Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Anabasis Ruskii: An Anecdotal Adventure Through Russia
As most of you may know, and by now all do, I recently spent ten days traveling through the Russian cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg with my girlfriend. As this was an extraordinary adventure, enlightening experience, and an overall good time, as well as my first time in another country, I feel I should write a short something about those experiences. As many of that land’s natives have expressed their desire to hear my opinions and stories about their home country, I feel obliged to post them here.
I suppose the best place to begin is at the beginning; that way, everything is nice and logically laid out - or so it is intended. Given to ramblings as I am (no pun intended), the attempt at organization will surely fall on its face, but I think there is virtue in attempting even the most futile of endeavors, if the ends are desirable. My flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to Domodedovo International Airport was a very long one, at 9.5 hours. It was also my first time inside an airplane that was actually moving. Needless to say, the first take off and the first landing were a little nerve-racking, but at least the in-flight movie wasn’t Fearless. The flight was long and arduous, and I did my best to sleep most of the time, but quite naturally failed in doing so. We left Washington at about 4:30 in the afternoon, and arrived at Domodedovo at about 11 or so the next morning, so I essentially went two days on as many hours of sleep; not something I’m given to do.
Before we left, we knew we would need to know some Russian for our trip. Despite our best attempts at preparation, we severely underestimated the amount of Russian we would need, and severely overestimated the number of English speakers we would encounter. This was, perhaps, due to the fact that our hotel was in eastern Moscow, far from the city center and away from the touristy areas where such people are likely to congregate (it was just outside the Ryazansky Prospyekt station, if you’re interested). Because of this myopia, we found the first two days in Russia very hard. Finding the train to Moscow from the airport was a challenge enough, much less actually getting to our hotel. Fortunately I can read the Cyrillic alphabet fairly well, so by using maps and road signs we made our way through Moscow’s fantastic metro system to our hotel.
For those who are unaware, Domodedovo is a town south of Moscow, about as far from there as Dulles is from Washington, but maybe a bit closer. I also found the airport in Munich, where our layover on the flight home was, to be a good half-hour train ride from the city. I suppose such a proximity is natural for loud international airports, though that hasn’t stopped, for example, National Airport in Washington from being quite literally downtown. Anyway, it required about an hour train ride to get from there to the Paveletskaya metro station; it was a rather pleasant trip through the Russian countryside, populated with beautiful white birches, rolling fields, and little clusters of shacks and country houses. It was easy to forget you would be in Moscow in only a few minutes’ time.
Fortunately for us, the lady at the front desk spoke English, and we were able to secure our room with little embarrassment. We spent the rest of the night, however, cooped up in the hotel room, too scared to venture into the world with our infantile knowledge of Russian, but mostly just too tired to do so. Since Moscow is GMT +3 and Washington is GMT -5, we found ourselves 8 hours askew from our normal time. It was only by sheer exhaustion that we made it to sleep at all. This did not stop us from waking at 3 in the morning, however, which was coincidentally the time that the sun came up. Lucky us.
It was even lighter in Petersburg; in fact, it never got dark! I took this picture at the stroke of midnight. The sun went down around 11 PM, and rose again around 2 AM. It was never darker than twilight.
We resolved that night to learn the essential Russian phrases we found we would need, simply by experience thus far. A few hours with note cards, a dictionary, and a handy phrase sheet gave us the basics: “I would like to buy this/that.” “How much is this?” “Excuse me, can you please tell me where X is?” As well as a few basic things like different kinds of food and different travel words like “street,” “train station,” and “breakfast.” I knew many already from my lessons (I used Pimsleur, thanks for the tip Godwynn
), but more is always better. We had screwed up big time before, but we were resolved not to make fools of ourselves any longer. Well, I was, at least. I found my girlfriend to be quite content with making a spectacle out of ordering food, asking for directions, and buying things. This got under my fingernails in ways I cannot describe, and would be but one factor in the eventual decision to end our relationship, which I arrived at during our trip and acted on afterwards unhappy about it though I was.
