Russia - St Petersburg

It was great going to Russia. I mean, how often can someone say that “hey, guess what? St Petersburg is such a beautiful city!” ? Anyway, so here’s like a not so brief summary of my trip!


Going there

The visa to get into Russia cost me €61 (S$122) !!! Apparently, how expensive your visa is, will reflect the relations between Russia and that particular country. Haha… so Singapore is probably not that “gum” with Russia. Haha.

So anyway, on 22 Feb Thursday at 7am… I boarded the bus that would bring me to Russia… the journey was quite long. I think we reached our hotel only at about 3 plus.

This is the castle of Vyborg (the town that is just after the border between Finland and Russia). Look at the people on the frozen sea surrounding the castle… they are doing winter fishing!

My hotel is at the end of the road… notice the high rise buildings… there are quite a lot of them in St Petersburg, which I didn’t expect to see.


It was only -13 degrees… but because of the strong wind… I’m pretty sure it felt colder than that.


The hotel we stayed in… 4 stars supposedly. Take note of the steps at the back (they look small in the picture) … I’ll explain why later.


Cars

The vehicles in Russia are horribly horribly dirty… their windows, especially the ones at the back, can be so dirty that you can’t even see much through them! So I suppose they don’t bother and just drive… haha, which is true from my experience. We tried to cross at a traffic light… but the cars don’t stop. It’s up to you to figure out when is the right moment to run! So we ended up waiting for 3 light changes before we finally made it across (thanks to following one of the locals. Haha)


People

The Russian people in general are not friendly… they don’t smile at you very much… only happened to meet one or two nice ones.


Places we visited

The first meal we had was in KFC! Hahaha… actually I was quite happy to eat there even though it tastes different… cos Finland doesn’t have one! And it’s so dangerous in Russia that they even had a signboard that said “Dear guests, your belongings should not be left without supervision” and they had a security guard inside the restaurant as well.

Russian KFC


An ice bar!!! Haha… everything you see that looks like plastic are actually made of ice.

This is a lighthouse from very long ago… if you can see, there’s a half naked guy standing there. Who is he? Haha, he’s one of my tour mates from Spain… and that crazy guy actually took off his shirt and pants (only underwear left) to take a photo! And it was so cold!!! Haha… but it was entertaining to watch him. Haha.


The seven Singaporeans outside Our Saviour on the Spilled Blood Cathedral. It’s a really beautiful cathedral… just that you can’t really see it in the picture cos it’s so dark.

23 February was Red Army’s Day or Men’s Day in Russia! Haha… it is a public holiday so we got the chance to watch some of the men march down the street. They are in black uniform so they belong to the Russian navy.

This is at the central square in St Petersburg… it’s so marvelously grand.

Another view of the central square, with the Winter Palace behind me.

The night view of the Winter Palace, also known as the Hermitage Museum… which is the best/second best (cos it’s competing with the Paris one) in the world!!! I didn’t know that until I went to Russia.

Inside the Winter Palace… super grand!

At the main staircase

One of the grand halls… there are many many many grand halls.

This is supposed to be a replica of what is inside Vatican City which the public do not have access to. I got to see this in Russia! Cool huh?


One of Leonard Davinci’s paintings… apparently there are only 14 originals left in the whole world, and the Hermitage has two! Did you know that the painting was painted in this order: bones, flesh, skin, clothes! Amazing.

This is Kazan Cathedral… another beautiful and huge building.

Can you see the small little red dot under the arc? That’s me! (not Singapore… haha, lame)

After this we went for dinner at Subway… and two guys attempted to pickpocket Daryl! They were surrounding him and pretending to ask him to buy some stuff. But Yvonne saw one guy trying to pull down one of the zips on Daryl’s jacket! She was so angry that she brushed his hand away and scolded “stupid ah!”. But fortunately at that time we were entering Subway already, so the guys stopped bothering Daryl. It was lucky that the guys were not professional – cos we have been warned by our guide that St Petersburg’s pickpocketers are really professional. But anyway Daryl kept all his stuff safely inside so he was not worried.

This is Mariinsky Theatre… I got to watch a Russian ballet here. It was really good, although the first dance was a bit boring.

We got the highest seats at a student rate, so it was only €10… those really good seats on the first level can cost up to €100 or more!

