Go Big Mike!

[ My photos from St. Petersburg] 

I arrived into St. Petersburg just before midnight on Tuesday night, via an easy 7 hour train from Tallinn. Working with Alex, a travel agent in Petersburg, and boyhood friend of one of my friends in LA, I had pre-arranged a private apartment, and a transfer from the station to the apartment. Easy peasy. The apartment was great, but a bit hot (it had been 35C/100F in Petersburg that day). I opened the windows to let in some fresh air for a bit, and went to bed. This was my first big mistake.

My sleep wasn’t easy, with the heat, soft/hard in all the wrong places mattress on the fold-out bed, and the sensation that I was being bitten by mosquitos, despite no evidence of the buggers when I shined my light around. I woke up about 3 hours later covered in mosquito bites. BIG swollen ones. As in “am I going to grow an extra limb there, or what?” big. They had mercilessly drilled into my bare skin like Gasprom does the endless white tundra expanses of Siberia. Extreme measures were called for. I flipped on the lights and went to work destroying the squadron of mozzies that were now too drunk to take flight. I think I killed about 10 between the 3 rooms of the apartment. I then slathered on a cocktail of 100% DEET and magical anti-itch/swelling potion that my doctor had thoughtfully prescribed for my travel medical kit. I love this lotion; instantly killed the itching, and the swelling was gone by morning. I managed a few hours of unmolested sleep, but was very cranky when it was time to get up.

Two hours later, I was even more cranky. I struggled hard the first few hours on the streets of Petersburg. I only had a weak map, and I had misunderstood my location during the drive the night before. Oh, and all the signs are in Cyrillic. After an hour standing on the same corner in Vossitiniya plaza, I finally figured out where the disconnect was, and started making my way West on Nevskiy, the main drag in Petersburg. I needed to meet up with Alex to pay for the apartment, and talk about my intended train travel, which he was helping to book. About midway through the 45 minute walk I finally saw the first clear bank (Citibank), so I stopped in and pulled out many thousands of Roubles. Thirty minutes later I was sure I was going to lose all those Roubles and more, as I stood on one of the top floors in what felt like a crackhouse apartment building. Another navigation error on my part led me into the wrong building about a block from Alex’s office. Fortunately he quickly responded to my SMS that I thought I might be outside their door, but was afraid to knock, saying I wasn’t at their door, and he’d meet me on the street.

I was happy to see Alex. He’s cheerful, and his English is very good (he worked as a tour guide in English 10 years ago, before co-founding an agency catering to Italian tourists). We chatted for a bit about my itinerary in Petersburg, and he offered some suggestions. And then we talked about my train tickets, which he was working on procuring. I got my Internet fix at an open desk in their office while he worked on train options.

Alex’s office is quite close to several of the main tourist sites in Petersburg, so I decided to do the Lonely Planet’s recommneded walking tour, to clear my head and hopefully warm me up to the town. Wow, did it ever. Once you’re in the right spot, and correctly oriented, it should only take about 90 minutes walk to convince you that St. Petersburg is a beautiful, world-class city. St. Isaacs, the Admiralty, the Neva, the Hermitage, the canals, Our Savior on Spilled Blood are all a short walk apart, and are all stunning.

The Winter Palace/Hermitage:

Our Savior on Spilled Blood:

Learning my lesson from the previous night, I didn’t invite my blood-thirsty enemies into my apartment Wednesday night, and I managed a decent night’s sleep with the fan blowing full-force on me. I got started later than I’d planned, but still ended up having a fantastic day. I headed back down toward the Hermitage, and caught a hydrofoil boat headed towards Peterhof (Pedroverets).

Peterhof is a massive, sprawling, word-defyingly large compound outside Petersburg, with manicured gardens, wooded areas, beautiful fountains, and gold-domed buildings. My words won’t do it justice, and the photos hardly do. I spent about 5 hours wandering around (including a brief detour off the grounds to visit a cool church about 10 blocks away). And I didn’t even go inside any of the buildings, due to the lines and my satisfaction with the grounds.

A small part of Peterhof:

The cool church a few blocks away:
 

Exhausted, I plopped down in a seat in the hydrofoil for the 30 minute ride back to town. I tried to stay awake to enjoy the views on the way back in, but slept through most of it. Alex and I were to meet up for a few beers, so I headed to his office to meet up with him. We ended up going to “Beer Exchange”, a sportsbar with lots of European beers on tap. The TV’s in the bard were showing St. Petersburg’s main soccer team, “Zenit”, playing a match in the European cup against a Czech team. Petersburgers LOVE Zenit (it’s their only city team; Moscow has 6 such teams), so the locals were cheering and groaning loudly at all the right times, and I tried to follow suit. Zenit ended up winning, so the game was followed by about 5 different celebratory fight songs. Alex and I did our best to talk over the din, on topics ranging from cars to travel to *gasp* politics.

Friday morning I again overslept (pattern here?), before mustering to the Internet cafe. My main destination today was to be the Hermitage, the gigantic museum. Of course, it started raining just as I left the cafe, so my walk was through alternating light spit and real downpour. Good thing I picked up an umbrella in New York! :)  Arriving mid-afternoon worked to my advantage with the lines at the Hermitage, though, as it only took about 10 minutes wait to get through the line and into the museum. It’s a big-time museum, on par with Paris’ Louvre. In just shy of four hours I managed to hit all the floors of the 2 main buildings, but not all the rooms. There were several special collections (mostly on jewels) that I didn’t have access to, and several other rooms or entire wings were simply closed without explanation. But there was plenty to see, and I nearly gave up before wandering to the first floor to see what turned out to be some of my favorite displays of the day, the bronze age and earlier discoveries around Russia. Sure, the Greek and Roman antiquities were excellent, as were the extensive European painting collections, and the like. But I rather preferred the simple, Russian-only collection on the first floor. Actually, the star of the museum is probably the museum itself; mostly housed in the old Winter Palace, many of the rooms are show pieces in their own regard.

After a few minutes snapping photos in the large square out front, I started making my way toward St. Isaac’s church, to get up above the city for some great views.

But the weather had other plans. It started to rain again, and a block short of the church it started pouring. I ducked into the nearest cafe, which turned out to be a Czech beer house. There went the aspirations of climbing the church today… :)  I had a few beers and some tasty Czech pork concoctions, and Alex came and met me to drop off my train tickets through Beijing.

I’ve got one more full day in Petersburg, before I hop on a train just after midnight Saturday night to Moscow. I’m hoping I don’t oversleep this time; there’s lots of great stuff yet to do, and I need to pack up and clear out of the apartment. While writing this up, I did a load of wash, which was nice. It’ll be a while before I have access to my own washing machine again.

Random notes:
* the mullet is in full effect in Mother Russia. I’ve started sniping some photos of prime mullet glory when I can. But it’s really everywhere.
* similarly, the ladies are indeed lovely here. Seen more 6-foot tall women in the few days I’ve been here than in my entire life.
* when posing for pictures, Russians don’t smile. Men try to look tough (or disinterested), and women try to look sexy. I need to work on my poses.
* English? Not so much. Very limited speak/understand here. Guess I need to get used to it…