Russia 03 – Highs and Lowes
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"The only possibility seemed to be to climb out."
In August 2003 I went to Russia. It can’t really be classified as a ‘Wild East’ since I went alone and therefore doesn’t count. The following isn’t really supposed to be a detailed account but more of a light-hearted view of what a week in Russia can do for you. The trip was a short affair (8 days in length). Visa processing took 10 days and was 150Litas (about 30quid). I got an overnight train on the Saturday afternoon. £10 for a 700mile journey (cheapest seats!). 4 days in St Petersburg, then SE to Novgorod, then headed back towards home (Lithuania at the time) calling in at Pskov. Had the time, but not the money for a monster trip. It’ll happen one day.
St Petersburg Easily the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited. Beats rivals like Prague hands down. Lots of tourists around, but I got the impression that somehow the city is too big, too wild, too eastern and too intimidating not to be overrun. Could quite easily spend 2 weeks there. There are so many things (some more sane than others) that you can do in this city the mind boggles. Going to see every Lenin statue is one (there are supposedly 194 still standing?!). Seeing how many different sphinx monuments there are. Every metro station has a different design and there are 200+ stations… Crossing the border at 3am was quite a thrill. Not as horrendous as I thought – no bribes, ‘medical insurance/ecological tax/handling charge’ required. And this was the big one, not some minor satellite site. This was it! Not as expensive as is reported in the guidebooks. Was the 300th anniversary that summer. Quite nice to be in the right place at the right time for once. First taste of real Russia having been to 5 outlying republics. To hear Russian spoken everywhere by everyone and to understand it was really nice. Tasting the 8 different brands of Baltica beer. Diehards can do them all in one sitting. They go from 0 (zero alcohol) to 7 (12%). No.s 3 & 4 are quite drinkable. The hostels are a good place to meet other travellers all of whom were doing Rus independently.
Lowes Getting locked in the toilet in holiday hostel. No amount of swearing, kicking, barging or wrestling would even shift the door an inch. First plan was to wait until someone came in and then shout. This is where mark would’ve come in usefull! After 15mins of patient waiting nobody came – I might be waiting a long time. The only possibility seemed to be to climb out. One of the #101 times when being 6’2 and built like a beanpole in eastern Europe is a distinct advantage. I didn’t realise how difficult climbing out of a toilet can be. The operation involved scrambling onto a rickety toilet seat, then onto a coat peg. Then I had to try and hoist myself onto a crouched sitting position on top of the toilet door (there wasn’t enough room to sit property). Desperately trying not to fall 15ft I then had to swing my legs over the door. I’ll respect Russian toilet doors for life after this! On the outside the door opened with my little finger – only in Russia could they get the locking mechanism the wrong way round. I was nearly screwed over for registering my visa in St Petersburg and not Moscow (independent travellers must still write an itinerary of all the towns they intend to visit and have marked on their visa).
Novgorod Not much to say about this town really. Had quite a nice castle and I had the ‘beach’ mainly to myself (300+ miles from the sea), but it was only 15degrees….
Lowes
Pskov Not good for…supermarkets/shops/any form of shopping, tourists, cinemas, nightclubs, working streetlights, customer service, anybody with even remotely left wing views, non-Russian speakers… Good for…Lada-spotting, 25year old trolleybuses with no numbers, marked destinations or timetables, Lenin statues and ‘heroes to the Soviet worker’ monuments, cheap vodka, standing in hour long queues to be told foreign train tickets aren’t sold until 5pm, realising how lucky you are to have an exit visa out of Russia… A friend who knows Russia well told me that Pskov was ‘a nice little town’ and referred to Kaliningrad as ‘a shithole’. Perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t go to Kaliningrad….
The future |