St.Petersburg & Moscow

After starting to work, your free time seems to shrink. Rather not because of more workload, but due to rather fixed working schedules. That's why they invented holidays. Unfortunately, you never have enough holidays to succeed in all the trips you. So you have to delay plans and focus on only an excerpt of your plans. That means for me in particular: only one trip per year for me which I would actually allow to be called "vacation". The remaining free days are used for short trips like those recently and those which will come ahead.

This years main holiday was designated to Russia. Originally, I just wanted to visit Alina in Moscow with an option on a few days in St.Petersburg. But then suddenly her brother decided to marry in just that period of time and I had to decide to either delay my holiday or extend it. Of course, i extended it and ended up for almost 3 weeks in Russia. I started in St.Petersburg, traveled through Moscow further to North Ossetia in the Caucasus region and back to Moscow.

Travel preparations were already uncommon for me. Due to some superstitious EU countries, Russians need to apply for a visa before they are allowed to enter glory central Europe. Which actually makes sense for developing countries, it is not suitable for a country like Russia. Therefore, eye-for-an-eye, Russia gives EU a taste of their own medicine requiring me to apply for a visa in Russia myself. Instead of spending two days in the Russian embassy in Berlin or Bonn with no certainty for success, you can hire agency for the whole process. First, you need an invitation from Russia. Usually, you are invited by the hotels you intend to stay with. But in my case, I did not want to book hotels or hostels in advance, since my travel schedule was not fixed. Second, after getting the invitation you need to spend those days at the embassy applying for the actually visa. My agency invited me to Russia and also made all the embassy and paper work for me.  But it feels actually very strange to send your passport to some internet agency. I was curious, if I would get back my passport or if it would be lost together with the fee that I paid. But 2 weeks later, an envelope with passport and visa was in my post box and I could start my journey to Russia. Getting to Nicaragua last year was much easier.

I arrived in St.Petersburg in the afternoon. A crowd of taxi drivers welcomed me at the airport, but they push me to their cabs like the Nicas tried to. But I was not looking for a taxi anyway, but for a minibus. Minibusses are just are normal vans. Of course the driver let me pay double the normal price. But it still was just about 1 euro, therefore not socially but financially acceptable. In the city, I needed to take the metro in order to arrive at the hostel of my choice. I paid my ticket at the counter and the woman gave me the change. I put the change in my wallet and waited for the ticket. I looked at her, she looked at me, we both were not saying anything. Since this scenery already last a few moments I took a look around and realized that the coins of her change in front of her had a huge printed "M" on it. They do not have actual tickets, but coins for the metro. Ah, stupid tourist, me. I did not get change, but "tickets".

Since I already learned a bit Cyrillic, I tried to identify the stations which the metro passed and try to identify the stations in announcements on the metro. Luckily, I somehow managed and without ending up in some suburbs, I found me hostel directly. The hostel also registered me in Russia. That was also new for me. If I have a visa, my residence has to register me to the officials, so they know, I am not hiding somewhere. That took a one hour.

Next day was first Thursday of the month and accidentally exactly the day of the month when "The Hermitage" (Russian answer to French Lovre) had free entrance. Despite my childish rejection against museums and exhibitions, I entered my first museum in years and actually liked it. It was a good practice for Cyrillic, too. Only the art galleries were disappointing. Not because of bad art. They had very famous art there painted by artists even I had heard of before. But the light was horrible. You had light reflections on the painting from ever point of view. So you hardly ever could concentrate on any details of a picture. And after a few hours my mind and eyes got so tired. But there was so much more to see! So I hurried through the corridors trying to absorb more culture, but it was only floating by. In the afternoon, I left the beautiful winter palace and walked to the island of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Not because of another cultural highlight, but because of the beach. With a breeze from the sea and sun on face, I relaxed from my cultural overdose. 

I asked back in the hostel what would be special around this time in St.Petersburg. 

They said "It is bright all night long!".

Me - "Oh, what is happening in the city then?"

They - "People make tours on ships and get drunk"

Since I could enjoy bright nights (and drunk people) in Sweden more than enough, I decided it would not be worth to spent my little time on one of those ships. Maybe next time, if I won't travel alone.

