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Published: September 24th 2009
Hello again!!!
So we arrived in St Petersburg after our overnight train from Lithuania, train was quite an experience. Basically there is 1st Class not sure what its like, then 2nd class which is 4 beds in a private compartment with a bed on top of the other and then 3rd class which is called Plaskart, which is an open compartment, similar to 2nd class but no privacy, so like one big dorm, except there are 54 beds squeezed into a carriage aboutn 10 metres long! We of course decided to go Plaskart (cheapest!!) and got allocated 2 top bunk beds. It was a bit confusing finding out seats when we got on the train as it has numbers for beds then underneath it has numbers for when the train is being used as seats, but we showed our tickets to some Russian lady and she patted the top bunks so we settled there. The two people below us were this Russian lady and a Latvian lady, neither of them spoke any English. The Russian lady was so helpful though, we tried having a little bit of communication and she made my bed up for me 😊 (you get some
sheets and a face towel provided). Its a bit awkward though as between the bottom bunks there is a table so during the day the four people sit round this table, but then when the bottom bunk people want to go to sleep they have to wait for the top bunk people to go up, which was us. So after some attempted chatting Ste and I decided to go upstairs so they could lie down and make up their beds. Up the top it is so tiny, you can't sit up you just have to lie down, so we read a little but very quickly fell asleep. Ah but not before Ste decided to drop the mp3 player which was left dangling about 2 inches above the woman below him!!!! Luckily (!) she was asleep and it stayed connected to the headphones which were still in his ear!
This was probably one of the worst nights so far as we were going across the border into Russia and got woken up several times by various different important looking people, had no idea what they were saying to us, just handed over our passports and that seemed to keep them
happy. Around 6am, the provodnitsa (lady who looks after everyone in the carriage - bit like an air hostess) came and woke everyone up, even though our train didnt arrive for another hour and a half. We sat back down on the bottom beds with our new friends, ate our breakfast we had bought with us (bread again) and waited to arrive.
St Petersburg was an hour ahead so it was 8.30am when we arrived, we headed towards our hostel which looked about a 30 minute walk away hoping they would let us leave our bags there until check in but we were lucky and the lady at the hostel let us check in early. So we made up our beds and went back to sleep!! Woke up about about 3 hours later and after a shower (the worst - hand held and cold!!) we finally headed out into the centre. We were really lucky actually as our hostel was within walking distance.
We walked around all the famous parts, palace square went through the Hermitage, but didnt go in as it was quite expensive. Had a really nice walk around the Peter and Paul Fortress (again didn't
pay to go in!) It was mad as we must have seen about 5 different wedding parties with all these brides and grooms having their photos taken - they were everywhere. It was quite cold, we had our fleeces and scarfs on and behind the fortress there is this really random small beach and there were loads of men in their swimming trunks sunbathing!! Then this woman stripped down to her bikini and jumped in the river, and there we were freezing!! Crazy Russians!!!
We had heard so many stories about Russia and the police stopping you to see your documents, so our first day we were a bit weary walking past all the police and they are everywhere!!! But luckily we had no problems. There were also loads of soldiers around, some of them looked really young so not sure if they was something going on or not. We headed back to the hostel via the supermarket which was a bit of an issue. Settled for some cheap microwavable pizza and noodles and some cheap cans of beer!! Its mad because some of the food works out quite expensive, think the pizzas were about 1 pound, but then
some things like cheese is so much cheaper than at home. And the cans of beer from the supermarket are only about 60p.
