Seeing the Sights: St. Petersburg

I WENT TO RUSSIA! NBD, e'rybody.

But first I went to Tallinn, where it was a fairly nice day. I sat in Freedom Square and read for a while, and was even able to give directions to some Norwegian tourists! Feelin' like an Old Town local. 

      From there, I hopped a ferry to Helsinki and awaited the rest of the group before we all got on the Princess Maria bound for Sankt Peterburga. It's about a 15 hour ride and, turns out, a wifi-less one. Luckily, we found other ways to amuse ourselves. I watched part of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with Marta, Sofia, and Laura from Spain and Costanza from Italy. They pointed out something in the movie I'd never noticed before, and now I need to watch it in ALL THE LANGUAGES!
     Anyway, we made it to Saint Petersburg and headed through border control. We met up with our guides and headed into the city to ditch our bags at the hostel(s). They were spectacularly located in the city centre; the one most of us stayed in was right across from Kazan Cathedral, and the one I stayed in was two streets over in a 4-star hotel. Classy joints. With wifi. We made a group decision that if any of us found wifi anywhere (monument, restaurant, etc.) it needed to become public knowledge ASAP. We're not entirely wifi-dependent, not wifi-junkies, but there were plenty of concerned texts from parents, and at nearly 2EUR per text for some people, internet texts were the best option.

Kazan Cathedral

On our way to St. Isaac's we saw this epic Cinderella-style horse drawn carriage and debated if it was worth the money to ride in said vehicle. Later we saw a little boy in it waving to everyone he passed. Adorable.






St. Isaac's Cathedral; a cathedral so heavy we don't even know how heavy it is, only that each column weighs in at 100 tons. What does it say about society's weight concerns that we even ask buildings how much they weigh?
Anyway, we were headed to the top!

Palace Square (& a bit of Hermitage) from the top of St. Isaac's. 

This was the first place I noticed the Russian perpension against order. The walkway at the top of the cathedral is, naturally, a ring. Thus, traffic flows one direction. But because of construction and people stopping to take photos, things move slowly. Therefore, the next course of action is to go the other way 'round, meaning that instead of one "lane" around, there are now somewhere between two and four; two moving, one taking photos, one waiting to take photos. Needless to say, it was a bit of a squeeze to get around.



Following the gardens behind (?) the cathedral, we went to a monument to Peter the Great, since St. Petersburg is full of such monuments. I mean, they don't call him "the Great" for nothing. I think this one is pretty interesting because it has a "twin" of Swedish King Charles XII in Stockholm and they're pointing at each other.

 We walked along the river until we came upon the first of our "magic places," monuments where people make wishes. This one is of Peter the Great during his boat building time in the Netherlands, a gift from that country to the city. As all of us are students, we were particularly interested in the "magic power" of this statue. Peter the Great had a passion for and interest in boat building, which is why he disguised himself to study in Holland, returned and taught boat building, and constructed a massive golden building to serve as a boat construction site. So! If you rub his foot, you'll find your passion and be able to pursue it. I'm putting an awful lot of faith in this statue.
    Next we headed to the Hermitage. Desafortunadamente, because it's the holiday season in Russia, this popular and free museum which usually has little-to-no line had a massive queue. And then it started to pour. Buckets.


Enough of the group brought umbrellas that we kept fairly dry. But then the amount of people meant that the cloakrooms in the museum filled up, and since use of the cloakroom is compulsory, we had to wait until people left the museum. We stood in the queue for more than an hour before we rushed inside. By that time, we had an hour to see this massive museum before it closed. Challenge accepted.

The problem with putting museums in palaces like this is that the architecture distracts from the museum pieces. Knowing that I don't really appreciate art as much as I could/should, I headed for the floor I knew I'd at least like to look at, which held paintings from the 17th and 18th century. Palaces, however, are labyrinths, so I wandered through portraits of royal Russians as well as other Asian royalty. You can clearly follow fashion trends of the time each royal lived.
I found myself in ball rooms that really didn't need the placard saying "Ball Room."Architecture is one thing I can appreciate, and happily wandered from room to room looking up more often than anywhere else. I could very easily live in a palace, even if no title or honour came with it. To know that you could explore within your own home, get lost without ever leaving, discover a new room each time you left your bedroom. That'd be awesome. Especially, if I lived in a historical palace like this one. Yeah, I'd do that. Everywhere you look there's clearly architectural influence from around the world, glittering crystal, gilding, a painting the size of my house covering the ceiling, carvings, etc.