Next day was already supposed to be my last day in St.Petersburg. It was obvious that I could not see a satisfying amount of sights until the evening, even if I would run the whole time. Which brought me to the insight: I have to come back to this city, anyway. And since I have to come back, I will then take my time to see the city. Therefore at that day, I walked through the bordering areas of the city center, exploring cathedrals and island were almost no tourist were. Only on a cathedral I met a Swedish teacher from Gothenburg. I noticed in his nice English accent that he must come from Sweden. Since I failed already after 2 sentences to answer properly in Swedish, we switched - as usual - back to English.

On one of the islands, I came across a German restaurant called "Bierstube". Since I was hungry, I did not only enter because of curiosity. But the same moment when I entered, the same moment I wanted to run away. The style of the restaurant was homey at first glance. Dark heavy furnitures and waitresses dressed in some sexy wanna-be-German costumes. But they had colorful lights in the plants the speaker sang some unknown children Christmas songs. I felt sick instantly. But I fought back the sickness in my stomach and decided to take the pain and watch Russian believes of German style. The food was good and the beer, of course, too. But funniest part was the music. The Christmas carols switched song-wise with some German songs which a needed half hour to be certain about the lyrics of. But then it was obvious: old GDR propaganda songs. I had to laugh, because the melody itself sounded suitable for my belief of a Russian restaurant. And for them it was perfect, I guess, since they could not understand the lyrics. But lines like "Die Partei, die Partei hat immer Recht" ('The party is always right') made me smile gleefully. Over time, the songs changed. The old Christmas carols were exchanged by Rolf Zukovski Christmas carols and the GDR anthems stopped in favor for some unknown old Schlager. But when they played "Cheri cheri lady", I could not fight my stomach anymore and had to leave. 

When I arrived back in the hostel, I did not go to bed, because my train was about to leave at 2 am. The train itself was like from the movies. Small cabins with 4 beds each. I shared my cabin with two guys I would guess from the far east of Russia, since they looked rather Asian. They did not speak a single word English, I did not speak more Russian than "Please" and "Thank you". But we managed to communicate with hand signs and dictionary. I managed to sleep quite well and we arrived at Moscow at 10 am. The landscape during the journey was similar to Swedish landscape only missing lakes and rocks.

Moscow was disappointing to me, at first. Due to 16-20 million inhabitants (10% of Russia's total population), it is so much bigger than beautiful St.Petersburg, which had reminded me of Stockholm. Moscow lacks a traditional city center and traffic is imminent. It needed a while to charm a boy from the countryside who rather likes rocks and lakes. But before exploring Red Square and more, we needed to fix bureaucracy. Since I had left the hostel, I needed a new registration in Russia. And for private persons like Alina, it is more work than for a hotel to register a guest. But afterwards she could show me around a bit. Due to the incredible amount of cars, they have streets like highways up to 6 or 8 lanes - for each direction. Despite the high amount of inhabitants, buildings are not incredibly high. 10 floors, approximately. Except for some new buildings in a business district, Moscow does not seem to have any skyscrapers. But it was a lot of parks, instead. Rather small ones in the center, and really big ones the further you move away from the city center. But even in the center you find trees along the sidewalks. If they would just upgrade their cars with some standard emission filters or at least catalysts, it could be an extremely green city. But car emissions smell everywhere. Even in St.Petersburg next to the sea with a slight breeze it feels like you constantly breath fuel dust. But anyway, they have huge parks and a lot small parks and each of them is a nice relief.

We spent the evening with Alina's friends in a bar, enjoying the wonderful shot combination called "Dreamshot". Two fruity shots, both delicious and strong. At the second day in Moscow, I visited the Gallery for European and American art. My first art exhibition anyway. And it was amazing. They took perfectly care of the light conditions and you watch each picture perfectly. And again, famous artists who even I had heard of. Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet etc. At 10 pm, we started our journey to Chikola in North Ossetia, where the traditional part of the wedding ceremony of Alina's brother Iliya was supposed to take place. It took us 25 hours, 1800 km and a few claw marks to get there. But that is another story on another day.