Finally in Russia!!! The big post of St Petersburg.

The Glory of St Petersburg, The Hermitage Museum

Getting off the train from Helsinki into St Petersburg was one of the biggest culture shocks I’ve ever experienced. Police, security gaurds, old women speaking thick Russian, streets teaming with people all whom look like they are from a Russian mafia movie. Only upon seeing a statue of Lenin outside the train station did I feel slightly more comfortable about where I was. With the guide book informing us that this was the spot where Lenin returned from being exiled out of Russia it was with some relief that we were actually where we’d planned to go and not been sent to some gulag by ‘mistake’.

This shock was then taken up a notch by getting on the metro. Within moments of walking, or more like swimming the river of people through the door Tom managed to get pulled out by the collar from a security guard who caught him snapping a picture within the metro building. Luckily I’d converted over some euros to rubbles and flicked the guard 100 rubles (about NZ$5) after he pointed at some piece of paper he had with a list of fines, specifically to the one which said 100 rubles on it. The culture shock continued until we arrived at our hostel, with our first experience of the St Petersburg metro being really interesting as after the fine we got to experience one of the longest escalators in the world (only topped by one in Moscow), and then battled the crowds of one of the busiest metros in the world while listening out for our stop names in Russian. Somehow we managed to count the stops right and slightly recognize our transfer stop and final stop being annouced to get off at the correct place without problem and easily find our hostel within a few minutes walk.

Lenin in front of the Railway Station

After the culture shock wore off, we came to realize that St Petersburg is actually a really great city and experienced a number of amazing cultural pieces, social interaction and historical sites. So I thought I’d put together a small helpful 5 day guide to some of the things we did and possibly help other people who are visiting St Petersburg in the future.

Day 1:

The Hermitage:
First of all, wake up early and don’t bother to plan to do anything else today apart from The Hermitage except for maybe resting and massaging sore worn out feet at the end of the day. Next ensure you have a student id on you before arriving, it doesn’t matter how fake it is just have one. We managed to stick a passport photo of Tom onto my old expired id and use that for Tom who is not a student by any means. Lastly, possibly get yourself a written guide to the museum or a friend who knows a lot about art.

Big Paintings in The Hermitage

Arrive at the hermitage from the gateway located at the end of Bol'shaya Morskaya Ul. This welcomes you with an amazing view of the hermitage framed by the gates elliptical shape. Then proceed through the front entrance way and find the queues to the ticket office. A good trick is to walk around to the second queue that is to the north of the queue starting to trickle out the door as no one realises there is more options than the first queue present. Flick your student id to the angry lady behind the desk and get your free pass. Also don’t bother with buying a photo pass as no one checks this at all.

Man gets one in the groin in The Hermitage

The hermitage holds thousands of paintings and ancient artifacts, from greek vases, Egyptian tombs, pieces from Di Vinci, Monet, Van Gogh, and Picasso to even some terrible stuff showing off old Russian culture. I’m not an art master so will not try to tell you what to see, instead if I were you I’d pull out a guide to help you find whatever it is your interested in. We spent about 4 or more hours wondering around the museum at a moderate pace, this gave us enough time to see nearly everything, and also to stop and look in more detail at the master pieces. The only problem is that there is only one café at the museum which is really over priced and pretty poor, so we were starving by the end, and with hardly any seats around its three floors it was a real work out on the legs.

Gateway to the Hermitage

Day 2:

After a lot of walking around the Hermitage it is probably a good day to sit around in some funky cafes and bars, spliced in with a bit of sitting around in some nice parks. The best café we found for eating was Zoom Café, the menu was about 100-200 roubles for mains, and food ranged from pasta, to more traditional Russian meals like meat with potatoes, onions and mushrooms, and had some nice desserts to finish off like ice cream on apple pie. Just round the corner was also a little treat of a bar. We found it due to it also being a Laundromat and we needed some clothes washed. The Laundromat is actually just three washing machines and two dryers they have out the back of the bar. The bar served brews for you while you either waiting for your washing to dry or while you enjoyed some of the local dj talent that would play there. The good thing about St Petersburg is that quite a few young people can speak a little bit of English unlike elsewhere in Russia, so it is possible to get by at restaurants without accidentally ordering the tongue delicacy.

To the north of Nevsky Prospect (the main avenue) there lies the summer gardens park and the eternal flame memorial. These make for a nice place to sit around on a warm sunny day. Unfortunately for us, the weather was terrible, supposedly the cold was quite unseasonable and temperatures never rose above 10 degrees. We ended up only walking through the eternal flame memorial as sitting down would probably result in freezing to death.

Come night time the city comes alive with little bars spotted around the main part of town. It probably takes a little local knowledge to find bars that are worth going to, luckily we’d met people who knew of some pretty good locations and we had a really good time every night we went out. The best places for drinks were Fidels, Actung Baby,and the bar next door to Actung Baby. We experienced these with some Russian friends we’d made who showed us the custom way to drink, or maybe the custom way to make foreigners drink. The best night started first in our hostel with a round of vodka drinking games based around learning the Russian numerals, then heading out for a beer with the Russians. Everything was going well, until the Russians put their spin on things, that is to have a vodka shot in between every beer. Of course being in Russia you have no option but to accept the customs. So while I didn’t drink too many beers, the fact that in between each one was a shot of vodka made it a night that was felt well through the next day. It seems fine while in the bar, you have a beer, finish it off, then have a shot. The only problem with having a shot is that it is over quite quickly, and your thirst does not retire for long and so to sip on something you buy another beer. The next day I complained a lot about life, but at least held it in unlike Tom a few days prior.