Or maybe just a giant, golden Peacock clock. Because some people just don't do ordinary.

With le Peaclock. Hehe. Came up with that all by myself.

 Anyway, I wandered from room to room, glancing down occasionally at the map or my watch (which depicts no fowl). I found a couple of thrones (because one isn't enough, where do you sit the in the next room, then?), as you do. One problem of traveling alone is that I end up with really random photos because a pithy remark came to mind when I saw it and there was no one there to tell it to. I came across several of them while choosing photos for this post.

 Sofia, Laura, Marta, Costanza, and me outside the Hermitage. By this point in the day, we were tired, hungry, a bit cold (the Spaniards more than myself), and ready to sit down for a while. However, we'd had our fantastic guides check ballet times and prices for us (when in Russia, right?). She mentioned one was cheap, but started in half an hour. Because of the holiday, there would only be one more while we were there and the cheap seats were 100EUR. Despite the protests of our feet, bellies, and drooping eyelids, we accepted this new challenge and raced off to find the ballet and pick up tickets.


Conveniently, when we found the kiosk to buy tickets, they told us it started an hour later than we thought, so we'd have time to find dinner. Lera and Lena and already picked a spot across from the kiosk, so we went through the cafeteria line (with translation help) and shoveled food into our mouths, still needing 20 minutes by bus to make it to the conservatory. The line moved really slowly, so by the time the last of us had bought food, they had less than five minutes to eat it. All part of the adventure.
Those of us who have experience with the theatre were a bit concerned about how considerably underdressed we were, but figured everyone would survive if we showed up a bit grimy from travel and in our jeans, sneakers, etc. So with our cheap-seat tickets in hand, we headed off to Swan Lake!

Tired enough that Ricardo fell asleep, a few others nodded off, and
no one could recognize one of the characters. We still don't know who he was.
Oh, and we poked lots of wholes in the plot. 

 We tried to find the women selling programs to check which company was performing and to remind us of the story, but that didn't happen. I think they were students, since the only word we caught was "conservatory" and it didn't quite seem as professional as I was expecting. True, I have very little experience with ballets; I don't think "Medea" we saw in Tallinn used pointe shoes. In one instance, the white swan smacked into the proscenium during her exit, and often times you could here the sound of the dancers steps. Whether the music wasn't loud enough, the dancers were too loud, acoustics were super-duper fantastic, the theatre was old, etc., I know not, but I wasn't expecting to hear the sound of hard pointe shoes hitting the stage so often. Not knowing much about ballets (it's moments like these when I need my mother, or even my gramma) I really only pick up what when wrong, since I don't know a good ballet from a great one. But overall, I enjoyed it, which I guess is the point..e.

We were all fascinated by this couple,
especially, her hair and outfit.

 Afterward, while we were excited to have seen a ballet (especially one so well known) in St. Petersburg, exhaustion hit full force and we were ready for a long, long nap. There wasn't enough room in the hostel owned by our tour company, so most people were in the hostel closer to Kazan Cathedral. But there were three of us in that first hostel. Personally, I loved it. My bed space didn't feel cramped, despite the fact that I keep my backpack on my bed. Each bed had two outlets and and a reading light. There were small shelves to keep my littler things from getting lost (glasses, watch, etc.). I have a picture, but it's on my phone. In short, loved it! The only downside was that the wifi slowed down incredibly after 11p, which made submitting homework annoying.

May 3, 2015:
We started the day by picking up a few Metro tokens. I wish I'd bought an extra to keep; they're adorable!
We started in the newest Metro station, built in 2011, which is also the deepest. We didn't time the descent on that one, but a few of the other stations have about a 2min15sec average escalator ride to get to the lines. It doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but if you've used public transport in other cities (I immediately think London Tube) it's takes a long time to get that deep. And European metro escalators are impressively vertical.
Anyway, from the newest, we visited the oldest station which opened in 1955 and has a statue of Pushkin. We then headed to the "city" of Pushkin to see the Summer Palace, which inspired a lot of Anastasia. 
Being all well-versed in the art of travel, we took the opportunity while standing in line to snack. I love that St. Peterburg is dotted with corn stands. As much as I love a good hot dog, the US needs to acquire some corn stands. They smelled amazing!

