Andy and Sarah's Journal

Helsinki

Arrive 6^th October

Depart 8^th October

Got a bus into town pretty easy. Noticeably colder than London. Bit tricky with the language and signposts so wandered around a bit carrying rucksacks until got bearings – Sarah complaining about my map skills. First impressions – very conservative people, not a diverse population. Very few people cross roads unless there is a green man – even though no cars in sight. Didn’t see any policemen or police cars the whole time we were there – seems strange for a capital city these days. Trams seem pretty good – although missed the beer tram as this only runs in the summer. Signs are in Swedish and Finish – this is the case in any area where 6% or more of the population are Swedish speaking. Much advertising is in English though and this is widely spoken (only way to access good telly, internet etc?) along with Russian.

Went to the annual Herring festival/market that was running for the 269^th time. Fishermen selling straight off their boats – nice atmosphere and good fish.

Took the ferry over to the fort – sveaborg. Tied up with all major parts of their history:

Used by Russians in the Crimean war against France/Britain. Featured in the Finish civil war after independence from Sweden in 1917, the whites defeated the reds with German support. Then defended by the Finish against the allies after they joined Germany to keep out the Russians during the 2^nd WW.

Finish like to drive on the pavement – kept happening. Good restaurants.

St Petersbug

Train from Helsinki took 6 hours. Lots of people involved at the border with impressive uniforms and stern faces – but we didn’t have to leave our seats and it was all straight forward. Bit of a jolt walking into the street from the train station. Cyrillic alphabet quite hard to get to grips with. Tried to get a taxi – but wanted 600 roubles for a 3km journey. So headed into metro with the big ruck sacks. Bit stressy but went ok and we got there in the end.

Highlights:

Church of the Resurrection (on spilt blood – site where Alexander II was killed)- classic church with onion domes, very impressive.

Peter and Paul fortress (1703) – built to keep the Swedish out and later the Germans WWII. Within grounds is SS Peter and Paul cathedral where all the Russian TSARs are buried – including Nicholas II and family who’s bodies were brought back from the mine shaft in Siberia where they were hidden after their murder in 1918. There was a state burial in 1998, attended by British Royal family – distant cousins.

St Isaacs cathedral 1859 – impressive dome and good views from top.

The Hermitage 1762 – massive palace of the Tsars now stuffed full of 3,000,000 national treasures – many priceless. The security system appears to be run by a St Petersburg House Wife in each of the hundreds of rooms – very low tech considering the value of the exhibits. The French impressionists were our favourite. A selection of Leonardo Da Vinci paintings were quite powerful too, however the most impressive thing was the palace itself. Hundreds of massive rooms very ornately decorated.

Main shopping street – Nevsky Prospekt. Lots of Mercs and Bentleys and very posh shops.

Tourist Offices still seemed to be a little in the past. The lights were off so you assume they’re closed, when you look at the opening times you realise they are open. When you go in the staff avoid all eye contact even though you are the only people in there and they aren’t doing anything. The information available is limited to the main attractions and is not very detailed. We found a description of a memorial where some 420,000 people were buried during the Siege of Leningrad. The staff at our hotel didn’t know it but did their best to give us directions. We set off a bit late on our last day in town and found ourselves walking through a suburb as it was starting to go dark having taken the Metro away from the centre. The walk took us a good mile and a half out of town, people seemed a bit surprised to see us out that way, but it was interesting to get out of the tourist areas. We were the only ones at the memorial as it was going dark. Drizzling rain and a broody sky completed the atmosphere. An eternal flame burns overlooking about 8 football pitches worth of uniform grass mounds. Each one is a mass grave dated from 1942 to 1944. The siege lasted 900 days, most died from disease and famine rather than fighting. (St Petersburg – formerly Leningrad – is the most northerly city over 1 million in population and the siege coincided with one of the coldest winters on record). We were pleased that we made the effort to see this site and a little baffled that it is so poorly promoted.

Impressions

The St Petersburg Times is a weekly paper written in English. They featured an article on the gay and lesbian film festival. The venue was shut down by the fire ministry to try to stop it happening. But when this looked like it wouldn’t work the Emergency Situation Ministry turned up with riot police to make sure the meeting didn’t happen. The festival went ahead at a secret location with attendees invited by telephone. This was quite an eye opener for a city that appears to be so wealthy and Western. In fact St Petersburg is seen as the most culturally advanced and most “Westernised” of Russia’s cities.

Money seems to be in private wealth, the police and fire brigade all have old cars and the metro and tram buses are quite old. But there are more new cars around than in London and most of them very nice ones. However the water from the taps is not drinkable as the system is not good enough to rule out Guardia infection.