A snapshot of the ballerinas in action

After the ballet... we had to make our way back to the hotel ourselves... so we took Russian public transport... that was an experience by itself! Firstly, at "bus stops" there aren't any signboards stating the bus number. Secondly, it was a mini little van packed with people! (But not all the buses are like that lah, there are the normal looking buses, trams and metros)

St Isaac's Cathedral – another beautiful building (I think you are probably getting sick of me saying how beautiful the buildings are… but there’s more… Haha, so be prepared.)

Cathedral of St Peter and Paul… this is the first and oldest cathedral in St Petersburg. It is so tall that you can only see a small Yvonne, Daryl and me.

The interior – the church is also where all the royal family tombs are housed.

This is the pulpit which the priest or pastor (not sure it’s called in an Orthodox church) will stand in to preach.

Cruiser Aurora… a ship with a super rich history… except that I can’t remember anything. Oops, haha.

Cathedral of the Smolny Convent – one of the tsarinas ordered the building of this cathedral because she wanted to become a nun in her old age… except that she died earlier from sickness I think. Beside me is Thorsten, from Germany

Me in a Russian hat! Haha… it’s too big

Pushkin summer palace… belonged to one of the Catherines… haha, can’t remember which one (first or second).

Look at how beautiful the hall and the ceiling is!

This guy… who’s name I also forgot (Russian history is too rich… my brain has not enough space, haha), he is the one who came up with the periodic table! Haha… so those who hate chemisty… this is the guy.

Lenin! Haha… and I’m imitating him

A pretty pink church… and I forgot the name

The Russian dinner… left most is Alvaro from Spain, and Gaurav from India (who is studying in NTU in Singapore)

Ladies in traditional Russian costumes, singing Russian folk songs.

Ok… here I’m going to talk about the dinner. The food was quite nice… but it was after the dinner when all the action started. The Russian ladies were performing some tradition songs for us, and getting us to join in some dancing and games. It was so entertaining.

More action came unexpectedly after this… cos the place where we had our dinner also had a wedding dinner going on… so some of the drunk Russian guys came over to celebrate with us and treated us to vodka! When I say vodka… I mean vodka – pure 40% vodka. Actually during the dinner there was already a small glass for each person, but I gave mine to Ping Hong. But after the whole dinner, the atmosphere was so nice with the Russian guys celebrating and everyone toasting to friendship… so I ended up joining in… I think we did 3 or 4 toasts.

Although each toast I only had a little bit in the glass, I probably ended up drinking one full small glass. It’s actually not a lot, but cos I don’t drink so I got affect by it after more than an hour later when we got down from the bus at the hotel. Everything started to become back and soon all I could see was the bright lights from the hotel! I couldn’t walk straight either cos my head was too heavy. It was a terrible terrible feeling. So anyway, remember I talked about the steps to the hotel at the start? Well… in the end, Ivan had to piggy bag me up those steps… (thanks Ivan!).

That’s when I started to recover… as I walked from the lobby to my room, my vision gradually returned to me. All the while I was aware of what’s happening la, cos my hearing was perfectly fine. So anyway, that night I drank so much water to dilute the alcohol that I ended up going to the toilet 4 times in 4 hours. Conclusion: don’t drink if you can’t drink. I’m not proud of this incident… but it was a learning and actually interesting experience.

Enough about me, now to talk about others… haha. I drank only 1 glass… but many other people drank so much more. Like the Spanish gang… I think they drank almost half a liter of vodka each! Then they got really high and were doing all sorts of stupid stuff. Two of the guys were dangling the girlfriend over the staircase railings!!! We were so worried that he would really drop her! But most of the other people were ok, probably cos they are used to alcohol. Fu Xiang drank 8 glasses I think, but he was ok, and also took care of me (thanks fx!).

The groom is the one in coat and pink shirt

The last day, 25 February, we visited the Baltika brewery in the morning… it was so cool. The amount of high tech machines packing all those beer is amazing! And there was free beer after that… which I didn’t drink, of course. Haha.

This is the Russian Red Army uniform in the olden times. My tour guide, Bair, is the one on the left… haha, he specially dressed up for this particular stop. Pity that I sprained my leg (again… hai) cos of the uneven snow, so I didn’t get to listen about the history.

Our tour group picture!

Here are some freebies I got! A Russian badge which says “Russia” in Russian, a cup from Baltika Brewery, and I won a bottle of champagne from a lucky draw. Haha… luckily not vodka.

So anyway, to sum it up, it was a really great trip… even though when I got back on Sunday, I had Finnish exam the next day. Haha… but it was ok. Yups, that’s all for my super long post… more pics, go click on Flicker on the right side of my blog!