Day 4: A tale of two cities

Day 4: A tale of two cities

I've never actually read Dickens' novel but I'm going to fairly safely assume he wasn't talking about St. Petersburg and Moscow, so I'm not stepping on his hallowed ground and plagiarising his work.

That description says "Brad Pitt" somewhere. Welcome to Cyrillic

Readers, I'm afraid I have to start this entry with some terrible news. The cotton pandemic has now spread to St. Petersburg. I can only assume this is why Putin has fled to London in the last few days, and I now fear for my life every day. Please send supplies (preferably Iced Tea?)

#prayforrussia

However, I will NOT let this stop me. The day had otherwise begun as most my other days had: woken up by some snoring Serbian in my hostel. This time I had the last laugh though; I turned on the lights as I LEFT the room. Take that, Serbia! The train to St. Petersburg itself was a nightmare to try and find. It's left from Moscow OKT, which stands for Moscow Oktiabrskaia. Which refers to... Moscow Leningradskiy of course! It doesn't matter anyway because the metro station for it (Komsomolskaya. duh.) doesn't translate its signs. So I thought it would be a good idea to follow the little train picture. It was only when I got to the station did I discover there's actually 3 train stations there (why didn't they sign to the other two?!) and I was in the wrong place. Frantic hand signals with the police and 20 minutes later, I found myself on this:

You get free magazines and the TV shows Jungle Book! (On repeat)

Pretty nifty train. What impressed me most was that each seat came with a neat little cushion designed for a comfortable sleep during the 4 hour long 6am train. Unfortunately I was too mesmerized by Russian Jungle Book to even contemplate sleeping. 

I'm that little door in the middle. Notice how this one actually has a lock.

Walking out of the station the other side was a COMPLETELY different story. It was a straight line, sunny and all the street signs were translated! Also first impressions of the hostel weren't too bad, this could be a great place!

Or maybe not. I'm on the 3rd floor of this...

Despite conflicting appearances the hostel itself is lovely, except they don't take card so I still haven't actually paid for my stay. Normally I wouldn't mind too much, except they took my passport as a deposit and I definitely need that for the random police spot checks. Which are "legal".

I'll just park(es) myself here

If you get the joke give yourself a brownie point.

Moving on, I had a city to visit! But first, and foremost, comes food. 

I <3 Protein. The "dumpling" turned out to be fish.

St. Petersburg, it must be said, is an incredibly lovely city. What struck me first is how much different (besides the cotton infestation) it feels. Whereas Moscow is a huge sprawling mass with buildings piled on top of eachother, St. Petersburg is far more open with a compact city centre in which it only takes a few hours to see the main sights. 

To show how compact it is they decided to build a mini version. Yeah, bit weird.

However before I go into greater detail, allow me to introduce my resident tour guide/friend, Svetlana. "Friends" is a pretty tricky concept for someone Russian like Svetlana as it necessitates being nice to people, and you can actually see the strain on her face from trying to do so, so I'm even more grateful for her help.

Hey, Dimitri! Come here and pose for a picture with me!

One of the places we saw on our stroll (read: 10 hour walk) was the gorgeous Summer Garden. Despite Sveti's best attempts to warn me it used to be much better before the government closed it for 15 years' renovation, it was lush to wander around some well-maintained greenery only 10 minutes from the city centre

Although they're generally beautiful, do fountains actually serve a purpose?

Annoyingly there's like no trees on the left which sorta ruins the symmetry

Next to the park, what do we have? More open space! This is the wonderfully simplistic memorial to World War Two. The eternal flame is quite an impressive sight too

There is actually some brickwork in St. Petersburg, I promise.

As you can probably tell from my gushing, I really do enjoy St. Petersburg. Perhaps it's because it's more like London, or because I wasn't alone. Either way, there's something remarkably relaxing about the place they call the Blue City.

This is apparently tea. I have no idea and it costs 120 roubles (£2.40)

I don't even know where to begin with that. All I wanted was a cup of bloody tea. This is the kind of stuff that could really ruin St. Petersburg for me, that's your last warning. Right, I'm off for a sit down to calm myself.

Ahhh... that's better

Another thing I realised, this place has really nice harbours and places to sit down to read a book or whatever. Or buy some overpriced merchandise from some street seller who ALWAYS thinks I'm Italian. I might even talk to him next time to set the record straight.

"I don't want a toy statue. I just want some bread"

There's no real direction to take in this place, everything's so central which is really useful for aimless walking around. You have the famous buildings and museums, of which there's an abundance, that I will cover tomorrow but the mantra was to relax and get a feeling for the city. I immediately felt comfortable - there's such a different atmosphere here than they have in Moscow!

Except weddings are still in fashion. That statue's of a guy called Peter

Should probably admit it took me waaay too long to make the link between the various statues of some guy called Peter and the name "St. Petersburg".

By now I was battling some insatiable desire to try and eat something Russian with someone Russian just to pretend to myself that I was Russian:

I taught Sveti the word "quaint" here

... So we went to a Patisserie. However I did manage to grab myself some Borscht, which is apparently traditionally Russian in the fact that it's Ukrainian. Looks REALLY appetising too

It was actually delicious. Don't judge a book by its cover

So that's a brief overview of the openness and coolness of St. Petersburg. I really enjoy the general ambiance of the city, even if they do struggle with how to make tea. I guess nowhere's perfect though.

TOMORROW: A closed Hermitage, rain and a very different Red Square.

Times I ordered a cup of tea and wasn't offered milk count: 5