But I digress. As I noted before, our hotel was far from the city center. With its scattered apartment blocks, lack of wide streets, and giant trees everywhere, it more evoked a third world city than the largest city in Europe. Smokestacks gleamed on the horizon, and the early morning air tasted like smoke and two-stroke engines. From our room on the 15th floor of a Soviet-era hotel (which wasn’t that bad a building) we could see for miles, though our window faced southeast, away from the city and towards the hills. Here are a few pictures I took from the window:
The Moscow metro system is fantastic. It is shaped like a giant spider web, with radiating lines to every compass direction and a ring route with stops on every line. The trains were at-most only 45 seconds apart, and often less. Each car was usually packed full of Muscovites going somewhere to do something. Ridership is measured at an astonishing 9 million a day. In about 15 minutes, I went from near the end of the line (Ryazansky Prospekt) to downtown Moscow (Kitai-Gorod). Upon emerging from the station, I was greeted by this beauty:
After obtaining directions from an English-speaker, who, although Russian, was also visiting in Moscow, we made our way towards Kraznaya Ploshchad, that most famous Moscow city center known in English as “Red Square.” The name actually has nothing to do with socialism, and originates centuries before, when the word “red” also could mean “good.” This is still somewhat visible in Russian today, where red is “krasniy” and beautiful is “krasiviye.” The square deserves the name, as it is bordered on all sides by gorgeous buildings, and opens on one corner to the Moscow River. Below are some pictures I took or had taken there:
[Pictures moved to following post because of a stupid picture limit]
It was amazing to stand there and see the sights I had seen so many times in films: the Lenin Mausoleum, where Soviet premiers would watch military parades across the square and where Soviet troops cast the Nazi standards after victory; the Historical Museum, its imposing red and white façade the backdrop of so many gatherings; and majestic St. Basil’s, so iconic of all Russia that even Iosef Stalin would not see it torn down, as he did the Kazansky at the opposite corner of the square. To stand there was to stand at the center of Russia itself. I could not help but feel overwhelmed by it all. But I only had three days to take in all of Moscow, so we had to be on the move.
We made our way around the sights of the city, to Ploshchad Revolutsii, the Square of the Revolution, where famous sculptures of Soviet athletes are, but today it is mostly populated by street vendors selling stereotypical Russian souvenirs. I felt obliged to drop a cool 500 rubles (about $15 USD) for an ushanka bearing the iconic hammer and sickle, appropriate not only for me, but for simply where I was; Russia still evokes the Cold War, communism, and nuclear holocaust for many Americans; my boss jokingly jested that I wasn’t to be trusted after I came back from Commieland, because I would be converted into a capitalist-hating loony. What a clueless fool he is. But that is neither here nor there.
Our itinerary included myriad places and things, but was mostly improvised and nonchalant; we were travelers first and tourists second, we were on vacation and we didn’t intend to forget it. Perhaps appropriate to my ideals, but certainly not dictated by them, my favorite thing to do was simply to wander the streets and see everyday people doing everyday things in everyday places. As the camera I brought only had space for 500 pictures, I was admittedly gun-shy the first few days as far as photographs go, but was to take far more in St. Petersburg. I did, however, manage to snap a few shots of everyday places in Moscow. Here are some of them:
Despite my simply toddleresque Russian, I always preferred the places away from the tourist areas, where I was forced to speak the native tongue and was spoken to in it, and otherwise treated like a normal person who just spoke crappy Russian. In the tourist centers there were plenty of English speakers and American culture, but I did not want these things; I had come to Russia to experience it wholeheartedly, and I felt like speaking English and ordering a burger was, in a way, cheating. I wanted to see Russian culture, Russians doing Russian things as they do them everyday, try Russian beers (which were awesome) and cuisine (also awesome), and I couldn’t do that. I did appreciate the occasional English-language menu, though, but I always ordered in Russian.
