Russia Day 18: Wandering around St Petersburg

Slept in until after 7:30, and then went down for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Breakfast has been included at the hotel here and in Moscow; this one is a little nicer, with better quality cold cuts and a little more variety.

I didn't feel quite ready for hitting museums today, so after a shower I headed out to wander some of the main streets, and maybe do a little souvenir shopping,

I took the metro to Nevsky Prospekt and started walking. It took about a block to get my bearings and figure out which way I was going! I wandered down some side streets, along one of the many canals, and wound up at the Church on Spilled Blood, one of the famous churches here. Again, I'm probably the person least interested in exploring churches, but boy, this one is really wild.

It helps me understand a little better what was behind the choice of the visually-noisy Sochi 2014 artwork that covered posters and clothing at the Olympics.

Wandered around a bit more before stopping for lunch. I've heard St Petersburg called the Venice of the North because of the canals, but to me it feels more like Amsterdam or maybe Copenhagen, since the streets are built higher above the water level and you're looking down on the canals more.

I recall the canals in Venice being closer to street level (hence the frequent flooding they encounter there). In any event, it's a beautiful city, full of distinguished-looking buildings everywhere you look. It feels newer and generally in better repair than Moscow. 

The Singer Building (yes, the sewing machine company)

The metro stations in particular feel newer (because they are!), but also quite a bit less majestic that those in Moscow, though I've only seen a few here so far.

Dostoyekskaya Station platform

Had lunch in a nice restaurant and then wandered through a nearby souvenir market, where the vendors were more friendly-aggressive than I had seen in Moscow, and the bargaining was fun. I picked up a bunch more souvenirs/gifts and also a CCCP hockey sweater with Tretiak's name and number on it at a good price.

Just around the corner from the market I found the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines, and cool little place with a few dozen old video games and other games. Many but not all of them were in working condition, and for my entry fee I got a pile of old 15 kopek coins to operate the games. 

Tank game; it was difficult to figure out how the controls made the tank move,

or what else I was supposed to do.

 Pinball game with very very little action.

The classic claw game where you can never manage to grab anything.

Some of them were much like games I had seen years ago at home, and some quite different. I'm not sure whether these games were as inferior to western games as it seems, or the passage of time makes them all seem pretty lame. It was fun though wandering around and trying them out.

A great example of the Russian theme of "Here's a door frame; please trip as you enter".

I continued wandering around the neighbourhood, circling back across a small river/canal back to Nevsky Prospekt (the main drag) and reaching the square in front of the hermitage art museum. Found my way from there to the metro, and returned to my hotel.

I stopped at the concierge and arranged a ticket for the circus on Sunday night. I have some concerns about how the animals may be treated (not that I have read anything to suggest they are not well-treated), but I think the circus is an important part of Russian culture and I should go see it (much like going to a bullfight in Spain). There was no extra charge to have the ticket delivered to my hotel!

After a little rest I headed out to dinner at an Irish pub a few blocks from my hotel. I enjoyed fish and chips (the fish was a generous portion, and pretty good; the chips thin, soggy, greasy slices hidden under the fish) with a couple of pints of a decent dark ale, while listening to some decent classic rock & roll.

And a few more additions to my collection of entertaining transliterations from English to Russian:

"Long Island Diner"

This one I actually had to read out loud before I got it:
Syekond Khyend = Second Hand.

Next post: http://mrjohngross.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-day-19-st-petersburg-grand-maket.html

Russia Day 17: Moscow to St Petersburg

I'm done in Moscow! After breakfast and a shower, I packed everything up. My bags are getting fuller as I accumulate more stuff, but so far there is still a little room (in part because I've been wearing my big puffy winter coat), and I haven't yet unzipped the expansion pocket of my large suitcase, so I can still buy more stuff in St Petersburg!

Checked out, picked up a light lunch from the nearby grocery store (not sure how good the food on the train will be), and headed out a little after noon. It wasn't too hard to navigate the subway (one line change) with my two rolling bags, though I did skip one crowded train and went to the front of the platform to get on a less-crowded car on the next train.

Arrived at Komsomolskaya metro station, and followed the signs out to the Leningrad train station. Each train station is named for the main destination of trains leaving from it, and St Petersburg used to be called Leningrad. They renamed the city, but not the train stations related to it. There are 3 train stations near this metro stop! Two of them were near the exit I took. I could see the ticket windows for Leningrad station, and signs pointing to high-speed trains, but it took me a few minutes and asking two people before I figured out that I needed to walk all the way around the metro station building to get in to Leningrad station. Once again, I found the building, but not the entrance!

Walked through the station to the platform, including two more security checks, including X-raying of all my luggage. The train was on the station, and I easily found my car, where there was a short line-up to check tickets.

The Sapsan train at Leningradsky Vokzol (Leningrad Station)

"Sapsan" (Сапсан) means peregrine falcon in Russian. It's a fairly fast train (150km/hr, though it didn't feel that fast when it was going) that does the Moscow-St Petersburg run in about 4 hours.

I stowed my luggage and settled into my seat. It was a beautiful train, very clean and comfortable, and all the announcements were in both Russian and English. A very civilized way to get to St Petersburg. The trip was uneventful, and I arrived in St Petersburg (at Moskovsky Vokzal, of course) on time at 5:40pm. I found my way to the exit, and after one person misinformed me about directions (contradicting my own sense of direction, which turned out to have been correct), I was rolling down Ligovsky Prospekt to my hotel, just a few blocks away. Checked in, and unpacked; my room is small but very well laid out with lots of storage nooks and crannies that make very effective use of the space.

