a day trip to the city of Krakow. We rented bikes from the hostel and set out to the train stations. The station that sells tickets to Vilnius was part of a district called Praga. I was a bit unimpressed by Praga, I was expecting an old-style unrestored district but it looked more like the slums, and I was glad we didn’t get the hostel in that area. Getting the train tickets wasn’t too difficult. Although all the young waitresses in Poland speak English very well, the train ticket cashiers are generally older women who don’t know English. Their Russian is decent though, and that’s how we got by. Their accents and mix of Polish words were different enough even for me to recognize. For instance, instead of saying “tri” for “three,” most would say “tshi,” which is Polish. They also spoke in broken Russian – one asked “What time is it right now?” instead of asking what time we wanted the train. I could sense a general animosity from a couple of those cashiers when they were forced to speak Russian, we tried to stick to English as much as possible.
With all of our train tickets purchased, we spent some more time exploring the city on our bikes. We stopped at the old town square for some frozen yoghurt and to listen to some guy playing steel drums. At night we decided to be very unoriginal and eat at the same Polish restaurant for dinner, but this time we brought along our roommate Lee, a South Korean university student studying abroad in England who lost his passport his first hour in Warsaw.
Early Tuesday morning we set out on the four hour train ride to the city of Krakow, which is far south of Warsaw close to Poland’s border with Slovakia. We just wanted to spend a day there, and it was a good decision because the amount of things to do there were limited – one day was perfect. We ate lunch in the main square outdoors, a concept we had almost forgot. This was the best meal we had in a long time, and we savored it in the middle of that square in the 65 degree sunlight.
The rest of the day was spent exploring Krakow. It’s the epitome of a small European city: cobblestone streets, old looking buildings, castles on hills. There is some fascination with a dragon story in Krakow, so all the souvenirs were dragon-themed and there was a statue on the river bank that breathed fire every couple minutes. While sitting on the river’s short it hit us… we were sitting on grass! Something we hadn’t seen in a while. We left Krakow the same day around 8:30pm and spent our last night in Warsaw.
We were all sort of dreading Wednesday. There’s only one train that goes from Warsaw to Vilnius without passing through the country of Belarus, which has the most ridiculous visa requirements in Europe, so we had to take it. We left Warsaw at 7:00am and arrived in Vilnius at around 7:00pm… it was quite a journey. Luckily our hostel was close enough to the train station that we didn’t need a serial killer or any illegal free transportation to get there. We set our things up in the room and quickly got out of there because our time in Vilnius was very limited.
Like Warsaw (and every other city we visited), Vilnius had a pretty extensive old town area that turned out to be the most interesting to explore. We had dinner at a Lithuanian cuisine restaurant – the food was so good (and cheap), I got zeppelins which are meat-stuffed dumplings covered in curd. At dinner everyone around us was speaking an accented Russian, and it became clear that the Russian ethnic population and influence in Lithuania was definitely higher than in Poland. Our waiter was switching from flawless English at our table to perfect Russia at the next table to native Lithuanian behind the counter. The language proficiency of people in service jobs in the Baltic states is pretty amazing. They all know their country’s language but also had to learn Russian in the USSR and now English in order to communicate and deal with tourists and the rest of Europe. I was just very impressed that our waiter was going around memorizing orders in three different languages.
The twelve hour journey that day took all the life out of us, and we went back to the hostel to rest up. This hostel wasn’t as good as the one in Warsaw (will anything ever be?!?) but it was still decent. We woke up really early in order to see more of Vilnius in the daytime because our bus out of there was at 10:00am. The three of us hiked up to this castle on the hill and got a great view of the two sides of Vilnius – old town and downtown. The downtown area came as a surprise, we hadn’t seen any trace of a skyscraper until we got up that mountain and looked the other direction. After that little side-trip we grabbed breakfast and head over to the bus station, where we waited for our Eurolines bus to Riga.
The capital cities of the Baltic countries are so close that there aren’t any trains running between them, just buses. Our bus from Vilnius to Riga was an easy four hour day trip, and we arrived in Latvia around 2:00pm. The poor Riga weather that we got at the airport a couple days before was still lingering, and it was raining our entire time in the city. We decided earlier that we didn’t want to spend a night in Riga, which turned out to be a great idea. It could have been a spring break time for these countries we visited, but Riga was totally empty. There wasn’t a single tree with leaves on it, and the rain made everything feel pretty somber. I’m sure Riga is beautiful in the summertime, this was a wrong time to visit. Luckily we found a great cafeteria to eat at and kill most of our time in the city.
Our bus ride out of Riga was technically the next day, but at 1:25am. Night bus: bad idea. Not because of safety but because sleeping on a bus should never be a voluntary choice. Also problematic was that we were set to arrive in Tallinn, Estonia at 6:30am and would not be allowed to check into our hostel until the afternoon. But we went through with it anyway, of course. We arrived in Tallinn just in time to see the sun rise over the port on the Finnish Gulf. The hostel was a very short walk from the port and as we guessed beforehand the room wasn’t ready. We left all of our things at the hostel and went out in search of breakfast.
