Gaston and I have just returned from a great holiday (city trip) in Russia. We visited both Saint Petersburg (11 days) and Moscow (2 days). Instead of staying in expensive hotels, we decided to rent apartments which has many advantages: it is cheaper (half the price of an equivalent hotel room), you have more living space, cooking facilities, and it is not so touristic. If you choose well you will really live among the locals.
Here are some of my observations:
- Saint Petersburg is a beautiful city with very many museums and stunning architecture. Moreover, Piter (as Russians call it) is not spoiled yet by (busloads of) western tourists. Moscow however, has more of a real big city feel not unlike Paris and Rome. Not so nice is the feeling of walking too near to a busy highway, which is the case near main roads (also in the center) both in Moscow and in Saint Petersburg.
- The weather in Saint Petersburg is completely unpredictable: there are lies, damn lies, and the weather in Saint Petersburg. Real Russians don’t read weather forcasts and we also stopped doing that because they didn’t make any sense. Granted, the weather forcast in Holland is also not perfect (but I think better than in Piter) and can change several times during the day; thanks to the sea climate in both in Piter as in Holland.
- All rooms in museums (e.g. the Hermitage has 1024 of them) are guarded by old women; it must create many jobs for them. Never underestimate the tiranny of these humourless granny’s: they see everything from the slightest flash of a camera to a Lonely Planet book temporarily and innocently placed on some forbidden flat surface.
- Eating out is reasonably cheap, at most about half the price of an equivalent Dutch restaurant. Don’t eat raw fish in Japanese restaurants, it may upset your stomach. The quality of the food is good, and like in Western Europe all styles of cuisines are present in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. We even ate in a Gregorian restaurant (recommended by our two Russian female dinner dates) in Moscow. In the non-alcoholic drinks department I especially enjoyed a yoghurt-like substance named Kefir, it is a type of butter milk and you are supposed to live a 100 years if you drink lots of it.
- What ever you do, don’t drink the tap water! (repeat like a mantra). This is stern advice from the Lonely Planet. Indeed the tap water in Saint Petersburg looks brownish and smells funny. It is actually known to contain a nasty parasite which can keep your bowels busy for 2 weeks. In the beginning of June the hot water is closed off in Saint Petersburg, so some people use a boiler in summer (the switch does not always work, especially when you have a construction error in the water pipe system of your apartment). In Moscow the tap water looks much cleaner, but just to be sure I didn’t drink it there either. A girl living in Moscow mailed me recently that the danger is somewhat overestimated: she drinks it sometimes, so far nothing bad happened to her. Anyway, the water supply system in Piter is much more worn-out than in Moscow. Buy lots of mineral water and carry it around.
- In Russia women look much younger than they actually are. To us Western Europeans they look like 17 old girls when they’re actually 22 years old (and yes we happened to see a passport of one of them, they don’t lie). Even older women look much younger. We found women in Saint Petersburg on average even more beautiful than in Moscow.
- Taxi drivers use every trick in the book to cheat money out of you (even the “sorry I don’t have the change trick” at the end). Learn to bargain, and moreover learn to say “no” to rediculous (read: western european) prices. Don’t take “official” taxi’s of the Mercedes type for which access is controlled by a taxi manager, but try to find the small independent friendly Lada driver. Late at night/morning, every private car in the street may be your taxi if you pay the driver a couple of hundred of Roubles. At the moment 250 Roubles is about 7 Euros.
- It is difficult to find people that speak a bit of English, even in touristic areas. Best to try your luck with young academics. Learn to read the Cyrillic alphabet and your life will be much easier in Russia, especially while travelling by metro. Your minimalistic vocabulary should contain: Da (yes), Njet (no), Ja (I/me), Pazalsjta (Please; but also ok for many counter reactions, not unlike Italian prego), Spassiba (thanks), Skolko (how much does it cost), Adin (one), Dwa (two), Gdje tualjet (where is the toilet), Charasjo (OK/good).
- Officially it is not allowed (since jan 1st, 2006) to drink on the street, but you still see folks doing so almost everywhere. Even youngsters from ages 12 onwards can be found drinking and talking in the street. One wonders why the whole country is not filled with Pjanitsja (drunk people; by the way, don’t use this word, it is very offensive to Russians). The police does not do anything about it (or about any else) it seems.
- Most beggars (there aren’t very many, mostly close to metro stations) are old women. The social security system in Russia is not good and without a man, who probably drank himself to death years ago, it is hard to survive. The difference between rich and poor is much bigger in Russia than in Western Europe, a sad thing. You may find Lada’s driving side by side to BMW’s.
- The presence of many scaffolds shows that many buildings in Saint Petersburg and Moscow are being restored to their old glory. It is clear the centers of these cities will look much different (read: even more beautiful!) in 10 years time. The economy is booming, under president Putin the Rouble has remained pretty stable, and foreign investments have become big business. Now people may still want to move to the West, but my guess is the tables will be turned within a few years. Let’s hope those investment returns and the earnings of Russia’s gas and oil exports will eventually flow back to Russia’s common people and not only to the elite.
- We went to a beautiful classical music concert of the Saint Petersburg Orchestra in the big hall of the Shostakovich theatre. They played Shostakovich’s 8th Symphony. Highly recommended and only costs 600 Roubles a person. Buy tickets in person at the actual theatre and not via booking services on Nesvky Prospekt (main shopping street in Piter), that will save you money.
- Nice places to go out in Saint Petersburg are: JFC jazz club, Jimi Hendrix blues club and club Metro (discotheque). Drink wodka (pure) or Sambuca (including chewing the beans and inhaling the “brulee” alcohol fume with a straw).
- Stunning museums in Saint Petersburg are: Hermitage (of course), Russian museum and the Palace at Peter Hoff (just outside Saint Petersburg). Both the Louvre and the Dutch Rijksmuseum offer little compared the vast amount of art you can find in Russian museums.
- When in Moscow, don’t miss the Red Square and the War museum at Victory square, the latter mueum is an impressive memorial for the 27 million(!) Russians who died in the second world war. We found the Kremlin somewhat disappointing. There are undoubtedly many more interesting spots in Moscow but we unfortunately didn’t have much time there.
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