But we were also there to see the famous Muscovite sights, and there were many we saw. The most unplanned of them were the Seven Sisters: seven great monoliths built by Stalin to dominate the Moscow skyline. They all share a similar style commonly called “Stalinist Gothic,” it is big, imposing, impressive, and strangely similar to Art Deco. It is Socialist Realism in all its glory. I managed to “find” several of these structures throughout the city, despite not actually looking for any of them. I felt obliged to photograph them.
[Pictures moved to following post because of a stupid picture limit]
By far the biggest disappointment in Moscow was the discovery that my train to Tallinn was already booked. We had mistakenly believed we could only purchase the train tickets in-country, but only discovered we were wrong about two days before we left. Though we tried to obtain them, our attempts proved fruitless. We were forced to abandon the Tallinn portion of the trip and spend an extra three days in St. Petersburg. Disappointing to be sure, but by no means purgatory. A lesser disappointment was discovering that the famous Worker and Kolkhoz Girl statue at the All-Russian Exhibition Center had been removed for repairs.
I found it amusing that the station our train left from, Leningradskiy Vakzal, looked exactly like the station we arrived at in St. Petersburg: Moskovskiy Vakzal. Exhibit A:
Though the weather in Moscow was cool (about 50 F ) and wet, St. Petersburg proved to be the exact opposite. When we disembarked our train at about 10 AM (it was an overnight train), it was sunny, cloudless, and about 80 F; in other words, stupendously wonderful weather. Moscow was refreshingly cool, but Petersburg felt like a resort. It also had a very different feel to it than Moscow did. 800km away, Moscow felt like a whole other country, it felt exotic and, well, very different from Petersburg, which felt like a European city. Its wide avenues lined with Haussmannesque buildings evoke the Paris boulevards, but there is still something distinctly Russian about it. And it wasn’t just the Cyrillic letters everywhere. I knew I would enjoy the rest of my trip a great deal, if I was going to be stuck in a place like this.
Because we went to Petersburg 3 days early, we had two hotels; the one we booked on the fly, and the one we booked for our original 3 days we planned for after Tallinn. This proved to be a blessing in disguise, as our first hotel was outside the tourist areas just as the Moscow hotel was. Still near downtown Petersburg, though (as defined by “The Nevsky,” aka Nevsky Prospekt, one of the main avenues and traditionally a very wealthy area of the city), our hotel was down Sedovaya Ulitsa, about a mile from the Nevsky; where the two roads meet is the famous Gostiny Dvor arcaded shopping mall, dating from the 19th Century. This put us in an ideal place to both get downtown (the Sennaya Ploshchad metro stop was a few minutes’ walk) and to venture further south, further from the tourists. We had some great food in the south, including an amazing Uzbek restaurant called “Karavan” where we enjoyed a potato-based pastry called manti, and some delicious mutton kabobs.
Petersburg was such a fantastically beautiful city. You could very easily fall in love with it (or in it!). There were practically no skyscrapers, all the buildings were those 6-7 story Haussmannesque buildings; they were so amazing and they were everywhere, creating a constant facade of 19th Century beauty wherever you went.
[Pictures moved to next post because of stupid picture limit]
We visited a great many places during our six days in Petersburg, including an excursion by hydrofoil to Petrodvorets, the Versailles-like palace of the Russian Monarchy. But the most famous was easily Palace Square. This was a very special event for me, as the book I was reading at the time was Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, not timed accidentally for this trip. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to read about events in the city, such as the protests at Palace Square or the running battles in the streets between the Cossacks and the workers and soldiers, or the cruiser Aurora turning her guns on the Winter Palace, and then go out into the city and stand at those very locations and imagine them unfolding before you. To stand at Palace Square early in the morning and think about all the important history that such a small plot of land has seen was very powerful, and a very unique experience I was lucky to have enjoyed.
