It's now or Neva

Location : St. Petersburg
Visited since last post : only here, but there's plenty here to keep me busy
Mood : a little low. I think the weather has triggered the hibernation instinct, and I need to wake myself up.
Company : a few nice Aussies during the day, but we repeatedly failed to meet up for dinner
Reading : Ubik. I borrowed it ages ago, decided to take it away with me, and I've finally started reading it.
Weather : SNOW! Proper snow that actually settled on the pavements for a day or so, though now it's melting and making everything damp and 'orrible.

St. Petersburg is a beautiful city. The photos I associated with the place don't really present it very accurately (for a start the Church of the Resurrection / Spilled Blood looks amazing from a distance or in a picture, but actually just looks tacky close up), because it's not so much a place with a few sights, as a place where every street is beautiful. Unfortunately the grey weather and the grey slush as the first snow melts again are spoiling my photos, but it's still a pleasure to walk around. More annoyingly an awful lot of the city is covered in scaffolding, because they are giving it a facelift in preparation for next year's 300^th anniversary celebrations. It's not on the same crazy scale as Beijing's or Berlin's building projects, because they're only renovating, not redrawing the map, but it does still mean that s large proportion of what ought to be the nicest looking places are currently being worked on. It will look amazing when it's finished though.

I took that guided walking tour of the city, which was a good move for various reasons. Not only did I meet some anglophones, but it also took me through parts I wouldn't have wandered through otherwise, the guide was very knowledgeable, and most importantly she was eager to talk about day-to-day life as well as the history of the place. I have to remind myself that I've only spoken to one Russian, and particularly that she was young (I wonder if her conviction that anyone who wants to work can find a job might change once she's had to spend more time looking), but I did learn a lot more than I would have done in weeks of wandering around alone. I found her inability to understand why people in Western Europe accept paying taxes that then subsidise other people not working quite illuminating - yet another sign that this perception we tend to have that people in the East have not shed the ideology of Communism is at best out of date, if not downright patronising. It was also interesting hearing her account of childhood in communal flats - I've always wondered how much the perceived awfulness of such places was down to Western counter-propaganda (I certainly don't believe that everything we heard about the USSR back in the days was honest and fair...), but from her account it really was a pretty nasty way to have to live.

I'm finding it in turn amusing and irritating how absolutely everyone here is on the make in one way or another. The showers in my hotel are shared, and on the first day there appeared to be only one shower (between 200-odd guests) and a queue (though no-one was physically present to form the queue, making me doubt whether it even existed). On the second day I didn't have time to wait, and I discovered that if you slip the floor attendant (a job so superfluous that there isn't even a proper English word for it - the superfluous jobs thing is a part of the stereotype about Russia that is being borne out) a tenner then magically keys for other showers appear, with no queue. 10 Roubles is not much money - it will buy a cup of tea in some of the cheaper cafes - but to my British-conditioned mind there is something very wrong about having to pay for a shower, especially when the money clearly gets pocketed. I've also been stopped twice by police asking to see my passport, visa and visa registration; I don't see why they would care (even in China the police don't do this to foreigners, even when I was wandering around Tiannanmen Square taking photos last year), and my best guess is that they hope to find something wrong so they can get me to bribe them not to arrest me for it. I was warned before arriving that for this reason it's important to make extra certain that every piece of paper is 'correct', even beyond what the law demands (for instance visas only need to be registered within 3 days of arrival, but it was the first thing I did, and I'm sure if I hadn't done that I'd have had trouble with the cops).

In a nicer way, rules can also be bent if people see an opportunity. I went to see the Aurora (the cruiser which fired the shot that signalled the start of the October Revolution, but you already knew that, didn't you?), and admission is free but there are sections roped off. For a couple of dollars I had a guided tour of the actual control rooms, given by a sailor who seemed to be desperate for some cigarettes (they have compulsory service here, and as far as I know they don't pay the conscripts anything - the less resourceful ones on the Aurora were basically begging for smokes). The only thing is I'm left wondering whether I bought a bonus service, or whether he had himself roped the area off so that he could claim a toll....

I'm off to Moscow tonight. From what I've heard so far I expect I'll like it a whole lot less than here, but there's no shortage of things to do there, so whatever happens I know I won't be bored.