I had dinner at the hotel restaurant, and spend the time figuring out how to buy a hockey ticket. The KHL regular season has ended, and the playoffs start Friday night. The local team here SKA (another Red Army team) finished second in their conference, and will be hosting the CSKA Moscow team that I saw the other night, in the first round of the playoffs. Tickets are plentiful and not too expensive. After several minutes figuring out how to register an account on the ska.ru web site (partly in English, but it took some help from Google Translate to really figure it out), I managed to buy a ticket in row 5 near the blue line for 1800 rubles (about $55). The hotel concierge got it printed out for me, and I've figured out which metro stop the rink is near. I thought hockey was big here, and I'm astounded at how easy it was to get a good ticket to a playoff game for one of the top teams, at such a reasonable price. Ilya Kovulchuk and Alexei Ponikorovsky (former Leaf) are the best-known (to us) players on SKA; they also have a guy named Victor Tikanov, son of the famous former Soviet hockey coach.

Next post: http://mrjohngross.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-day-18-wandering-around-st.html

Russia Day 16: Moscow. Gulag & Contemporary History Museums and Movie Night

I did a couple of museums today, starting with the Gulag Museum.  The word "Gulag" is actually a Russian acronym for "Main Administration of Corrective Labour Camps and Labour Settlements". The museum is located down a short lane way off a trendy street full of high-end fashion stores. The lane way is lined with barbed wire and photos of some camp inmates. There were photos and artifacts from the camps, with a little English captions alongside the longer Russian descriptions; many of these were much like what I had seen at the Sakharov museum a few days ago. There was also a re-creation of a typical barracks, with two double bunk beds that would have slept eight prisoners. The highlight of this museum for me was the testimony of three inmates. These were videos projected down from the ceiling onto large book-shaped screens, and the Russian interviews included English subtitles.

I found a place nearby for lunch. I've been trying to eat local and avoid the American chains, but this place caught my eye.

The text to the left of "Bud Diner" is a direct transliteration

of "Food & Drinks", meaningless in Russian

This reminded me of some other fun transliterated signs I've been grabbing photos of this week:

"Dont Tell Mama Cafe" at the bottom of this sign.

Duncan Donuts

Sub Vey

Coffey Khaus (the kh is the back of the throat consonant like the Ch in Chanukah)

Golden Gross (a jewelry store)

And I thought I had a photo of a Vendys, but I can't find it now...

After lunch I crossed the street - as is common here, by using a pedestrian underpass that lets the car traffic keep flowing all the time - and spent a couple hours with a private English-speaking guide at the Museum of Contemporary History. His English was quite good, once I got used to his accent and his rapid pace. He took me through 20 or so rooms detailing Russian history in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. I learned more about the two Russian Revolutions, the White and Red armies, the origin of the terms Bolshevik ("majority") and Menshevik ("minority") and a bunch of other interesting stuff.

After the museum I walked a few blocks to a cool little artsy show with all kinds of quirky things for sale.

Back to my hotel for a rest, and shortly after I got there I had a call from the front desk, wondering why I had not checked out. I told them I had one more day before heading to St Petersburg, and they said my stay had ended this morning and I should be gone by now. I went down to the front desk and showed them my booking confirmation showing I had booked and paid for 10 nights starting February 23rd, and after a few minutes they backed off and apologized. They have now given me a scare at both ends of my stay!

I decided to go see a movie this evening. I had asked the front desk for help finding a movie in English (i.e. with Russian subtitles instead of dubbing), but they were not much help. So I poked around on the internet and found the Pioneer Cinema, showing Nebraska tonight at 7pm in English with subtitles. I took the metro there (2 line transfers and then about a 10-minute walk through a quiet neighbourhood to the very busy street the theatre was on), and found a beautiful theatre. I got to choose my seat on a touch screen at the cashier, and they had a nice restaurant where I had dinner before the show. The theatre itself was small (about 80 seats), but the seating was very spacious and comfortable, and the screen was a decent size. There were only a handful of people there. The movie was not bad, and I enjoyed trying to follow along with the Russian subtitles, seeing places where the translation was pretty loose (I probably understood about half the Russian subtitles).

Just down the street from the movie theatre was this cat theatre:

It's apparently a very popular show featuring cats doing amazing tricks. I had looked into getting a ticket to a show, decided the one first offered was too expensive, and by the time I got around to looking for a cheaper ticket, they were sold out until March 8th (after I leave town). Since then I've found suggestions online that the cats are mistreated, so it's probably just as well. I'm also interested in the Cat Cafe in St Petersburg, where there are lots of cats you can interact with (in a separate room from where they serve the food and drinks). I am not making any of this up!

More general impressions:

Lots of people smoke here! There are groups of smokers outside every metro station entrance, and huddled in the streets outside building entrances.  Smoking is allowed in restaurants; there are usually non-smoking sections, but the separation is not always great.The lobby bar at my hotel (called "Лобби Бар" or "Lobby Bar") has a few tables marked as non-smoking, but the whole place reeks of cigarette smoke. 

And everywhere I go, I see lots of English: on signs and ads, on clothing, on the nameplates on the back of players' sweaters at the KHL game. They seem to think it's cool. I think the Cyrillic is cool, and at times it's hard to find the souvenirs I'm looking for (hats, shirts) in Russian!

Next post: http://mrjohngross.blogspot.ca/2014/03/russia-day-17-moscow-to-st-petersburg.html