Oh, and the buildings on Palace Square are fantastically beautiful to boot. Here, let me show you them:
One of the things I greatly enjoyed about Russia was the ease of access to alcohol. I made sure to procure for myself two things while in Russia: an ushanka (check) and a bottle of Russian vodka. Finding an appropriately-sized bottle sure not to piss off the customs officers too much,/I] I picked up a bottle of Ruskiy Standart, real Russian vodka (sure I could’ve just grabbed a bottle of Stoli back home, but it’s the principle of the thing that counts - I bought this vodka in Russia ) for what was the equivalent of about $8 USD (279 rubles); a fantastic deal! But even more accessible than good Russian vodka was good Russian beer. It only recently became illegal to drink in public, but its very clear that neither the people nor the police really care about the law. It was common to see people half-drunk, bottle in hand, wandering down the street at absolutely any hour of the day. But even better, there were clusters of picnic tables around small booths with a tap or two in it, where you could sit and enjoy a beer - right there on the sidewalk, on the square, or in the park! And they were everywhere. I made sure to get a wide sampling of Russian beers, and these were four of the ones I tried, listed in order from best to worst:
The Baltika was brewed right there in St. Petersburg, so it was very accessible. I had many of them. It was obvious to me why so many Russians are alcoholics: the booze is good, and its quite literally everywhere.
The food was equally spectacular. I was exposed to whole new cooking uses for the potato that I had never thought of, and some that turned out a whole lot better than I thought. Probably the best was a type of crepe-like pancake called bliniy. There was a fast-food restaurant called Teremok that served them up at an unbeatable price; the best of their menu was named after that legendary hero Ilya Muromets, and had pork, mushrooms, spinach, swiss cheese, and a Thousand Island-like sauce. It was delectable.
I almost forgot! I got yelled at by a Bolshevik on the Moscow metro. Either that, or he thought I was a Bolshevik! Whatever he was, he was very drunk. He also said something about the Rodina (motherland) in a desperate tone of voice but the words of which I mostly missed. It probably had to do with the ushanka I had just bought and which I’ve already mentioned, which bore a large hammer and sickle on it, visible through the shopping bag. I imagine he was probably somewhat angry or offended by my touristy purchase of an iconic part of his nation’s past, one which he probably took pride in, and I can hardly blame him for that. It was all somewhat of an amusing spectacle I‘m sure, him yelling at me, me being completely bewildered, since I was trying to buy a metro ticket, and us quickly hurrying away while he carried on, probably already having forgotten about us by the time we made it to the escalator.
Most of all, I got the impression of a collapsed civilization while in Russia. Everywhere was visible the signs of 70 years of communist rule; the precisely-laid-out apartment blocks, gigantic monuments, Constructivist and Socialist Realist architecture, hammers, sickles, and the color red galore, the Ladas (Lada was a Soviet car manufacturer) that crowded the streets, and large public areas. But alongside it was its precise antithesis, the result of the neo-liberal policies adopted after the collapse of the USSR: privatized everything, from water to toilets (yes you had to pay to use public toilets), myriad useless trinkets and tourist-oriented garbage, and disturbing numbers of poor and homeless beggars, most of whom were veterans who had lost a limb in Chechnya, though a few seemed old enough to have been in Afghanistan. Though the people thrived as always, I could not help but feel that their best days were behind them, and for that I mourned their loss.
This is not to say, of course, that I did not enjoy my trip. I found it eye-opening, enlightening, exciting, and more than a little humbling. I was happy to be able to speak English again, though I will miss haggling over the price of a bottle of water, or trying to figure out how to order a particular pastry without sounding like a fool. It was a place I could very easily “go native” in, if only I knew more Russian. If the communists return to power, I will feel more than a little tempted to return again. But the thing I will miss most from Russia? The women.
