9 - The Nyet (St. Petersburg)

St. Petersburg, RUSSIA - 25 July 2002

It was drizzling when I stepped out of the St. Petersburg main train station. I waded to three hotels. I was met by receptionists or security guards who merely grunted, “Nyet nyet nyet” and waved me away impatiently. All these inexplicable ‘Nyets’ thrown at me… Frankly, I was beginning to feel a little defeated here in Russia.

1½ hours of walking around in the rain was enough. I tried my luck at the Youth Hostel finally, which had a dorm bed available but was very expensive.

At first glance, even in the drizzle, St. Petersburg looked resplendent. The whole city seemed to be lined almost entirely with old buildings of intricate 1800s architectural style. Naturally, the main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, had billboards, boutiques and fancy restaurants now but St. Petersburg looked like it was carefully preserved and lovingly restored.

Even at 8 or 9am in the morning, you would already see a number of drunk men tottering around with a bottle of vodka or a can of gin and tonic. For the rest of the day, groups or individual men and women could be spotted walking around with bottles and cans of alcohol, taking swigs. It was really common.

There were buskers, portrait artists, people wearing signboards telling all where to head off to buy CDs, elderly women selling little bouquets of flowers or a few cucumbers or carrots that came straight from their gardens, ladies announcing boat trips along the canals, men holding signs indicating currency exchange rates of nearby exchange houses and there was quite a number of beggars, including pet-beggars. Pet-beggars are people who take their dogs (or cats) out to beg. Sometimes, they make their dogs carry little pails in their mouths. These dogs are usually huge, luscious-looking ones. I guess they are there to get sympathy from people who love dogs.


St. Petersburg, RUSSIA - 26 July 2002

I decided to check out of the hostel. The cost each night would really hurt my pocket.

I trudged out to look for another hostel and half a day later, I eventually located it. But handing my passport over to the babushka at the counter resulted in more ‘Nyets’. Why? Why? Why?

There were two tourists in front of me, similarly exasperated. It seemed the lady at the counter wanted them to account for each and every night of their stays in Russia. She expected a registration stamp to be obtained upon arrival at each town.

This was not what we understood it to be. I thought we just needed to be registered within three days of arrival in Russia, and not each town. So, since I had no stamp for my last night in St. Petersburg, she was rejecting me as well. Arguing with her (in English, duh!) was useless. She just kept shaking her head and repeating her ‘Nyets’.

Argh!! This was so frustrating! Can you imagine hostels or hotels run by elderly women who did not appear to fully understand the system behind this registration thing? To be on the safe side, she simply rejected tourists and accepted only Russians, I supposed.

Three-quarters of the day gone. I returned to the Youth Hostel to make sure everything was alright with my visa registration, which it was… and sorely accepted that Russia was going to be a budget-breaker and not an easy place to travel in.


St. Petersburg, RUSSIA - 27 July 2002

No more home-hunting for me. I figured I could be here for days doing it and arguing with old crones fruitlessly! I decided to maximise my days here in St. Petersburg with the sights I wanted to visit.

The Hermitage is definitely a must-see. It must be one of the best museums in the world. The Hermitage is made up by three main buildings - the Winter Palace, Little Hermitage and Large Hermitage. The state-rooms in the Winter Palace are awesome. Many have the typical ‘wedding-cake’ architectural style where the rooms were painted a pastel blue, for example, with white ‘icing’ cornices everywhere. Most rooms are opulently decorated with gold, chandeliers, crystals, etc… They sent my head spinning.

Even without considering the important art collection here, the Hermitage is awe-inspiring enough. But the art collection here is truly magnificent. I cannot do it justice with my tepid descriptions so I shall leave it be. Just GO, I implore you.

Naturally, being the major sight in St. Petersburg, the whole place was swamped endlessly with tourists. These lemmings were trained to recognise the umbrella, wallet or flag held by their tour leaders and trotted behind him or her obediently. If the tour leader stopped in front of a painting, they would stop. If the tour leader walked off the cliff into the ravine, they would walk off the cliff into the ravine.

Almost every room sat a babushka with a watchful eye. From my observation, here in Russia, a babushka has plenty of job opportunities.

Another place with many sitting babushkas are the metro stations. They were employed there to sell the metro tokens (or cards in Moscow), watch people slot in their tokens or cards, and sit at the bottom of the escalator and watch people come down the escalator. The last job function was the one I never understood the purpose of.

I had not eaten a proper meal for the past three days in Russia. On the first day of arrival in Moscow, Pablo and I had only one meal that day and that was at McDonald’s. We were not proud of it but we were famished (and upset over the visa thing) and the huge McDonald’s (the first one in Russia, if I may add) was just THERE so we did not have to hunt all over for food. On the second and third day in St. Petersburg, I had eaten horrible, microwaved, tiny-portions of dodgy food from cafés and survived on some bread and jam.

