Day #14: St Petersburg

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Overnight trains are an interesting and cost-effective means of travelling between cities in Russia, but one of the downsides (apart from having to hang around near-deserted stations close to the dead of night) is that the day leading up to the overnight journey can be a long one. Today we had to leave our hostel by 10am, but the train did not depart until 11:20pm, meaning a lot of time to fill (or enjoy, as we tried to think of it).

We started the day with a bracing walk along the river, which showed St Petersburg as a working docks rather than just a living museum. As the ice melts the amount of dust in the air increases and walking in the bitter wind we got dust in our eyes and could taste the grit on our teeth, but it was a different side to the city.

We then visited the synagogue, partly for something different after all the churches and monasteries, and also because of its relatively veggie-friendly Kosher restaurant. The synagogue certainly is a beautiful building inside and out, and very lively: we were shown around by a very enthusiastic man and worshippers came and went throughout our visit, then when we ate a huge communal meal was taking place in the room next door.

Finally, for something different again to keep up our flagging energies, we ended up at the Museum of Political History. Vast in scope and confusingly organised (we went from an exhibition on the Revolution, to one on the ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska - whose building housed the exhibition, having been requisitioned by the Bolsheviks - to one on the history of St Petersburg, and finally to a huge section covering the Soviet era from the Revolution to glasnost), but it was all fascinating. Highlights were Lenin's office and the balcony from which he addressed the crowd in 1917, some weird and wonderful artefacts from the Soviet era, and, hauntingly, a small display on the various ways Gulag prisoners kept themselves occupied, including sewing work, hand-made playing cards, and a complex thesis on a design for a rocket ship. Probably the most exhausing day of the trip so far!

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