As most of you may know, and by now all do, I recently spent ten days traveling through the Russian cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg with my girlfriend. As this was an extraordinary adventure, enlightening experience, and an overall good time, as well as my first time in another country, I feel I should write a short something about those experiences. As many of that land’s natives have expressed their desire to hear my opinions and stories about their home country, I feel obliged to post them here.
I suppose the best place to begin is at the beginning; that way, everything is nice and logically laid out - or so it is intended. Given to ramblings as I am (no pun intended), the attempt at organization will surely fall on its face, but I think there is virtue in attempting even the most futile of endeavors, if the ends are desirable. My flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to Domodedovo International Airport was a very long one, at 9.5 hours. It was also my first time inside an airplane that was actually moving. Needless to say, the first take off and the first landing were a little nerve-racking, but at least the in-flight movie wasn’t Fearless. The flight was long and arduous, and I did my best to sleep most of the time, but quite naturally failed in doing so. We left Washington at about 4:30 in the afternoon, and arrived at Domodedovo at about 11 or so the next morning, so I essentially went two days on as many hours of sleep; not something I’m given to do.
Before we left, we knew we would need to know some Russian for our trip. Despite our best attempts at preparation, we severely underestimated the amount of Russian we would need, and severely overestimated the number of English speakers we would encounter. This was, perhaps, due to the fact that our hotel was in eastern Moscow, far from the city center and away from the touristy areas where such people are likely to congregate (it was just outside the Ryazansky Prospyekt station, if you’re interested). Because of this myopia, we found the first two days in Russia very hard. Finding the train to Moscow from the airport was a challenge enough, much less actually getting to our hotel. Fortunately I can read the Cyrillic alphabet fairly well, so by using maps and road signs we made our way through Moscow’s fantastic metro system to our hotel.
For those who are unaware, Domodedovo is a town south of Moscow, about as far from there as Dulles is from Washington, but maybe a bit closer. I also found the airport in Munich, where our layover on the flight home was, to be a good half-hour train ride from the city. I suppose such a proximity is natural for loud international airports, though that hasn’t stopped, for example, National Airport in Washington from being quite literally downtown. Anyway, it required about an hour train ride to get from there to the Paveletskaya metro station; it was a rather pleasant trip through the Russian countryside, populated with beautiful white birches, rolling fields, and little clusters of shacks and country houses. It was easy to forget you would be in Moscow in only a few minutes’ time.
Spoiler :
Fortunately for us, the lady at the front desk spoke English, and we were able to secure our room with little embarrassment. We spent the rest of the night, however, cooped up in the hotel room, too scared to venture into the world with our infantile knowledge of Russian, but mostly just too tired to do so. Since Moscow is GMT +3 and Washington is GMT -5, we found ourselves 8 hours askew from our normal time. It was only by sheer exhaustion that we made it to sleep at all. This did not stop us from waking at 3 in the morning, however, which was coincidentally the time that the sun came up. Lucky us.
Spoiler :
It was even lighter in Petersburg; in fact, it never got dark! I took this picture at the stroke of midnight. The sun went down around 11 PM, and rose again around 2 AM. It was never darker than twilight.
