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Published: August 25th 2013
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Mosaic park
Be sure to check this out if your in St Pete's! Amazing work- similar to Gaudi but a whole lot quieter than park guell, at least before 11am it is I was going to leave this entry until I had a chance to put photos up but I have lost my European power adapter (Hopefully I can replace it soon or I won't be able to use my camera 😞) so I will have to put them in later I will also be putting photos on www.always-wandering-but-never-lost.tumblr.com if you interested, just search the tag of certain cities to narrow it down if you like 😊.
Today I was reading a postcard that I wrote the day I arrived in St Petersburg and only just got around to posting today and in it I had written that it looked like St petersburg had lots of touristy churches and Museums but not much else. I don't think I could have been more wrong! I know I wrote about a few trendy places in my last blog but they just kept coming!
-New Holland (Referred to in my previous st petes blog)
- Zoom Cafe (Also mentioned)
- Erarta: A five story contemporary art museum (Also in London, Hong Kong an New York) that had some really interesting works (Mostly Russian artists) that were quite challenging and allowed you to
come to your own conclusion about the artists ideas. One of favorite works was this machine type thing that you put two fingers from each hand on small pads and then the machine would analyse your brain activity and make musical noises and beeping Morse code type noises in accordance to which side of your brain was more active (music for right, Morse code for left). I think it's pretty obvious that I am left brain dominant, you know engineering and stuff, but when I first did the musical side was louder. This was really surprising and interesting because I noticed that I could change from right to left side dominance by altering my thoughts. I'm sure if I did this in an engineering exam the Morse code would be significantly louder yet here in the art museum my right hand brain was obviously more alive. Fascinating stuff!!
-Loft project ETAGI: This hidden four story, reasonably run down building is full of fantasticness! Space for artists to work, Galleries, one with crazy a audio visual exhibition, boutique shops, a vintage camera shop a bar and a funky restaurant with an outdoor terrace with a large painting on the wall
as a backdrop and.... minimal tourists and plenty of locals! The staff in the restaurant speak English but I recommend you just order drinks, the food was fairly average. Beers were only 80 Roubles ($2.50) which is fairly reasonable.
-Udelnaya Flea markets: A bit of way out of the city but very easy to find from the metro stop, the large second hand (mostly) market is certainly worth a visit if you love digging through heaps of crap to find yourself something nice- something I am incredibly fond of! There is so much stuff here, I just don't understand who buys it. Things that everyone has too much of so they throw it out (A terrible sin but we are all guilty of it), I'm talking old mobile phones that a bit scatched and smashed up, cables and cords, CDs, DVDs, tools (ok so they are quite useful). It's a good concept and it probably saves a lot of things going to landfill but I don't understand how it can be profitable business. I went to buy a shirt and got told it was $8, I probably wouldn't pay that in Aus! I ended up getting it for $5
since that was all that I had exact change for (they just seriously don't do change at the market) which didn't thrill the lady but but I figured she must have been making some money from me if she accepted rather than changing the money, which surely must have been possible.
I'm really quite sad to be leaving Russia, everything has just completely surprised me (in a good way). All the stereotypes that you get (particularly from mass media) about Russia portray it as a country still living in it's soviet past. From what I could gather there is quite a difference in the generations in Russia, young people seem to be liberal and cultural, art is considered an important way for people to able to express themselves and their is a lot of support for Russian artists. Although I do think I only saw one side of things as I have read in recently published guidebooks that there is still a large amount of crime and corruption and that Russian people in neighboring countries (such as the Baltics- where I am heading next) are quite mistrusted. Either way I am glad I only got to see Russia and the people in a relatively positive light- I mean at the same time customer service doesn't really exist and you can feel a bit silly
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