Санкт-Петербург/Saint Petersburg, Day 1

I can’t do the trip to Petersburg justice, probably, but I can’t really skip over it, either.

This means you’re going to get a lot of detailed entries with a bunch of information you don’t need.

Train and Day 1

I had never traveled by train before. There are two options—compartments and cars with open berths. As far as price goes, the open cars are the better option, and honestly it seems to me that there are two differences. 1. In the open cars, there sections with four bunks to the left (stacked two and two) and two to the right, and the two to the right don’t exist in the compartment cars. 2. There aren’t doors—but the four bunks on the left are laid out exactly like compartments. I know this is boring, I’m just trying to give you a clear picture. Darcy, Kevin, and I were the furthest back of our group, and a strange (in multiple senses of the word) woman was in the bed above Darcy. Pretty early on the woman disappeared and she didn’t come back until late, muttering something about martinis—she’d presumably been in the restaurant car.

So we had our little section to ourselves, and pretty soon friends were coming and going, offering snacks and drinks and sometimes staying to chat. Kevin pulled out a bottle of vodka, and we saw the group of young Russians next to us, who were traveling on the two-bed side of the car, break out a bottle of whiskey. We laughed and got to know one another. There were two young women, Sasha and Masha, and three guys, Costya (Sasha’s boyfriend), Nikita (Masha’s boyfriend), and Vladimir. They were going to spend three days in Petersburg, like us, and had rented an apartment. They live in Moscow and were all 22 or 23. Professions: Sasha, a designer; Masha, an economist (that was her major, at least); Costya and Vladimir, computer programmers; and I don’t know what Nikita does.

They were all very sweet and interested in us, and they seemed more American than other young Russians I’ve met randomly. As has been the case with most people I’ve talked to here, they asked us, mystified, “Why are you learning Russian?” The night was exactly what I needed. I had been getting so bored of the routine in Moscow, but the train ride was new and everyone was giddy and enjoying themselves. At around three-something in the morning, Costya took out his laptop and turned on a Guy Ritchie movie that I love, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, but my eyelids were refusing to stay open. I climbed into my bunk and didn’t wake up until 8, when we were about an hour and a half from the city that Russians call the Venice of the North—not the East, of course, as they’ve worked so hard to make it Western.

At the station in Petersburg, we said goodbye to our new friends—for the time being—and got on a bus with our two guides, Tanya and a babushka whose name I can’t remember. Exhausted, we listened as The Babushka droned over the bus microphone about the sights we were passing and Petersburg history. It was awful. I couldn’t hear a damn thing because she held the microphone too close to her mouth, which resulted in a terrible droning, buzzing sound. And she never stopped. But finally we reached our hotel near the Metro station Чёрная речка (Chyornaya Rechka, or Black River, just like in Elyria—although речка is a diminutive, so it’s more like Little Black River). It was a nice place. Each room had its own bathroom and the beds were soft. I couldn’t ask for more.

An hour to rest and we met for breakfast (really, lunch) at the hotel’s restaurant. This was the first of many unsuccessful vegetarian meals for the four of us vegetarian students. Vera, our director, is a pescetarian—she eats fish. I did as well, and may do so again while I’m here, but I can’t tell you how sick I am of it and I’ve been planning on giving it up. I did not want fish, and assumed that I wouldn’t get any if I said I was a vegetarian. The other three don’t eat any meat at all. This was difficult for the restaurant to understand. Most of us ended up with fish (a rather disgusting dish topped with mayo, cheese, and eggs), one with a plate of vegetables. This was an omen of terrible meals to come.

We returned to the bus and The Babushka returned to her microphone. We, still fairly dazed and exhausted, were led to the Петропавловская крепость (Petropavlovskaya Krepost, or the Peter & Paul Fortress). First the cathedral, which I don’t actually remember clearly—all of the churches we’ve been to have been impressive and covered in icons—but I do remember the choir we saw there, a group of five monks who sang so beautifully that I cried. Next we saw a strange small-headed statue and then the prison. It was an unremarkable excursion, I think, although worth it because of the choir.

Back on the bus we went to—well, actually, my memory is so bad that I can’t remember if after the first excursion we went to another site, or if we just went to lunch. So, lunch: it was bad. We ate at another hotel. Why? No idea. They segregated us vegetarians at our own special table. We assumed this meant we would be served vegetarian food, but it was not to be so. First up: cabbage salad, because that’s how they do in Russia. Second: borscht, at the bottom of which I discovered a big chunk of beef. Thanks, Russia. Third: fish covered in mushrooms and cheese and who knows what else. Only one of us successfully received a non-fish dish, which I think was just vegetables again. But there was dessert! This could only be a good thing, right? Wrong. It was Jell-O (which is made from gelatin, which is made from animal cartilage).

My memory continues to be fuzzy on the details of the first day, probably because I was half-asleep and dazed from the train ride. If we took an excursion after lunch, I don’t remember it. Eventually they let us go and we all took about an hour to rest at the hotel before heading to the center of town. My friends stopped at МакДоналдс (McDonald’s) for dinner, and then we got on the Petersburg Metro. It is nothing compared with the Moscow Metro—not as grand, not as useful—but it got us to Невский проспект (Nevskiy Prospekt), the main street in the city, analogous to Tverskaya ulitsa in Moscow. That first night, we mostly wandered and took in the sights, noticing how much less common drinking beer on the street seemed to be in Moscow’s classier counterpart. By the time we got back to the hotel (around 11:30 pm), it still wasn’t completely dark—Petersburg is coming up on White Nights. It’s too bad we couldn’t have visited in late May or early June, when the nights are even shorter.

More entries to come about Days 2 (one of the best nights of my life) and 3, although I’m not sure how quickly.