Hello folks! I'm sorry for my several-month long absence. Considering I let this fall to the wayside around my first trip to Saint Petersburg, I feel like talking about my trip there this weekend would be a decent way to pick this up. I'll think of a creative way to make up for the time gap sometime soon. Also, I should note, I'm going to add less pictures because it takes forever, and I just don't have the time to upload them all (that being one of the reasons why I kept putting off updating the blog). But, here we go.
This was my
second time coming to Saint Petersburg. In
Russia, it’s more fact than just a saying, that people here are either Moscow
people or Saint Petersburg people. I
definitely fall into the latter category, so needless to say, I had been
looking forward to our trip to SPb almost since my plane landed in Moscow back
in August.
The trains
are definitely a huge part of the trip, so I feel like I shouldn’t exclude
talking about them. We[students in the
Dickinson Moscow program] ride in a coupé (closed compartment with four
passengers) on the way to Peter, and we ride in the old-fashioned Soviet train
(open-compartments, louder, with its own unique smell – and I’m not saying that
it’s a good or bad thing) on our way to Moscow.
You don’t ever feel quite well rested after sleeping on the train;
however, you can definitely get some sleep.
I can say from experience, the first trains are the hardest to sleep on,
but it gets easier the more you do it.
It’s a nice system going between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The trains leave around midnight, and you
arrive in the city around 6:30 or so the next morning. Some tips for the train:
·
Bring
water with you – They will not have it on the train. Also, depending on your host mother, you
don’t have to bring snacks. Some like to
give you a feast for the train, some don’t.
·
Pack
lightly – If you can keep everything packed into one backpack, that’s
ideal. Don’t pack a bunch of homework
thinking you’ll do it; it only takes up space and makes your bag that much heavier/bulkier.
·
Wake up
at least half an hour before you arrive – You’ll need time to wake up,
clean up, and pack up. You need to get
out as soon as the train stops. So also
do a double-check of all your things well in advance!
When we
arrived in Peter, we checked into a hotel that was obviously made from an old
Soviet dormitory/apartments, which was pretty cool. It was in a good location because it was
directly behind the Kazan Cathedral (Казанский Собор). That helped
with remembering how to get back, because it was all the way down the main
street in Saint Petersburg: Nevsky Prospekt (Невский Проспект).
After
taking a brief nap, we woke up and went to breakfast at the café in the hotel. That place made great food at an even better
price. A bowl of kasha was 30 rubles, or
about $1, and the coffee was 50 rubles, or about $1.50. It’s impossible to eat that cheap in Moscow,
or even in the States, so we undoubtedly ate there every morning, and every
morning it was delicious.
We had
excursions every day we were there. Our
tour guide, Vika, was very nice. She was
a great tour guide for us because she was very energetic, and would focus on
what interested us. She also spoke
mostly in Russian, and it was helpful because she spoke at a normal pace, but
it was very clear and she explained anything we didn’t understand.
On Friday,
we took a general bus tour around the city.
We stopped into St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Church of our Savior on Spilled
Blood, the biggest synagogue there, as well as the most popular mosque. We only went into the mosque and the
synagogue because we asked if we could stop in and check them out. Yet again, I stress how great our tour guide
was, because she was very flexible about her tour, which made it a lot of
fun. We also checked out the Peter and
Paul Fortress and the cabin Peter the Great lived in while the city was being
built. That was really interesting
because to see because it was hard to imagine Peter the Great living in this
tiny, three-room, wooden house, after seeing so many grand palaces from the
Romanov Dynasty, and thinking about how he was the one who turned it all into
an Empire.
On
Saturday, we drove a little bit outside of the city and saw Catherine the
Great’s palace, a couple of parks, and the Alexandrovsky Palace (the palace
where Czar Nicholas II and his family were imprisoned before they were killed). It was a great experience because seeing the
Catherine Palace has always been number one on my to-do list in Russia. It was very beautiful, but also really
grandiose and over the top, and you can get easily bored looking at all the
rooms done in different styles. Then
it’s interesting to go over to Alexandrovsky Palace which was also big and beautiful,
but definitely more practical and simplistic in style. It was also really interesting to think about
how the Catherine Palace was almost completely destroyed, and how remarkably it
was redone; I definitely have some appreciation for how much work and
dedication was put into restoring the palace, especially because it took
several years to do, and those who worked on the restoration weren’t paid very
well.