Didn't realize how ridiculous my scarf looked until later.
W'evs. 

This year, the Palace adopted a new ticketing system, which had sold out by the time we got there, so we weren't able to enter the palace. A huge, massive, mammoth-sized disappointment. Instead we wandered the gardens, which were gorgeous, but not the same. We discussed the kind of party we'd host if we could rent the palace for a day, or even just the gardens.

Group photo, courtesy of Rosa and Teresa from Napoli.

Charlotte & Zoe (Switerland) on the lake. 

 Off to one side of the Palace is this Grecian style building with a huge patio where tsars used to hold garden parties. We figured that we'd hold a Gatsby-20s-style party there. It's just the natural choice.

Courtesy of Rosa. Taken by Paul. Ah, Paul.

Then we headed back on the bus/Metro to the Ice Cream Church! We may call them onion domes in the US, but they're ice cream scoops and cones to the Russians. This particular one in St. Petersburg is the Church of the Spilled Blood, since it was built over the resting spot of where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. I even have a picture with the exact set of stones.
We were told that when we went in there would be a large mosaic of Jesus with eyes that followed you around the room. Turns out, nearly all of the mosaic scenes covering the entire interior have Jesus in them, so he's everywhere you look. I mean, the big one's big and all, and probably does follow you around the room, but he's got eyes everywhere.

 Places like these make me wonder how much builders hate their jobs. I'm sure this was built by people devoted to their faith, but there's got to be some point when the guy laying each mosaic tile says, "Seriously? Is this necessary? Can't we just paint the rest? Beige, stipple effect, 3 days?"

Le outside

 By this time, we're ready for dinner. We head to a traditional Russian pie shop, and I take the opportunity to eat pie that's much more like American pie than the Estonian food of the same name. Ham and cheese pie, chicken and mushroom pie, and ananass and lemon pie. SO GOOD! Wish I'd had time to go back and grab more for the ferry trip home, but alas, that was not to be. I'll definitely be trying out a pineapple-lemon pie when I get home.

Rosa, Teresa, and I went on a boat tour of some of the canals. I don't know that I'd ever heard St. Petersburg likened to Venice before, but after having visited both, I can see it. Technically, the tour was guided, but there comes a time when you learn to tune out the languages you can't understand, so all that Russian just floated off into the breeze. I took a bunch of photos of what I thought was the Lithuanian embassy. Turns out, just another building.
    I'd woken up in the morning to an email reminder about a presentation due that evening; a presentation I'd forgotten about entirely. So while nearly everyone else went out, I spent the remaining hours of the evening comparing English in New Zealand and the Philippines. Since it's my grandma's birthday, I tried to call her, but my proxy server wasn't working. That's when I found out my phone didn't seem to be making calls either. So I set that aside for another time and headed for bed.

May 4th, 2015: The Last Day in Russia
We took the Metro to Peter & Paul Fortress, which I was completely stoked about the moment I'd heard about it when we first arrived. The island it sits on used to be inhabited by rabbits until a flood wiped them all out. We stopped by the magic bunny statue, but I wasn't able to hit it with my coin, so no magic for me. We saw the statue of Peter the Great given to Russia by the US and I had to apologize. He's got the tiniest head and these skeleton hands. Apparently, he's designed to have a larger-than-life body with a normal head to show both the strength of Russia and the difficult times it's had. Pish-posh, it's just a big, semi-insulting statue with a tiny head.
     Next came the exciting part. We picked up tickets to go inside the cathedral, and although we didn't have much time, there was really only one thing I wanted to see inside. The cathedral on the grounds of the Peter & Paul Fortress happens to be the final resting place for 40 members of the Romanov family, including the last seven. It took a bit of time, sorting through sarcophagi of royalty with names in Cyrillic, but I found St. Mary's Chapel with the graves of Nicholas, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, Alexei, and two of their servants. The cathedral also contains the graves of Peter the Great and his wife, Catherine the Great, etc., but my interest has always been with these last Romanovs. I don't know what it was about their story that captured my attention, but I've done so many projects on their family. Somehow, I didn't even know they were buried in St. Petersburg until I arrived, but from the moment Lera pointed out this cathedral and mentioned they were in it, I had to see it. I would have loved to spend more time in the cathedral, but we had to move on.

