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(Day 34 on the road)After taking the train from Helsinki, I finally arrived in Russia, where I will commence on the Trans Siberian Railway in a week or so, which officially starts from Moscow. Whilst so far I have travelled by a combination of trains, buses and boats (plus planes if you include the week of trekking in Turkey), for the next 8000km or so until Beijing the only mode of transport will be trains. Awesome!
St. Petersburg fully lived up to the image I had of it in my mind. Having wanted to go here for a long time, it is everything I expected it to be. If you have been here already, you know of the many wonders of the city.
Topping that list surely is the Hermitage, where I spent two inspiring afternoons. The Hermitage was founded when Catherine the Great realized that she was running out of space in her palace to house all the art she was constantly acquiring, so she ordered a dedicated building to be build, and called it her hermitage (as not a great deal of people were allowed to view the collection). Today the Hermitage is housed in six buildings
across the city and indeed Holland, Italy, the USA and the UK (the main one being the Winter Palace, former home of the Russian Tsars), and it is truly the greatest museum in the world: 15.000 paintings, 12.000 sculptures, 600.000 drawings, 600.000 artifacts, 224.000 objects of applied art, 1.000.000 coins and medals. Here is a statistic I liked: If you looked at each piece for one minute, you would have to spend a solid 5 years in the museum. Impressed?
Apart from that, the architecture and the many parks (the Summer Garden maybe being the nicest) are very appealing, as is the grand Peterhof a little outside the city, where I spend a leisurely afternoon wandering its massive seaside park. On the downside, I was a little perplexed at the apparent unfriendliness of the people here. Comparing it to Helsinki of Tallinn, where people were overly friendly and often went out of their way to help, many people here appear grumpy, sometimes even downright harsh. I haven't quite figured out why; all the Russians I know personally are extremely friendly and helpful people. Maybe just a St. Petersburg phenomenon? I am curious about Moscow...
What also stroke me
was the depth of the St. Petersburg Metro. Apparently it is the deepest metro in the world (not only due to Cold War considerations where it doubled as a nuclear-bomb shelter, but also due to the area's unique geology); the deepest station in the city is 105 meters deep! I once timed how long the escalators down to the trains take form the street level: 2 Minutes and 28 seconds at one station. Compare that to the metros in, say, Berlin, London or Hong Kong - I haven't timed it there, but it surely is no longer that 20 seconds tops!
Next stop: Moscow (Russia).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
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Tina
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Ich bin sooo neidisch!
Hallo Ben, es macht sooo ein Spaß Deine Blog-Einträge zu lesen, und jedes Mal bekomme ich so ein Fernweh und frage mich, was ich hier den ganzen Tag im Büro mache! Ich bin froh, dass es Dir so gut geht und hoffe, dass du JEDE Sekunde genießt! Hier geht alles seinen gewohnten Gang und bei Dir passiert jeden Tag etwas neues! Toll! Lass es weiter krachen! tina