Much talk in the paper about the mafia and gangsters running the show and creaming off all the money. We saw a couple of convoys involving blacked out Mercs and big four by fours.

The second anniversary of the murder of Anna ………was the week before we arrived. Those wishing to mark the occasion had to apply for a permit of some kind. This was refused as there would be works involving machinery at that location on that day – they were offered a place miles out of town. The gathering went ahead and sure enough there was no machinery working there. However riot police were present and all attending were video’d by the police according to the St Petersburg Times.

Port a loos seem to be a new craze in Russia. Quite regularly there would be three or so on the street with an attendant. Usually there was a queue of people waiting to pay their 15 roubles for the privilege. Public toilets are largely limited to museums and restaurants and access to these is fairly expensive. We could only assume that peeing in the street would carry severe consequences. Most public places seem to be patrolled by some kind of security or police and although there were street drinkers and beggars they were few in number and seemed to be excluded from most places.

There was a seedy undertone to St Petersburg. Every publication we saw had advertising for massage parlours and lap dancing clubs and these venues were all over the city. Generally the men were fairly unimpressive – chubby and sporting the classic long back and short sides hair cut. The women however were generally stunning. However the fashion seems be that women should make the most of every bit of sex appeal they have with what they wear. No complaints from me – but did feel a bit like a former era of our fashion trends when maybe women were expected to make every effort for their men and some how be subservient as a result (I did not feel quite the same but wished I had brought some mascara with me!).

The St Petersburg Metro system has the longest escalators you’ve ever seen, a good 200m long. No one walks up or down and so people stand on both sides, some even sit down. The reason could be the river and various canals require the extra depth (St Petersburg has flooded many times throughout it’s history).At the bottom of each escalator a person sits in a controllers box. They all looked completely bored and didn’t appear to have anything to do. Although if anyone fell down the escalators it could be serious due to the height and it must also be a nightmare when they break down as most people would find the climb up quite a challenge. The escalator supervisor job only seems to be done by women, like a number of other roles such as the room supervisors in the Hermitage.

Caviar – a small pot of red caviar was about 150 roubles in a reasonable restaurant. The taste was good, a bit like a luxurious fish paste.

Vodka – plentiful and cheap. Smirnoff no where to be seen though! Those we tried were very drinkable and lacked the harshness of vodkas we have at home.

Moscow (Mokba)

Train left St Petersburg at 11pm exactly and arrived in Moscow at 7am on the dot. We had a 2 berth business class cabin. Very comfortable and felt very safe. Although as a practice run for the Trans Siberian we didn’t manage to sleep much. The complimentary drink was a beer or vodka. The vodka option turned out to be a 200ml bottle!

Despite best laid plans the journey to our hotel went pear shaped. Some how we ended up a stop too far on the metro without realising and then walked aimlessly trying to get some bearings without a map. Eventually in the increasing rain Sarah’s written Russian enabled someone to point us in the direction of the hotel. 3 stops on the electric bus got us to the vast block of our 2000 bed hotel. Then our reservation wasn’t on the system, however the staff were very helpful and after about an hour it was sorted. But then we couldn’t check into out room for another 2 hours so quite pleased to finally get into our room.

There was a large Sunday market just outside the hotel and we spent a nice couple of hours in the drizzly rain looking at paintings, crafts and old military paraphernalia that the Russians seem to love to collect. The place was aimed more at locals than foreign tourist which was quite nice although we resisted the temptation to buy anything as prices for the nicer stuff were at least as high as at home.

Observations

A few themes continued from St Petersburg:

Smoking – still allowed in many restaurants, bars etc. Was very noticeable in the hotel lobby for instance and in restaurants where people smoked even when their food was in front of them. Surprised us how alien this felt to us even though the smoking ban at home is only quite recent.

Drinking – we saw both men and women drinking bottles of beer as they walked along the street. This was at any time of day, it is almost as if vodka was an alcoholic drink but beer doesn’t really count. No apparent stigma to drinking a beer walking along the street in the morning.

We read that life expectancy in Russia is 71 for women but only 59 for men. Explanations include high numbers of smokers, alcoholism, poor health system (and getting worse) and a quarter or more Russians living below the poverty line of $100 a month. (You certainly don’t get an impression of this poverty in St Petersburg or Moscow apart from the people standing at the underground selling a few random items or the occasional person going through the bins).

Cleanliness – both cities were very clean. This is probably the result of the jobs for the people approach. There were a lot of people sweeping and cleaning the streets and metro system. Also very few people seem to drop litter in the first place, perhaps the consequences for this are severe. Similar to our experiences in Vietnam buying tickets for anything involves a ticket office and then a short walk to the entrance where at least one further person will check your ticket and scribble on it or put an official tear in it.