A canon is fired from the fortress each day at noon, and so we joined the mass of people waiting. We didn't know what was going to happen, but upon seeing a crowd with ears covered, we soon figured it out. Then we found all the sunbathers who set up camp on the "shores" of the fortress. They're technically not allowed to swim in the water, since it's unclean (Did you know the tap water in St. Petersburg is unpotable? How much money must this city of 5 million people spend on bottled water?), but there's really no one stopping them. We only saw one old man in the water, and he soon left to dry out in the sun.
    Since this is our last day in St. Petersburg (there's a time limit on visa-less travel), we took the Metro back to the city centre and went to a street of magic places before having time to souvenir shop, etc. The first magic place was a fountain. Toss a coin, and whichever step it lands on is the number of months until your wish comes true. The second place was a metal cat statue in the corner of a building. If you can hit it with a coin, your wish will come true. I'd hate to be the people that live in the window right next to the cat; it gets it all the time!

The third spot was this photographer. Lera said the statue itself isn't very important, but if you touch certain parts of it in a specific order, you'll pass all your exams. As students, we once again jumped at "guaranteed As." Umbrella handle, pinky, camera, dog.
When we arrived, a girl passed and grabbed his nose. Lera said, according to her research, the nose is related to a saying in Russian (that doesn't make much sense in English) that you'll lose everything but your nose. She's not sure why anyone touches the nose if touching it means you'll lose everything except your nose.

I tried to buy a Metro token as a souvenir, but the nearest stop didn't give out tokens, so I did my other souvenir shopping instead. 

Too soon, it was time to head back to the ferry terminal and board bound for Helsinki. Breaking up the team was sad; we made an awesome group. We still had 15 hours of ferry time, but we were leaving our guides. We would have been impossibly lost without their planning and translating. And it certainly helped that they were our age and fit in really well. 

I had my UAS final exam to do on the ferry, and luckily we'd have time in Helsinki for me to submit it so I didn't have to pay for wifi on board the ship. I did some of it, and met up with everyone else a few decks above. We discussed linguistic differences, the meaning behind Italian hand gestures, the Mafia, and much more. We ate Russian pies, junk food, etc. before heading to our cabins. I watched the rest of the first Harry Potter movie with Marta, Sofia, Laura, and Constanza, when I realized that the British English version says "philosopher's stone" even in the movie. That seems to be the only difference between the two, but it makes me want to read the British edition of the book to see what's different. We talked about how the character names in Italian are COMPLETELY different from the English/Spanish versions. It was fantastic to do some Harry Potter geeking out. 

May 5th, 2015:

After going through border control on the other side, it came time for us to split up. If we all weren't headed home relatively soon, we might have travel to each other's university towns, but instead we swapped promises to visit home towns. Such a great group, it was hard to say goodbye. 

The tour company bought my return ticket for 10pm, to give me time to explore Helsinki. But I swapped my ticket for an earlier ferry my new Portuguese friends were on. Homework submitted, we talked about the trip they're taking through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania before going home. When we got off in Tallinn, we worked out their rental car and then headed for tacos!
I didn't even realize until this morning that I'd had tacos for Cinco de Mayo on Taco Tuesday! YES! I definitely miss having readily available Mexican food. And since tacos are Mexican and not Spanish, I was honoured to witness Ana Teresa and Ricardo try what might have been their first tacos.
I had to rush to catch the train, since during the time-change-not-time-change, my watch had misplaced 5 minutes and I miscalculated. I got to the station as the train was leaving, so parked it on a bench and continued reading. On the train, I finished my book and remembered why I don't read new releases; I cannot handle the anticipation. Anyway, I left grey and windy Tallinn for sunny and gorgeous Tartu and started the walk back to the dorms feeling reflective.

Then I slept.


All in all, a fantastic trip made so by the people I was with. Yes, the city was great and I loved having the opportunity to visit Russia, but if I'd been with another group the entire thing would have been different. At least I've got the memories.