Spoiler :
We resolved that night to learn the essential Russian phrases we found we would need, simply by experience thus far. A few hours with note cards, a dictionary, and a handy phrase sheet gave us the basics: “I would like to buy this/that.” “How much is this?” “Excuse me, can you please tell me where X is?” As well as a few basic things like different kinds of food and different travel words like “street,” “train station,” and “breakfast.” I knew many already from my lessons (I used Pimsleur, thanks for the tip Godwynn
), but more is always better. We had screwed up big time before, but we were resolved not to make fools of ourselves any longer. Well, I was, at least. I found my girlfriend to be quite content with making a spectacle out of ordering food, asking for directions, and buying things. This got under my fingernails in ways I cannot describe, and would be but one factor in the eventual decision to end our relationship, which I arrived at during our trip and acted on afterwards unhappy about it though I was.But I digress. As I noted before, our hotel was far from the city center. With its scattered apartment blocks, lack of wide streets, and giant trees everywhere, it more evoked a third world city than the largest city in Europe. Smokestacks gleamed on the horizon, and the early morning air tasted like smoke and two-stroke engines. From our room on the 15th floor of a Soviet-era hotel (which wasn’t that bad a building) we could see for miles, though our window faced southeast, away from the city and towards the hills. Here are a few pictures I took from the window:
Spoiler :
The Moscow metro system is fantastic. It is shaped like a giant spider web, with radiating lines to every compass direction and a ring route with stops on every line. The trains were at-most only 45 seconds apart, and often less. Each car was usually packed full of Muscovites going somewhere to do something. Ridership is measured at an astonishing 9 million a day. In about 15 minutes, I went from near the end of the line (Ryazansky Prospekt) to downtown Moscow (Kitai-Gorod). Upon emerging from the station, I was greeted by this beauty:
Spoiler :
After obtaining directions from an English-speaker, who, although Russian, was also visiting in Moscow, we made our way towards Kraznaya Ploshchad, that most famous Moscow city center known in English as “Red Square.” The name actually has nothing to do with socialism, and originates centuries before, when the word “red” also could mean “good.” This is still somewhat visible in Russian today, where red is “krasniy” and beautiful is “krasiviye.” The square deserves the name, as it is bordered on all sides by gorgeous buildings, and opens on one corner to the Moscow River. Below are some pictures I took or had taken there:
[Pictures moved to following post because of a stupid picture limit]
It was amazing to stand there and see the sights I had seen so many times in films: the Lenin Mausoleum, where Soviet premiers would watch military parades across the square and where Soviet troops cast the Nazi standards after victory; the Historical Museum, its imposing red and white façade the backdrop of so many gatherings; and majestic St. Basil’s, so iconic of all Russia that even Iosef Stalin would not see it torn down, as he did the Kazansky at the opposite corner of the square. To stand there was to stand at the center of Russia itself. I could not help but feel overwhelmed by it all. But I only had three days to take in all of Moscow, so we had to be on the move.
We made our way around the sights of the city, to Ploshchad Revolutsii, the Square of the Revolution, where famous sculptures of Soviet athletes are, but today it is mostly populated by street vendors selling stereotypical Russian souvenirs. I felt obliged to drop a cool 500 rubles (about $15 USD) for an ushanka bearing the iconic hammer and sickle, appropriate not only for me, but for simply where I was; Russia still evokes the Cold War, communism, and nuclear holocaust for many Americans; my boss jokingly jested that I wasn’t to be trusted after I came back from Commieland, because I would be converted into a capitalist-hating loony. What a clueless fool he is. But that is neither here nor there.
Our itinerary included myriad places and things, but was mostly improvised and nonchalant; we were travelers first and tourists second, we were on vacation and we didn’t intend to forget it. Perhaps appropriate to my ideals, but certainly not dictated by them, my favorite thing to do was simply to wander the streets and see everyday people doing everyday things in everyday places. As the camera I brought only had space for 500 pictures, I was admittedly gun-shy the first few days as far as photographs go, but was to take far more in St. Petersburg. I did, however, manage to snap a few shots of everyday places in Moscow. Here are some of them:
Spoiler :
Despite my simply toddleresque Russian, I always preferred the places away from the tourist areas, where I was forced to speak the native tongue and was spoken to in it, and otherwise treated like a normal person who just spoke crappy Russian. In the tourist centers there were plenty of English speakers and American culture, but I did not want these things; I had come to Russia to experience it wholeheartedly, and I felt like speaking English and ordering a burger was, in a way, cheating. I wanted to see Russian culture, Russians doing Russian things as they do them everyday, try Russian beers (which were awesome) and cuisine (also awesome), and I couldn’t do that. I did appreciate the occasional English-language menu, though, but I always ordered in Russian.