I seemed to be always hungry in Russia. Affordable cafés were difficult to find. Regular Russians seldom eat out. I decided to check out a café mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, something which I normally dislike doing as I prefer to stumble and tumble into charming local eateries by myself. However, so far, I had failed miserably in that. I convinced myself that starving three days for a proper (and naturally, expensive) hot meal was well-deserved. Hey, the café even served complimentary vodka! I had to pay for the stupid bread in the basket but vodka was free. You know you are in Russia when the cafés serve complimentary vodka.


St. Petersburg, RUSSIA - 28 July 2002

I checked out the Russian Museum today. In one room, I nearly reached down to pick up the papers dropped by a sitting marble statue.

Papers dropped by a sitting marble statue?!?! Had I just gone marbles? Yeah, the papers looked that real! If I really did it, I would have some explaining to do to the irate babushka in the room.

While the Hermitage had a gigantic and excellent European art collection, the Russian Museum held mostly Russian paintings and personally, it was great to get a flavour of Russian art too. There were many paintings about wars and a huge load of portraits, some with insipid names like ‘Portrait of a Woman with an Orange Background’ and ‘Portrait of a Man with a Diseased Arm’.

The price difference for tourists and Russians was really huge. For the Hermitage, it was R300 (about US$10) for tourists and R15 (about US$0.50) for Russians. For the Russian Museum, it was R240 for tourists and R20 for Russians. Ouch!

In St. Petersburg, there is a very beautiful church - Church of the Resurrection of Christ that was partly modelled after the St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. It had the same clash of candy colours (here, mainly blue and yellow) on the onion-shaped domes and intricate works of mosaics on the walls. It apparently took 24 years to build and 27 years to restore.

Many times, when I encounter such stunning sights, I always get this feeling - that once you first spot it as you turn the corner or spy it between the arcade of a gate or something, they loom at you large, captivating, domineering. For a moment, you are awe-struck, stupefied, weak in the knees.

As you hurry towards it, the sight will strangely become smaller and smaller, as the sky around the arcade of the gate, for example, grow in size. It is very puzzling as the sight seems to shrink as you walk towards it, as if it is disappearing from you… Then, at a ‘break-even’ point, it will grow again. Well, it sounds a little strange but this is something that I have observed a few times, for St. Basil’s Cathedral and here. My two-cents.


St. Petersburg, RUSSIA - 29 July 2002

Now that I was in a new continent, I also observed a different kind of backpackers.

Sample 1:
Girl with an affected voice in my room: You know… I was in the toilet today. And I did not have any paper with me. So, I took out a R10 note…
Me: You didn’t!!
Girl: Yeah, I used it. Come on! It’s like only US$0.30 or something… I had no paper!

Sample 2:
Guy at the breakfast room: You can ask the travel agency next to the Reception to buy the train ticket for you.
Me: Yeah, I know, but I thought I should TRY to get it at the train station myself first (although I did fail at that once in Moscow). Do you know how much is the commission for your ticket?
Guy: Commission?? I don’t care.

Sample 3:
Another guy at the breakfast room: I’m heading to Moscow tomorrow.
Me: Are you? Which night-train are you taking?
Guy: I’m taking the express train that leaves at 4pm and arrives in Moscow at 10pm.
Me: But isn’t the night train better? You save on one night’s accommodation.
Guy: Ooooh, I hate night trains. I can NEVER sleep on night trains.

The travellers I met in China had mostly been travelling around South-East Asia or India, Nepal. I guess, these people were more frugal and more tolerant of discomforts; that was why they choose Asia.

But here, the travellers I met seemed to be richer and more pampered. I guess that was why they choose Europe. So, there were not only cultural changes in the locals, there were also changes in the travellers.

I got along splendidly with one lady in my dorm, however. Karla is a tour leader, taking ‘Premium Groups’ from Hong Kong to St. Petersburg and then another group back. These tourists pay US$4000 for a 26-day trip of train-hopping! Woah! She was having an in-between-groups break in St. Petersburg now.

I bade farewell to her in the morning when I left the hostel, only to meet her again at the Internet Café, by chance. Then, I bade farewell to her at the Internet Café, only to run into her at a restaurant later. I had once again decided to treat myself to a proper hot meal - starve one day and splurge at a sit-down restaurant the next.

Later, I wanted to walk to the Peter and Paul Fortress. But when I reached the bridge nearest to it to cross the Neva River, I found the bridge, Troitsky Most, was closed for repairs.

St. Petersburg was built around the delta of the Neva River, with a number islands at the mouth of the river where the Neva split into Malaya Neva and Bolshaya Neva. With this bridge down, I decided to walk to Vasikevsky Island and on to the Petrograd Side by a series of bridges, before going to the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Then, to top it off as a day of bridges, I made it back to the Petrograd Side, straight to the Vybord Side and back to the main side by crossing more bridges. I crossed six bridges that day. Walking is a great way to experience a city but I was thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day.

I was having dinner at a little sharwma (kebab) shop when in walked Karla… for the third time today! What a laugh!!