St. Petersburg, Russia

Refreshed after a good night’s sleep, I was keen to chip out and explore St. Petersburg by day. It turned out to be a much more favourable city than I had seen last night. Then I had seen a surprisingly polluted traffic-jam of a city; one major roundabout I had walked past had cars gridlocked solid, the drivers all leaning on their horns. At the side of the roundabout nearest me I had seen a local, who had been unsuccessfully trying to start his crappy Volga, jump out of it and try to bump-start it by pushing it along by the door and jumping back in when he had built up some speed. It had been absolute chaos.

Whilst the smog was still prevalent, in the morning St. Petersburg appeared to be a bit more laid back than I had first experienced. Grandiose buildings lined the streets, one of the reasons St Petersburg – or Piter as it is affectionately known – is described as the most “European” city of Russia. People milled along the snowy main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, in fur coats and impressive hats. Now this was the Russia I had imagined.

Wandering along the thoroughfare, I reached Anichkov Most, a bridge across the Fontanka river
famous for its four statues of horses being tamed. I didn’t linger too long, though, as apparently this was a popular spot for the St. Petersburg Filth to shakedown tourists for bribes. From the bridge I took a detour to view the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Milk Blood, built on the site where a 19th century Russian Emperor had been dispatched, and looking wonderful in all its onion-domed glory.

I had checked out of the YHA in order to move to a hostel with more charm, a place called Crazy Duck. It was basic and run fairly haphazardly by a bunch of young Russians, but they were really friendly and accommodating, inviting me into the kitchen to share their pizza and, er, vodka to chat the early evening away.

Later I met up with Tash, who I had met in the hostel in Finland. She had just moved to St. Petersburg to study her second semester there, and we had a good old knees-up with her and her mates at a great club. During the revelry, she very generously offered to visit the train station with me the next day to help purchase my first few train tickets. This I jumped at, as I knew getting tickets was going to be one of my main bugbears due to the language barrier. It was a stressful experience indeed – and I didn’t even have to do anything! – but many thanks to Tash, I had my first three beautiful Trans-Siberian Railway tickets in my possession, as well as the niggling feeling that perhaps it had been somewhat naive of me to expect to buy my train tickets myself as I went through Russia.

St. Petersburg was a joy to walk around. I did one final loop of the sights, making a beeline for The Hermitage, a museum containing a supposedly stunning collection of paintings and artifacts through the ages, but I was absolutely gutted to find it was closed for the day. Instead I pressed on to the Peter and Paul Fortress, established by Peter the Great in the early 18th century, and burial place of most of the Tsars. The square outside the Cathedral was under construction which took away some of the impact, but the fortress did contain a number of surprising highlights, including a massive Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost sitting forlornly in a glass box, a tessellation of ducks lurking under the drawbridge and, best of all, my recommended daily allowance of irony.

I took a pleasant stroll back over the partially frozen river at sunset. St Petersburg was beautiful, but I felt I hadn’t done it justice in the few days I’d had here. Missing the Hermitage was certainly a disappointment. But the city’s closeness to Europe geographically meant it was a convenient weekend trip away, and with GermanWings offering budget flights from London to Piter for just over a hundred quid, I could certainly see myself returning some time in the future.

As night fell I reached the stunning Moscow train station to board the first train of many on my six thousand mile trip towards the Pacific Ocean.