But we were also there to see the famous Muscovite sights, and there were many we saw. The most unplanned of them were the Seven Sisters: seven great monoliths built by Stalin to dominate the Moscow skyline. They all share a similar style commonly called “Stalinist Gothic,” it is big, imposing, impressive, and strangely similar to Art Deco. It is Socialist Realism in all its glory. I managed to “find” several of these structures throughout the city, despite not actually looking for any of them. I felt obliged to photograph them.
[Pictures moved to following post because of a stupid picture limit]
By far the biggest disappointment in Moscow was the discovery that my train to Tallinn was already booked. We had mistakenly believed we could only purchase the train tickets in-country, but only discovered we were wrong about two days before we left. Though we tried to obtain them, our attempts proved fruitless. We were forced to abandon the Tallinn portion of the trip and spend an extra three days in St. Petersburg. Disappointing to be sure, but by no means purgatory. A lesser disappointment was discovering that the famous Worker and Kolkhoz Girl statue at the All-Russian Exhibition Center had been removed for repairs.
I found it amusing that the station our train left from, Leningradskiy Vakzal, looked exactly like the station we arrived at in St. Petersburg: Moskovskiy Vakzal. Exhibit A:
Spoiler :
Though the weather in Moscow was cool (about 50 F ) and wet, St. Petersburg proved to be the exact opposite. When we disembarked our train at about 10 AM (it was an overnight train), it was sunny, cloudless, and about 80 F; in other words, stupendously wonderful weather. Moscow was refreshingly cool, but Petersburg felt like a resort. It also had a very different feel to it than Moscow did. 800km away, Moscow felt like a whole other country, it felt exotic and, well, very different from Petersburg, which felt like a European city. Its wide avenues lined with Haussmannesque buildings evoke the Paris boulevards, but there is still something distinctly Russian about it. And it wasn’t just the Cyrillic letters everywhere. I knew I would enjoy the rest of my trip a great deal, if I was going to be stuck in a place like this.
Because we went to Petersburg 3 days early, we had two hotels; the one we booked on the fly, and the one we booked for our original 3 days we planned for after Tallinn. This proved to be a blessing in disguise, as our first hotel was outside the tourist areas just as the Moscow hotel was. Still near downtown Petersburg, though (as defined by “The Nevsky,” aka Nevsky Prospekt, one of the main avenues and traditionally a very wealthy area of the city), our hotel was down Sedovaya Ulitsa, about a mile from the Nevsky; where the two roads meet is the famous Gostiny Dvor arcaded shopping mall, dating from the 19th Century. This put us in an ideal place to both get downtown (the Sennaya Ploshchad metro stop was a few minutes’ walk) and to venture further south, further from the tourists. We had some great food in the south, including an amazing Uzbek restaurant called “Karavan” where we enjoyed a potato-based pastry called manti, and some delicious mutton kabobs.
Petersburg was such a fantastically beautiful city. You could very easily fall in love with it (or in it!). There were practically no skyscrapers, all the buildings were those 6-7 story Haussmannesque buildings; they were so amazing and they were everywhere, creating a constant facade of 19th Century beauty wherever you went.
[Pictures moved to next post because of stupid picture limit]
We visited a great many places during our six days in Petersburg, including an excursion by hydrofoil to Petrodvorets, the Versailles-like palace of the Russian Monarchy. But the most famous was easily Palace Square. This was a very special event for me, as the book I was reading at the time was Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, not timed accidentally for this trip. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to read about events in the city, such as the protests at Palace Square or the running battles in the streets between the Cossacks and the workers and soldiers, or the cruiser Aurora turning her guns on the Winter Palace, and then go out into the city and stand at those very locations and imagine them unfolding before you. To stand at Palace Square early in the morning and think about all the important history that such a small plot of land has seen was very powerful, and a very unique experience I was lucky to have enjoyed.