Saturday night, we went to see "My Fair Lady" done in Russian. I'm quite proud of myself because I only dozed off twice. The production was three and a half hours long, so needless to say, I dipped out early because I didn't want to spend my whole Saturday night at a musical. Around midnight, I went by myself to Fish Fabrique (will elaborate on this later), because I had been begging the guys to go with me all week, and I'd been wanting to go there since this summer. This summer I didn't get the opportunity to, mostly because we ran out of time and no one else in my group wanted to/would go with me. So this time, I knew if I didn't go by myself, it wasn't happening at all. And oh my gosh, am I glad I did it. I met some new people and spoke a lot of Russian, and best of all I had a great time. It was like, Reggae Hip-Hop night, so the music was really awesome. Over the stage, they had a sign in Russian that said something equivalent to "celebrating something just because we can". I really liked the vibe of the place. Besides having fun, I'm glad I went because this gave me a sense of independence I haven't had yet. I went out in a big city by myself. This means a lot because in general, this is not the safest thing to do if you're a woman. I definitely would not have done this back in Moscow, but I feel like Saint Petersburg is slightly a bit safer, so I went. And nothing bad happened to me. I went there on my own, and I walked all the way back home, and nothing happened. So I feel rather proud of myself, because I went out on my own and had a great experience by putting myself in the position that I had to speak Russian and had no outside help. That was definitely a highlight of my weekend trip.
The next
day, we pretty much had a “Hermitage in a nutshell” tour. At first I was reluctant to go back to the
Hermitage because my first experience there was horrendous (it was earlier this
summer, so the place was crowded with so many tourists you couldn’t see
anything you wanted to, it was our first day in SPb and we had been stressed
out about finding a hostel at the last minute, we had already been on our feet
all day, so we were wowed by the Hermitage, but at the same time it had been a
little too much for us by that point), but I changed my mind at the last
minute, and I’m really glad I did. The
good thing about going to the Hermitage a second time is that you can go and
see only the things you like and not feel bad about skipping a lot of
exhibits. It was also really cool being
able to explain some of the exhibits to my friends. Also, it was good going through a second time
because my first tour guide completely left out the armor exhibit. Being big into uniforms and military history,
that quickly became my favorite exhibit.
I could have spent hours in that one room alone.
I spent the
rest of the day with Chase and Petya, walking around the artillery museum and
all up and down Nevsky Prospekt, checking out all the places I wanted to see
that I didn’t get to last summer. We
found a great Ukrainian restaurant called Odessa Mama. The vareniki they cooked were really good,
and were at a great price for those on a student budget. We understood all the jokes they had on the
placemats, so that was very rewarding, since we’ve been working so hard at
understanding this language. We liked
the place so much, we stayed for two pots of tea, which were also very good (That’s one thing I’m
beginning to notice – since coming to Russia, I’ve started to become a tea
snob).
I also
showed Chase and Petya a tiny art district called Pushkinskaya 10. They have a
cool club there called Fish Fabrique, and a ton of nonconformist art
galleries. Between Fish Fabrique and the
main exhibit buildings, there’s this tunnel with a ton of graffiti on it done
by passers-by who wished to share song lyrics, write messages to people they
love, and other small pearls of wisdom.
We must have stayed half an hour or more reading the stuff in that
tunnel, and picking up some new vocab as well.
It was a lot of fun.
Then all
too soon, it was time to head back to Moscow.
Although Moscow is bigger, I find it easier to go out and do things in
Saint Petersburg. I already have a lot
of great memories just from my first two visits there, and I can’t wait to see
what adventures come about the next time.
Dickinson only takes us to Saint Petersburg once during the program
(because there is so much of Russia to see!), but I’m definitely going to go
back on my own for round three.
Walking around Nevsky Prospekt, we ran into people peacefully protesting agianst the expansion of apartments around the Saint Petersburg area.
"Death is worth living for, love is worth waiting for" - Viktor Tsoi. Not the best translation. What he means first part is that you should live, and it's worth living life because death is inevitable, but love is worth the wait, because you know that the right love will also come along. One of the small pearls we found in the tunnel at Pushkinskaya 10.
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