That evening there was a couchsurfing meeting that had been organised in the hostel bar that we were staying in. Its not really a meeting but more of a big piss up for anyone, whether its people that live in St Petersburg or people travelling through. It was pretty mad as the room was tiny but there were so many people there. From all over the world!! Everyone was just talking to everyone, someone would just walk up to you, introduce themselves and then talk for ages, we must have talked to so many people. We ended spending a bit of time with another couple, an American girl called Shaina and a Canadian guy called Kevin, turned out they were staying in our dorm room. There was also this other American guy called Elliot, he was pretty crazy, really really hyper and ended up persuading us to head off to this bar with him. On the way we stopped by a shop as he wanted some drinks and he came our with a can of Hooch
for all of us!! Yes Hooch!! Hahah, anyway, the bar was really near, so we stuffed ours in my bag and he drank his on the way (you are allowed to drink cans on the street in Russia - very strange to get used to!). Once we were in this bar Kevin and Shaina got their cans out to drink, Ste and I were a bit weary, but though hey if you can drink on the street maybe you can drink your own beer in the bars...turns out not!! haha, some barman came straight over and grabbed them of us. He wasn't too nasty and didn't throw us out, but we felt a bit stupid and the prices were really expensive 3-4 pound for a drink, so we headed back to our hostel to see if this party was still going. When we got back the barman was giving out free vodka shots, I tried to resist but Shaina insisted I do, surprisingly it was relatively ok! Much nicer than others. We stayed at this party for a while, meant some other strange characters, a russian girl who told me she likes me and that she likes girls 😉 and
was quite proudly showing off her unshaved armpits!! There were some other nice people though, but it got to about 2.30am and we headed off to our bunk beds in our dorm.
Saturday was a bit of a lazy day. We didnt book a room in this hostel and it was full for the Saturday night, we had to change and the only cheap hostel left was a bit of trek away. It was worth it though as it was a lot cheaper and had free washing and free international phone calls. When we finally got there after about an hours walking, we really needed to do some washing, but there was a bit of a queue for the machine, but we decided to just chill out for the day and wait for it, catch up on a few bits and just met a few people in the hostel. The weather then got really nasty and rained all afternoon, so we didn't go back out except to grab some dinner from the shop. It was mad when we were cooking dinner the owners of the hostel, this young couple, were sitting in the kitchen planning their own travelling trip
and the guy just poured out all these shots of vodka and gave them to us, with a gherkin!! It was so tasty though as it had been kept in the freezer, it went down very well. A bit weird though as we weren't even drinking that day, just having a nice evening chilling indoors.
Sunday morning we got up relatively early for us, about 9.30am! The guy from the hostel had wrote on a piece of paper the details of the train we wanted to book. At the party on friday we met a guy from couchsurfing who was going back to moscow on an overnight train that we wanted to get on, so we got the details of this train and headed to the station with our piece of paper with the russian writing on. All would have been fine if the train wasn't full!! It took us a while to figure our what she was saying but when she was repeating 'niet plaskart...niet plaskart' we got the hint. Luckily I had this tourist guide booklet with some other train times and if I wrote down the time of the train the lady behind the counter could
search for tickets. The thing is with going plaskart is that what is all the locals do so the tickets sell out very quickly. Eventually we found a train that left at 8pm....but got in at 4am, it was our only choice though if we wanted 3rd class, otherwise the tickets would have been twice as much. It worked out about 15 pound each 😊
We spent Sunday afternoon having a bit of a walk around the city to the area we hadn't been to and finished our afternoon at the hermitage where we got in for free 😊 😊 In our new hostel we met a few people who said they had got in the hermitage for free by showing their student cards, I didn't bring mine but this one guy said because they don't know what international university student cards look like they accept most things and he got in with his blockbuster card!! Well I had my railcard so we decided to give it a try and it worked, the lady behind the counter didnt event look at the cards. Im not a big art fan, and there are about 300 rooms full of all different
types of art, but the building itself was impressive enough with some amazing rooms in the palace.
We headed back to the hostel as they had let us keep our bags there, mad up some food for the journey and once again headed to the station. We had the top bunks again and seen as we were getting up at 4am, we pretty much went straight up to our bunks. We had some Russian women below us again, neither spoke English and they helped me make my bed again!! Very nice. This journey was alot smoother as we didnt get woken up by anyone except our alarm at 3.30am!
Arrived in Moscow fine, and will tell you all about it in the next blog.
Oh and thanks for the comments by the way, really nice to read them
Speak soon
Lots of Love
Layla & Ste xxx
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Claire Duke
non-member comment
Giggles
I LOVE reading your blog. It's almost like I'm travelling with you and I always giggle at something. You are soooo polite about the random people you meet who are, from the sounds of it, a little crazy in some cases.... I wonder what Ste was thinking about Layla's proposition from that woman?! Lol. Looks and sounds like you are really making the most of your travels and I hope you continue to have a fab time. Hope it gets warmer for you as you go further South! Keep the blogs coming, they're reall entertaining. Take care guys xxx