The most interesting part of Tallinn is, you guessed it, the old town! The problem is this place is apparently a big party city and nobody is awake to serve you breakfast at 7:00am. People were going home from the hundreds of bars and gentlemen’s clubs while we were out looking for a place to eat. The majority of Friday was spent exploring old town and dining like kings. Estonia was definitely the most expensive country out of the four we visited though, so our kingly meals came at a price. For dessert we found a pancake house that served humongous Russian “bliny” with delicious toppings. Zoltan is a blin-maniac and he was radiating happiness the entire time we were at this pub. He had one blin with chocolate sauce and ice cream and vowed that if we came back the next day he would order two. Dan and I really wanted to see his stomach explode, so we took him up on it.
Day two in Tallinn, and our last full day of traveling, was spent with some more exploring and a couple of museum visits. The map we had directed us to the Museum of Occupations, which was a museum dedicated to the history of Nazi and Soviet occupation of Estonia. The map promised a six meter tall statue of Stalin in the museum, and that’s the real reason why I wanted to go – but it lied, there was no Stalin to be found. The museum was still interesting – Estonians really hated the Soviet Union, so much that they consider Nazi occupation a better period in their history. The basement of the museum was a communist statue graveyard, and I got to take my photo with a massive Lenin head. After that we went to the Tallinn City Museum, which told stories and showed artifacts from Estonian history starting from Medieval times and ending with the fall of the USSR. One of the docents got to talking to us and she was so excited to hear that “people from the West” were in St. Petersburg studying the Russian language. She seemed to love Russian language, but still hated the Soviet Union like a good Estonian.
After dinner, you know exactly where we went – the pancake house! Dan and I got one blin each, like normal people, and Zoltan got two. He stared at them like a kid in a candy shop, it makes you happy just to see how excited he gets about bliny. He amazingly downed both without an exploding stomach, not sure how that’s even possible. Content in the belly and with our weeklong travel, we went back to the hostel for our last night.
The bus out of Tallinn left at 7:00am and arrived in St. Petersburg around 3:00pm. An entire hour was spent at the Estonian-Russian border (the cities of Narva and Ivangorod) because Russian border security is intense. It’s a little strange how uptight they are about keeping track of every foreigner since the country’s biggest problems lie within the borders. Our bus was filled with Russian nationals, so us three Americans were holding back the line at customs quite a bit. A dog came onto the bus and sniffed all of us, too. I got two pretty cool stamps in my passport with little car icons on them though, so it was all worth it.
I hardly recognized Petersburg. The sun is shining, the air is warm, the streets are clean, and the rooftops have no deathly, head-impaling icicles hanging from them! My host parents were happy to see me and greeted me with food and invitations to the Petersburg springtime. Their cat was happy to see me too, but it greeted me with a huge scratch on my thumb. I doubt it’ll be easy to go back to school tomorrow, but I’ll try. And I’ll put up more photos (some with people in them, oh wow!) on my Flickr account soon…
“Holidays!” Today was our last day of classes before “spring break” (the word spring is used loosely in this country). Tonight I’m heading to Moscow on an overnight train. Then on Sunday I’m flying out of Moscow to Warsaw, Poland with a couple friends, and from there we’ll be visiting Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I’m really excited for the trip, and I’ll be coming back to St. Petersburg on April 4. “Proshchajte!”
“What a nightmare!” That’s what you instinctively say when you exit your apartment and walk on the streets of Petersburg in this transition between winter and spring. All the snow that collected over the past couple months has to melt somewhere, and all the icicles that formed on rooftops have to drip and fall somewhere… hopefully not on your head.
The weather is starting to get to be above freezing point so the rain’s coming down and the streets are becoming a nightmare. You can’t walk too close to the road otherwise you get splashed and you can’t walk too close to the buildings otherwise you get dripped on and risk getting impaled by an icicle.
“Dvorniki,” street cleaners, go up onto rooftops and pick icicles off buildings, letting them fall onto the sidewalks. The only problem is, they don’t really clean it up, I guess that’s not their job…
Snow plows run through the streets pretty often and on the sidewalks of the “prospekty,” main avenues, of the city, but on the smaller streets it’s usually safer to walk in the middle of the street than on the sidewalk.
I’m proud to say I’ve only slipped once on this terrible black ice, though. I was turning into my driveway from the street, looked to my left, and saw this fierce looking man sticking his head out his apartment window smoking a cigarette, about one foot away from my face. Apparently it surprised me enough to forget what I was doing and fall on my butt on the ice.
And here’s one more photo to prove that Petersburg isn’t all lovely cathedrals – the further you go from the center the more industrial (and, in some cases, Soviet) it gets:
