Dear All,
Well it was as wonderful as I had hoped and many of my preconceived ideas were shot down in flames very quickly.
We arrived exhausted and both as ill as anything but were determined not to waste a minute and didn't in spite of feeling so grim. As the week progressed we felt better but both of us coughed and blew our noses into oblivion the whole trip.....
The weather was kind to us. It was as hot as hell though and very humid too. Average temp whilst we were there was between 28 and 30 degrees and it is sweltering.
No provision is made for aircon in 95% of the places we went to bar the Armoury in Moscow and our home in St.Petes. You walk into a shop and it's like stepping into your 240 degree oven. There were two massive thunderstorms during the first two days we were there. Both caused us no inconvenience, as we were indoors. They only have 3 months of summer and 9 months of winter. Winter temps average 30 degrees below zero, inconceivable in the heat we experienced.........It was light most of the time we were there. Only gets dark at about 2am and the sun is back up by 5am.....so we woke up in sunlight and went to sleep in sunlight...makes for very little sleep, as you never seem to tire when the sun is blazing outside all day and all night.
We stayed up one night to see the bridges over the Neva river open to let the massive ships through and that was the only time it got dark, and it wasn't really dark as we know it......
St. Petersburg is beautiful. Very flat and the river runs through the city, which is littered with canals.
Our apartment was situated on the banks of a canal and our hosts, Rob and Michelle Elfick live on the top floor of their five storied building. It's big and spacious with three bedrooms -the main bedroom with a walk-in dressing room, spa bath, sauna and double vanity slab and shower. The kitchen cum dining room is vast, with enough room for a study and suite for a family room. We had our own bathroom with shower, loo and vanity setup. It is air-conditioned and costs the company $6000 per month!!!!!!
You can't drink the tap water but they have a water machine in the kitchen area, so iced water is on tap all the time. Phone calls within the city are free, you only pay if you phone outside the city limits......There are wide boulevards between some of the buildings and they can be filled with outdoor restaurants by the dozen or be completely empty of any activity.
Everywhere one turns there is a statue to a poet, Tsar or some admired Russian...no-one who has done anything worthy does not get a statue put up to acknowledge his contribution. Even statues of Lenin remain but I never saw one of Stalin or the other Soviet leaders but then maybe didn't go to those places.
The gardens too are very pretty, brimful of flowers and vast. The lawns in between them appear to be mostly mown weed. In the parks there are huge trees which provide welcome shade in the heat and loooooong benches to collapse onto, as well as fountains of every shape, size and variety you can think of...no shortage of fountains. And again everything is spotlessly clean....which I must say amazed me, mostly I think because there are hundreds of people everywhere.....the Russians go and see all of the sights en masse.
As far as shopping goes there is almost nothing you cannot get. We went to several supermarkets and they are packed full of goods with names that one recognizes like Lipton iced tea, Rama marge, Persil washing powder etc Of course lots of Russian labels on products but all with pics, so not difficult to find what you're looking for. The supermarkets we went into reminded me of our supermarkets back in the 70's. Small isles and wire trolleys, small old fashioned fridge's but all stocked to the gills. I forgot to look at prices but Michele felt that you got better value in SA for the equivalent in Rands. As to clothing etc all of the top name brands are there and that goes for furniture, white goods, crockery etc, The choice is vast.......
The economy is buoyant, the skyline a mass of cranes and the streets are teeming with people. There are tourist markets to buy souvenirs and Graham went off exploring on his own one day and discovered a huge Russian market, selling everything including the kitchen sink but Michele said she didn't feel safe there and avoided it...probably full of pickpocket gypsies.
Onto the Russians.........what a bunch of miserable, militantly grumpy, obnoxious folk. They are unfriendly, in fact I have to assume that the words smile, friend, civility, thoughtfulness and manners are missing from both their vocabulary and dictionaries.
For example, I was walking along the pavement with G and M and moved to one side as some Russians came towards us but got mowed into by this woman, who hit me in the leg so hard with her bag, as she storm-trooped by, that I had a huge swelling and bruise on my thigh for the rest of the trip. What's more I fell off the pavement and she didn't turn a hair. Charming dame !!!!!!!!!
They will walk in front of you as you're taking a photo and in spite of learning the Russian for thank-you and smiling at them, they glare back at you as if to say....well push off now, what do you expect from me.... Unbelievable. Another example was when I was looking at a fountain, a Russian male decided to have his photo taken next to me. Until I got a shove and verbal barrage from him, I was unaware of him but I was obviously cramping his style and was bombed on in no uncertain terms. Rude oaf. On the odd occasion one met a friendly soul but they were the exception rather than the rule.
The two tours we went on in Moscow, run by a private enterprise had super people running the show and the guides were nice too. The two drivers that are assigned to Rob and who chauffeured us around, when asked to, were also very nice chaps and spoke moderately passable English. But as a rule they are revolting people and very hard to warm to. On the other hand they are scrupulously honest. I forgot my vanity case at the airport and my heart sank but it was held there in safe keeping for me and after filling in a multitude of forms to satisfy the most enthusiastic of bureaucrats, it was mine again!!!!!
I also left my glasses case at a stall one day, and rushed back to find it and there it was waiting for me. Also on the overnight train to Moscow, there is a little vase of silk flowers placed on the table in the compartment and when we got off the train there they all were, window after window.....they wouldn't last a sec in this country.....
The people I expected to see were big, strong Russian Amazonian type woman and huge men. Instead
the women I saw swarming all over the streets were petit, slender and in a lot of cases very pretty. They seem like clones of one another, they all have very similar figures....it strikes one very strongly. The men too are small in the main and slim. Of course there are big men but ones impression is that there are hoards of the little ugly okes all over the place. I didn't see one good looking man in either Moscow or St Petes, not one......maybe that's why the women are so grumpy and long-lipped.......The only big strong women I saw were those doing the manual labour and one has to ask why none of them were around the streets, but they weren't. They all dress in skin tight pants and skimpy tops, or little mini skirts and skimpy tops. That's obviously a broad generalization but that's the over-riding impression I got.
Another remarkable phenomenon I noticed, and I have to confess it made me feel my age, was all the young women setting forth to these massive palaces and their equally massive gardens in the new pointed toe high heeled shoes, (those with points so long, they ought to be classified as lethal weapons) and traipsing around.....totter...totter...totter....for miles on end, in the sweltering heat.....positively hurt my feet, just looking at them and yet there were masses of them. I guess what women will do in the name of high fashion will never change but I was very comfy in my Nikes and got home at night blisterless and with my back in tact!!!!!
You know you're getting old when...........
Driving around is another experience altogether. None of the ex-pats drive themselves, as the traffic police adorn the streets in their multitudes and pull you over. You get a spot fine and pay then and there. The multi-national companies won't let their staff drive, as soon as the traffic cop knows you're not Russian the fine quadruples and it is levied in dollars, not roubles.
The moves our driver pulled in the streets were mind-blowing and the little gaps he squeezed the car through left me whistling in admiration. They drive fast and defensively and it's an experience I will not easily forget....weaving in and out of traffic, avoiding pedestrians by a hairs breadth and squeezing into gaps that weren't there. Also the swinging around, over several lanes to get to where you want to be seemed to have no apparent rules as we know them. It's pandemonium but it works somehow.
We saw several prangs though, one guy just sailing through the red robot straight into a vehicle crossing the road.........scary stuff. Every imaginable car is on the roads in Russia, from the bombed out Ladas to state of the art Mercs, BMWs, Audis, stretch limos......you name it, it's there. Public transport includes mini-bus taxis, metro and trams and all seem to be well patronized.
We ate a little of the local food. Had a blini at a stall in a street boulevard but neither of us were mad about them, in spite of Michele saying they were very moreish. They are similar to a large flat pancake and are filled with a myriad of fillings of your choice.. I had cheese and ham and G had mushrooms, as an example. We also had a salad one day in a Russian restaurant. It is presented to you in a glass goblet and the base is a mixture of bits of potato, peas and corn. This is topped with Chinese cabbage (neither lettuce nor cabbage) and your choice of salad..once again I had ham and cheese and then it is all drowned in mayonnaise...they are wild about mayo and ice-cream. There are ice-cream and cooldrink vendors everywhere....One day G elected to eat a pie from one of the park vendors and his choice was potato or cabbage or meat of some kind. He had the potato and said it was good but the pastry wasn't flaky pastry as we know it but a sort of donut type dough but not sweet...he suspected it was a deep fried pie.
They seem to eat very fatty foods but according to Michelle need all that fat to survive the winters. We ate out a very posh place but the chef there was French, so I'm not sure that the style of food was Russian at all....it was divine. We all started with' vegetables' which was in fact a salad as we know it...lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers etc and then G and I had the most delectable piece of salmon which topped little flat ravioli type pockets filled with the most delish spinach and another with a delicate mustard sauce.....As we were taking Rob and Michele out and she wanted pud, I had some too although I was as full as a tick and I had a trio of three different flavoured creme brulee and she had an Earl Grey ice cream on a little tartlet...also scrumptious.
This was a floating restaurant on the Neva and was full of the so-called 'new Russians", all filthy rich and dressed up to the nines. The ultimate status symbol (for a woman) appears to be to have a miniature dog under your arm and they accompany you everywhere, restaurants too!!!!!!!!! Cellphones, the SA status symbol for the masses are ubiquitous there. On our return train trip from Moscow we were each handed a packaged meal consisting of cheese, marge, bread roll (fresh), biscuits, yoghurt, chocolate bar, pate, a bottled water, nuts (pistachio).......so you don't go hungry on the speed train..
There is also a hostess of sorts who trolls up and down with a drinks cart and you can buy all sorts of alcohol from her. The Russians like to drink. It is more common than not to see a fellow off to work in the morning with his briefcase in one hand and an open bottle of beer in the other.........but then they are strange people......I went to a bakery with Michele and the cakes are varied and look delish. A beautifully decorated cake starts at about R100 but is decorated so that each slice cut will look like a work of at on its own.
There was every conceivable type of bread, croissants, rolls, biscuits, tarts, tartlets, donuts, buns,ready made sandwiches etc. It is an upmarket shop and is apparently owned by an English woman.
The things we found to be really cheap were CDs...less than R20 each but apparently they are all black market and yet sold in modern CD stores. Camera equipment...cheaper than Hong Kong according to Rob (one of his drivers told us that that was because they had been smuggled in without customs and government taxes being paid), but again all sold in huge camera shops, computer programs also cheap and the same criteria....copies.
We bought and had developed endless spools of film, as that too was really cheap. The whole industry is Mafia run apparently and bribes are the order of the day. The so called New Russians apparently derive their wealth from what is referred to as "unclear circumstances" and have hoards of servants, flashy cars and clothes and live in vast homes...apartments with individual swimming pools etc.,
The wealthy drug barons put up these huge homes in the country too.....we saw several dozen of them and it is obvious that money is not in short supply.
The wealth of art, sculptures, tapestries, gold, silver, porcelain, crystal, marble, exotic woods , jasper....oh the list is endless that adorn the palaces of both the wealthy and the Royals is mind blowing.
What is on display is apparently a small sample of the stuff in storage. It is magnificent and as you travel from one room to the next in these vast palaces, you just cannot believe the scale and grandeur of it all. It is so breathtakingly beautiful...the art on the walls, the ceiling and even the floors is spectacular. It is impossible to believe you will see anything more magnificent than the room you are standing in and you move on to the next room and gasp!!!!! It is endless and afterwards, when you study the diagrams of the building you have visited, you realize you saw one paltry little corner of the palace in terms of its total size.............just amazing.
I knew that the Russians were the envy of every Royal house in Europe but had little idea of the immense scale of it all. I have only been to Versailles and Buckingham and Windsor castles, I hasten to add, but this lot make them look ordinary and I thought at the time that they were splendid indeed. You would need a couple of months to look over one palace and try to take it all in. As I said, palaces are a dime a dozen in St Petes and Moscow and so it is difficult to imagine the extent of it all. What also is amazing, is that the communists kept it all squirreled away somewhere..........
I also visited a museum devoted to communism and that too was interesting but mostly documents and pictures and clothing and the like. Very drab and monotonous but all there to see. It was set up in the palace that the last Tsar gave to his ballerina mistress in St. Petes and I have to confess that's why I went, not realizing what I was actually going to see. Glad I did in the end though, saw a totally different side to the museums.
What is very irritating in both the museums and palaces, is the lack of translated signage on the exhibits. Most of it is in Russian and so you are left wondering what you were actually looking at or who you are looking at. Because of the Cyrillic alphabet, it is even more difficult to even attempt to figure anything out for yourself.
The city is very clean, kept so by women, who also seem to man the parks and do heavy digging and raking of flower beds in the parks and street verges. The men seem to do all of the construction type work...refurbishing pavements etc., It has a population of 5 million and there is little evidence of poverty on the streets with a few old timers begging outside churches. There are a lot of street kids around, apparently it is a big problem and arises from alcohol abuse at home. The trouble makers are the gypsies, although we were lucky enough to escape them....saw a few but they were not really in evidence.
The week before we got there though Rob and Michelle's folks had been victimized by them trying to steal wallets out of pockets and cameras...and it was frightening for them, as they surround you in gangs and then victimize you.
The river is not clean, nor are the canals. The edges are positively gross looking with scum and gunge, yet the Russians happily swim in it..............ugh!!!!!!
As you stroll or drive from one place to another you will inevitably come across a bridal party, consisting of the bride and groom and each of them appear to have an aide, who has a sash across their chest. The wedding party trek off to a favoured monument and lay a buch of flowers at the site. They travel in a car that has an arrangement on its roof and another on the bonnet. This scene is familiar every day of the week and we were told two different reasons for weddings taking place on any day of the week. One was that it is expensive to get married over a weekend and the other was that in order to arrange your marriage you go to a bureau who help with everything and they obtain aa date for you from the registry office, which has so many marriages to cope with due to the size of the population that they dish out a date and that's your wedding day, full stop.
There is a big bash after visiting the monument of your choice, we were aware of one at the floating restaurant we were at and another zoomed passed us on a hydrofoil boat on the Neva. We also went on the hydrofoil, when we went out to the Peterhof palace for the day with Rob and Michele and that was a first for me. It was fun once we had managed to get onto the boat without being crushed to death by pushing and shoving Russians, who are at every venue you visit in their thousands. All militantly grumpy, rude and unpleasant.
The buildings in their entirety are magnificent. The architecture superb and it goes on and on and on, one beautiful structure after another. The city is littered with magnificent churches too, all with gold cupolas soaring into the sky and often with brilliant mosaics, frescos and carvings adorning them. Inside they are breathtaking....filled with icons and statues and art and chandeliers that are gigantic and exquisite....just so superb one quickly runs out of adjectives to describe them.
There is an enormous amount of construction of new places going on as well as reconstruction of existing buildings. The city is overflowing with palaces too....apart from the royal palaces, wealthy nobles and merchants also had homes that were so magnificent they beggared belief. Whilst all of this is so beautiful, the Russians have a lot to learn about tourism. On a whim they will close down a palace or a museum and that's that. We devoted one day to go up to Tsarkoe Selo to see the Catherine palace. We carefully checked the guide books to make sure that it was open, as it entailed Rob laying on his driver for us and it is about 15kms outside the city, only to get there and discover that it was closed for a medical day...whatever that may mean. So you may have travelled half way around the world to get there and it's closed, no explanation, no apology...just your tough luck.
On our last day there we again tried to go there only to discover that after waiting for 3/4 hour in the baking sun at a ticket office queue, being pushed about by the locals, that Russians would be admitted from 12-2 and non-Russians from 2-4. So we had to leave as we had to get to the airport by 1. That too was the rule for that day...it appears in no guide book and it's just tough if you are inconvenienced by it, they don't give a damn.
We had the same experience in Moscow...Red Square had been closed off for 2 weeks, due to a terrorist threat (?)........when you see the scale of the place, that's just nonsense. In both instances, without the aid of someone who could speak Russian, there was nothing to inform us as to why we were not allowed into these places. The officials on duty just glare at you and snap 'closed' and that is that. I mean it's like shutting Cape Town down for a weekend and to hell with the tourists....can't conceive of it happening anywhere else in the world.
So if one is going to Russia on holiday, it is wise not to set ones heart on seeing anything specific, as you might get there to find its closed and that's the end of your desire. I must say it was very disappointing as the Catherine Palace houses the newly refurbished Amber Room, reputed now to be one of the major attractions in the world, and judging by photographs of it, it is spectacular...........oh well, bloody Russians.
After the disappointment of our day at the Catherine Palace we had a wonderful evening. We went off to the Imperial Theatre to see a Russian ballet troupe perform Swan Lake, accompanied by the State Orchestra and it was fabulous. The Kirov Ballet Company was performing in London and the London Ballet Company was performing at the Marinsky. We wanted to see Russian ballet and so elected to go and see Swan Lake at the Imperial. Just wonderful............and the theatre, believe it or not is staffed by friendly people, who smile and are very helpful.
I would highly recommend St Petes as a tourist destination though, it was quite wonderful and we were exceptionally lucky to have Rob and Michelle to visit and show us around. I would hesitate to go there alone, one would need to go on a tour to see what we crammed into 8 days and the way was smoothed by Michelle, who did an enormous amount of organizing for us. Also she can communicate in the local lingo and without that you are doomed to a very frustrating time if you have a busy schedule.
Brave, would be an understatement in trying to go it alone, as one can do in the rest of Europe fairly easily.
We had a long trip home and the last comment I have is that the new Joburg International is fantastic. Warm , friendly and efficient staff make it the most super experience......superior to Charles de Gaulle and unquestionably a million times better than Pulkovo, which doesn't know what service means.
We were bowled over by the level of assistance and the smiling, friendly staff we came across.......a far cry from the good old apartheid days, where we compared favourably with the Russians. Even an unsmiling South African face is a friendly face after Russia and when we smile, we light up the world!!!!!!!!!
Much love to you all,
Baubie / Eileen
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