Oh, and the buildings on Palace Square are fantastically beautiful to boot. Here, let me show you them:
Spoiler :
One of the things I greatly enjoyed about Russia was the ease of access to alcohol. I made sure to procure for myself two things while in Russia: an ushanka (check) and a bottle of Russian vodka. Finding an appropriately-sized bottle sure not to piss off the customs officers too much,/I] I picked up a bottle of Ruskiy Standart, real Russian vodka (sure I could’ve just grabbed a bottle of Stoli back home, but it’s the principle of the thing that counts - I bought this vodka in Russia ) for what was the equivalent of about $8 USD (279 rubles); a fantastic deal! But even more accessible than good Russian vodka was good Russian beer. It only recently became illegal to drink in public, but its very clear that neither the people nor the police really care about the law. It was common to see people half-drunk, bottle in hand, wandering down the street at absolutely any hour of the day. But even better, there were clusters of picnic tables around small booths with a tap or two in it, where you could sit and enjoy a beer - right there on the sidewalk, on the square, or in the park! And they were everywhere. I made sure to get a wide sampling of Russian beers, and these were four of the ones I tried, listed in order from best to worst:
Spoiler :
The Baltika was brewed right there in St. Petersburg, so it was very accessible. I had many of them. It was obvious to me why so many Russians are alcoholics: the booze is good, and its quite literally everywhere.
The food was equally spectacular. I was exposed to whole new cooking uses for the potato that I had never thought of, and some that turned out a whole lot better than I thought. Probably the best was a type of crepe-like pancake called bliniy. There was a fast-food restaurant called Teremok that served them up at an unbeatable price; the best of their menu was named after that legendary hero Ilya Muromets, and had pork, mushrooms, spinach, swiss cheese, and a Thousand Island-like sauce. It was delectable.
I almost forgot! I got yelled at by a Bolshevik on the Moscow metro. Either that, or he thought I was a Bolshevik! Whatever he was, he was very drunk. He also said something about the Rodina (motherland) in a desperate tone of voice but the words of which I mostly missed. It probably had to do with the ushanka I had just bought and which I’ve already mentioned, which bore a large hammer and sickle on it, visible through the shopping bag. I imagine he was probably somewhat angry or offended by my touristy purchase of an iconic part of his nation’s past, one which he probably took pride in, and I can hardly blame him for that. It was all somewhat of an amusing spectacle I‘m sure, him yelling at me, me being completely bewildered, since I was trying to buy a metro ticket, and us quickly hurrying away while he carried on, probably already having forgotten about us by the time we made it to the escalator.
Most of all, I got the impression of a collapsed civilization while in Russia. Everywhere was visible the signs of 70 years of communist rule; the precisely-laid-out apartment blocks, gigantic monuments, Constructivist and Socialist Realist architecture, hammers, sickles, and the color red galore, the Ladas (Lada was a Soviet car manufacturer) that crowded the streets, and large public areas. But alongside it was its precise antithesis, the result of the neo-liberal policies adopted after the collapse of the USSR: privatized everything, from water to toilets (yes you had to pay to use public toilets), myriad useless trinkets and tourist-oriented garbage, and disturbing numbers of poor and homeless beggars, most of whom were veterans who had lost a limb in Chechnya, though a few seemed old enough to have been in Afghanistan. Though the people thrived as always, I could not help but feel that their best days were behind them, and for that I mourned their loss.
This is not to say, of course, that I did not enjoy my trip. I found it eye-opening, enlightening, exciting, and more than a little humbling. I was happy to be able to speak English again, though I will miss haggling over the price of a bottle of water, or trying to figure out how to order a particular pastry without sounding like a fool. It was a place I could very easily “go native” in, if only I knew more Russian. If the communists return to power, I will feel more than a little tempted to return again. But the thing I will miss most from Russia? The women.