One last thing - the weather is going to get seriously cold from now on (it's not actually that cold yet, just damp), and if you were to ask me why I picked this time to go to this place, well, you wouldn't be the first. The answer is in the headline - if I didn't do this now, I can't see when I would next get the chance, and it certainly would be far enough in the future that I can expect my life to have changed dramatically by then. It might mean I miss St. Petersburg's white nights, but also don't get to see Siberia snowbound, it might mean that I'm less comfortable than I would have been in the same places a month earlier, and it might mean that my photos don't come out too well, but at least means I get to see these places.

posted @ 11:00 AM -

I'm here. I'm really here

Location : St. Petersburg
Visited since last post : managed to get lost in a forest near Riga and almost miss my train. Duh....
Mood : Nothing quite feels real at the moment
Company : erm... some people who claimed to be part of the Latvian national rugby team (looked far too small, but they certainly drank like rugby players) on Saturday night, some very depressed Russians on the train from Riga, and now just ickle me
Reading : the Russian phrasebook that I finally got around to buying today. I'm actually in this country for long enough to justify a concerted effort to learn a little bit of the language
Weather : partly cloudy with sunny spells, and cold enough already that I am very glad indeed I'm not here in winter

Well I'm here. I've been dreaming of this for longer than most people seemed to realise when I finally started doing something about it, and I'm finally in Russia. It was also a lot easier than the rumours would have one believe.

For a start the more people I spoke to along the way the more I began to understand that while they haven't relaxed things to the extent that China have (in case you don't know, China is a really easy country to get a visa for these days - it just takes a small amount of money and about a week of waiting for your passport to be returned, and though there is officially a requirement to specify your whole itinerary I didn't bother this time and I didn't get any hassle), the Russian authorities are far less concerned in reality than they claim to be about having pre-booked accommodation and travel and so on. I pre-arranged everything via a tour operator, and I'm still glad that I did that because it made things much easier at a time when I was extremely busy with work, but I've met several credible people (as opposed to the travelling storytellers who exaggerate or outright invent everything they say, are a little irritating, but are also very easy to spot) who say that they bought tickets and booked accommodation after getting into Russia.

More importantly, the actual formalities are straightforward. They don't entirely make sense - I have as yet to invent a good reason for having 5 people who [after the Latvian passport control, which is also seperate but just involves one passport controller and one customs inspector] walked down the train checking things. There was a lady in a sharp suit first of all who just wanted to know which bag belong to whom, then a boy (can't have been older than 16) in a military uniform checking and stamping passports. Then there were two people, one in a uniform and one in an old leather jacket in the style of Polish plainclothes ticket inspectors (ie looking very shifty indeed) with a large torch who appeared to be customs, but were only interested in opening the luggage bins under the bottom bunks and having a quick peek, as if a smuggler wouldn't think to put things inside a bag. After these, there was a woman in uniform who professed to be from immigration, and was only interested in the non-Russians, but then all she asked me was where I was going.

The point is, Russian border formalities are time-consuming and don't entirely make sense, but they are also very little hassle. The train itself is also quite amusing, because in imperial days Russia made a decision that would make Britain's Euro-skeptics truly proud: while Eastern Europe and China already had railways on the same standard gauge as each other, the Russians decided to use a wider one. This means that cross-border trains have to have their wheels changed, an operation that across this particular border (apparently it will be different when I leave) involves the entire train being jacked up while the passengers are inside. The worst of the travelling storytellers I've encountered so far claimed that the train is suspended by cables and raised 10 feet off the ground (see what I mean about obvious confabulation - if these people just told smaller lies I'd probably fall for it), but in fact it's a short distance on jacks. It does feel very odd though - it's not a direction that trains are meant to move in, and the whole carriage creaks rather worryingly in the process.

Anyway, I'm here, and this internet cafe is round the corner from the Church of the Ressurection, so I've just been walking up a canal towards it, but it doesn't quite feel real yet. So far I like the place a lot, but I feel a little bit too much like a deaf-mute observer, not understanding anything that I see. I guess it's partly because this is a bigger city than I've been to for a while, partly because a lot of history I know too little about was played out here, and partly because I've had so little time so far. Tomorrow I'll take a guided walking tour, which hopefully will give me a bit more of a handle on things, and help me meet anglophones, which is really a much harder thing to do now that I'm not staying in hostels.

posted @ 11:00 AM -