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Published: June 26th 2011
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So today we left Russia, the land of command and conquer red alert 2, which is not too far away from the actual truth of the place. There are quite afew beautiful sights in St Petersburg, with its cathedrals and museums, but what will stick with me the most is the lack of customer service. This starts as soon as you get off the boat. For some reason Crew are treated as second class citizens over there, asif our money somehow isnt as good as everyone else's. We have to take all kinds of documents with us, even though the passengers dont, and god help you if your from Ireland, South Africa or any of the other 20 or so countries on their watch list. Passport control consists of 3 women in a tiny booth all yapping away as they look at your documents, making several phone calls and checking every little detail out untill finally they give you a stamp and wave you through. It was at this point I realised I had acidentally got my multitool with several knifes in my bag, so was really glad they didnt search me.
Crew shuttle busses run once an hour, so if
youv just missed one, being as your not allowed to walk through the port area, you can enjoy sitting staring at concrete while some 'everyone is happy dah?' music is thrown at you. Once you do manage to get onto a shuttle bus you are dropped off right outside all the souveniour stands, conveniant yes?
Anyway, enoughh bitching (for now). I met up with two girls, Charlie (who lives in my corridor and is the ships art consultant) and Jill (one of the nurses) and being as we wanted to do the same things went off to explore together.
There are several ways to see the city, taxi's busses and boat tours, but we opted just to take it at our own pace. We wandered through the tourist areas, marvelling at the mix of amazing buildings and remnants of Soviet Russia. Everywhere you look there are reminders of what used to be life here, and it seems some of the older generations resent the new ways still, but this does mean theres always something interesting to look at.
After wandering for a while we found a cafe for lunch, and again were reminded that customer service has not been introduced here yet, being told to wait 20 minutes for 3 cokes and 3 panini's, which werent even freshly made. Aparently soviets cant fit more than one thing at once into a sandwhich toaster, and even when they do they come out colder than when they went in. As we went to leave we asked for 3 seperate bills as we all had big notes on us, no small change, and were greated with the warmth we were coming to realise is normal 'you all pay together, I can no bothered to do 3 bills'.Lovely.
There are plenty of museums to look around, although when we tried to get into one we pointed at a sign saying 'visa accepted here' and gave our visa cards over, only to be told 'NO, ONLY ROUBLES!' then got moaned at in russian.
The one place we really wanted to go was actually abit friendlier, a church whos name skips my mind but Iv included a photo, as its quite famous. Inside every inch of the walls and ceilings are covered in fantastic mosaics, its quite small on the inside but theres alot of art in there.
By the time we had photographed every square inch of that place it was time to wander back to the shuttle bus. On the way I stopped to buy a souveniour for my mum and sister, while chatting with the guy who owned it he said 'you have very nice jacket' pointing at my north face coat, 'if you want you trade me jacket for many things on my stall, is very nice jacket', all of a sudden there was a matt shaped hole in the dirt with me shouting 'thaaaaaannkkksss' as I left very quickly. Bugger off mate, my jacket is worth more than everything on your stall combined and what would I do with all that russian stuff anyway?
We got back on the shuttle and were glad to be heading home, although after sitting on it in the square for 50 minutees we all decided to ask the driver what was going on, as one of the crew on there spoke fluent russian. She told us that the 3pm bus had been cancelled, despite us all being there since 2.20 and it now being 3.10. They didnt have a reason either, they just couldnt be bothered, but when 16 crew members start complaining about wanting to get home, having to goto work at 4, being tired, not being told of the change, the grumpy bloke grumbled to himself and begrudgingly started the engine and returned us back to the ship.
Once more through passport control, because you never know we might have become Irish while we were ashore, and back to the safety and comfort of our lovely Queen.
I will return to St Petersburg in a month when we do the same voyage again, only this time I will know not to expect any plesantries, and not take my knifes ashore with me.
On the plus side, Im now sitting here with a massive bottle of russian vodka, and the clocks go back tonight giving us an extra hour. Party time!
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