Day 3:

Hopefully not nursing a large hangover, you'd best check out some of the other amazing sites around St Petersburg. The north side of the Neva River, is the Peter and Paul Fortress. This is an amazingly solid looking wall around some pretty cathedrals. There is probably a lot more info to it, but we didn’t bother really getting to into it. Past this there is a few sites worth walking around to on this side of the river including a big mosque, and a navy ship that contains propaganda from soviet days gone by.

Inside the Peter and Paul Fortress

After checking this out you could head down back to the south side of the river past the Vasilyevsky island and check out the monuments on the side of here, then end up at the palace on the other side.

The wannabe St Basils along a canal

If it is on your way home, stop past the Cathedral of Spilt Blood. This is a similar looking building to St Basils in Moscow. This cathedral is nicely set along one of the canals running through the city and would look amazing on a snowy winters day or in the middle of a blue summers day. Unfortunately we were there on a miserable grey day and so was not so photogenic.
After checking this out for the day, why not hit up a ballet or opera performance. We tried to go to the mack-daddy of theatres The Mariinsky, but it had nothing on that day. But did find a performance of Swan Lake the Ballet. This was thoroughly enjoyable, I’m not really one for normally going to dance recitals but did end up really enjoying this. The performance started a little shaky with a few dancers missing the beat or not getting in a full twist. But once the ensemble warmed up there instruments, and the classic Swan Lake pieces came on, the dancers started to show their full potential and proved that St Petersburg is the home to ballet. Being cultural people, we nearly walked out half way through the performance as it was intermission, but for some reason we’d clapped the performers. Fortunately some Swiss girls behind us had a Russian program which they could read and told us to stick around for the amazing end.

Day 4:

Spend the day at the markets and shopping malls around the south side of Nevsky Prospect. The markets here are typical Russian markets selling millions of jeans, fur coats, and wool socks. Unfortunately there isn’t much else apart from cheap fake sport shoes, so unless you are after one of these items don’t bother. Pretty much I walked through these just complaining to Arnika about how lame they were, and so went to a mall which was slightly better, but in the end I didn’t really want to buy anything so am not sure why I actually went shopping.

To finish off the day you could do what we did on our second to last day, which was to see off some friends we made at the hostel by going out to have some beers before their train at 2am. I’m pretty sure they made it to their train as we heard out of them another day, but feel sorry they had to do the 1/2 hour walk to the train station with a big pack and a few brews in the belly.

Day 5:

There is probably still tons of stuff you can do in St Petersburg, but what I’d really recommend seeing is the monument to the siege of Leningrad which is in the south of the city on the way to the airport. You need to take the awesome St Petersburg metro there so thats a double bonus. The monument is this huge obelisk sticking up in the middle of a huge round-about at the bottom of the main avenue going south. The obelisk is surrounded by a huge circular memorial piece, and also contains a few sculptures and a museum with it. Check the video below for more details!

The Siege Monument, it was Awesome!

Lenin points the way, kinda near the Siege Monument

After checking this out, if you woke up early enough unlike we did, so had to do it the next day, go to the museum for the siege of Leningrad. The museum is pretty small and not really informative seeing everything is in Russian. But you do get a little A4 sheet written in English with the run down on the siege which is really interesting, and it is cool to see all the stuff about how people were living while being cut off from the rest of everything and how they managed without any supply of food or energy resources for 900 days. If you are really prepared, then head round the corner to the erotica museum which has good old Rasputins penis preserved there in a jar. The rest of the museum isn’t really a museum but just a hallway to a women’s clinic for some celebrity doctor so not really worth the entrance fee which is just a forced purchase at the souvenir shop. But the penis makes a great self take photo…

Penis! Self Take!

We finished our time at St Petersburg watching crappy Russian tv at the hostel until our 1am train to Moscow. The train was really sweet, as was an overnight train so we basically just got a free nights accommodation by taking a train. Speaking of free accommodation, the staff at the hostel we were staying at where not really on to it, or at least didn’t really care to much. So we managed to spend two extra nights at the hostel than what we paid for. This was a sweet play as it ended up being a nice and cheap week at one of the sweetest cities we’ve been to. I won’t give the name of the hostel, just in case they someday come across this, but if you are them and work out that it was us, then don’t worry as we gave our recommendation to other travellers so totally made up for it.

View over the Neva River

Costs:
5 nights accommodation whilst paying for 3 at 550 roubles a night = $82.50
Sights: ballet = $35, hermitage photo pass = $5, other museums = $10
Food: approx 6 days at 200 – 300 roubles a day (cooking own dinners saved lots) = $75
Drinks: 2 big nights out at about 100 roubles a drink = $40
Train ticket to Moscow was 615 roubles = $30
Total = $4573+ $300 = $4873