Saint Petersburg, Grimy Grandeur

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I arrive at my first stop in Russia. When you enter Russia you are required to fill out an immigration slip with two parts; part A is taken by the customs official at the border, part B you have to keep and is collected when you leave Russia. I'd been warned that the Russians are very strict about this slips; you must keep the original part B of the slip in order to leave the country, and fill it out clearly and neatly, otherwise you may be fined when leave. The first thing I managed to do on entering Russia was write my name down incorrectly on the immigration slip; in disgrace I had to ask the customs officer for a new one in sign language.

So, I arrive in Saint Petersburg, walking out of Finlyandsky station late at night, into an alien city. Huge Cyrillic letters adorn neon signs and billboards; the roads are hugely wide, three or four lanes are common; cars scream past at breakneck speed, far faster than anyone would ever drive in a city back home, but the streets are eerily deserted. I've booked myself into a hostel named 'Baby Lemonade' and having memorised the map I have a good idea of where I'm heading. I set off into the night, not realised the scale of the map or the city. Saint Petersburg is huge, five million people in total and I'm walking for ages. 'How the hell do people cross the road in rush hour' I wonder, as I sprint across the road, dodging the lunatic drivers; pedestrian crossings are thin on the ground, and the traffic lights are clearly only for decoration. Unfortunately I thoughtlessly wrote down the address of my hostel in English but of course everything is in Cyrillic Script here. I'm looking for a street called ' Ul. Sadovaya' but it's actual name is 'ул. Инженерная.' I get myself into approximately the right place and phone the hostel who give my directions.

Baby Lemonade is one of the best hostels I've stayed in. It's a cosy little place, with only three large dorm rooms and can only accomodate twenty people at a time. It's 60s themed, with posters of the Beatles and Hendrix all over the place, plus various records, books and other memorabilia giving it real character. The bathrooms are ludicrously luxurious for a cheap hostel, and the staff are friendly and helpful. In contrast to most other people I've met in Russia. I am ignored or glared at, I held in utter contempt whenever I get my change wrong at a shop or present the wrong ticket for something. This is partly because I don't speak a word of Russian and I'm unfamiliar with everything here, but Russia does feel genuinely unwelcoming. Russia attracts few tourists and they add nothing significant to the economy, so there is little incentive for them to make things easy for traveller. Case in point; the expense and complication of obtaining a Russian visa and the law requiring the tourist to register their visa in each city they stay in for more than seven days. Buying a train ticket to Moscow was certainly challenging. Russian train stations have airport style security, with bag scans and random searches before you board and police everywhere. Saint Petersburg's Moscow station is vast and it took me forever to find the ticket office and nearly as long to buy the right ticket, using good old sign language.

Saint Petersburg is a grand old Imperial City, with a great deal of culture and history. It was this I wanted to experience while in my three days here. It is a port city on the Baltic Sea; it was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and conceived of as Russia's gateway to Europe. It was the Tsarist Capital and remained so until 1918 when the Communists moved the capital to Moscow. It has many grand old buildings and over two hundred museums, and it was these I was keen to get stuck into. I didn't quite have time for that many, so I pick a few that seem interesting. First up is the Russian Ethnographic Museum. I didn't realise it before I came here, but Russia is very much a Federation of different ethnic groups; it includes the Slavic European Russian, Jews, Muslim Tatars and Bashkirs, the shamanistic nomads of Siberisa, the Buddhist Buryats and Tuvans and many others.

The next day I visit the Museum of the Siege of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914, then Leningrad in 1924, then back to Saint Petersburg in 1991). During WWII Leningrad was subject to a horrific siege when German troops invaded Russia; right at the border it was left cut off from the rest of the country. The siege lasted between September 1941 and and January 1944 and was one of the most destructive in history. The museum was informative and poignant, and focused on how the ordinary people of the city worked together to defend and maintain their city in conditions of extreme deprivation and horrific violence; I was particularly moved by a photo of two ten girls of ten or so, with a clip-board and stethoscope tending to a wounded soldier; the medical staff were desperately over-stretched and many of them were dead, so their places were often taken by children. That afternoon I had a look around the Peter and Paul fortress, the original Cidatel of Peter the Great around which the city was built. It's a huge place, on an island in the river surrounded by huge ramparts; it contains numerous old buildings, including a Cathedral and a Prison. Today it's a fascinating museum, with numerous different exhibits on the city and fortresses history.

On the last day I was planning on visiting the Hermitage Museum. This is a Museum of Art and Culture founded by Catherine the Great in 1764; it is on the largest and oldest museums in the world, it houses over three million items and occupies several huge buildings, including the magnificatn Winter Palace of the Tsars. You're advised to spend at least a whole day on it and I was very excited. However my last day in Saint Petersburg was a Monday, and it was closed. I discovered despondently when I tried a few other places that most Russian museums close on Mondays. Bummer. I wandered around in the snow, feeling lost and had hours left before my evening train to Moscow. I reflected that Saint Petersburg is a city which is magnificent and ugly at the same time. It has grand old imperial buildings with peeling paint and boarded windows; pround long avenues choked with eight lanes of traffic; litter is everywhere and a layer of grime settles on everything. Nowhere is this more noticable than the cars, some of which are so caked in solidified air pollution that it must be difficult to see through the windows. Perhaps this explains the way most cars I saw drove; break-neck speed and all over the place. Pedestrians seem to have no right of way, cars fight their way into any gap they can find and I saw two crashes in as many days. Petersburg had an atmosphere of a faded and decrepid glorious past; fascinating, but I would not want to live there.

Baby Lemonade Hostel, 7 ул. Инженерная, Saint Petersburg, cosy, friendly and quirky hostel in the city centre, very convenient for most of the museums, highly recomended

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