St. Petersburg (Russia)

Gettting to St. Petersburg was quite an adventure. We took a night bus from Tallin, which meant that we also crossed the border with this almost empty bus. After a few hours of driving, the Estonian border control got on the bus and checked our passports. They didn't take long and also were friendly. Tough just a few minutes later we would have to get through the Russian border control, which worked slightly different. Every passenger had to get off the bus - with all their belongings. For us this meant to take our little bags as well as our huge backpacks out of the bus. We then entered a little house, where a lady checked our passports. Of course we had a visa (if you missed how we applied for those, check some earlier blogposts!), therefore they let us through quickly. Actually they never checked our baggage, which is why we didn't quite understand why we had to take all of it out of the bus, since after waiting for everyone to get through, we got on the exact same one again.

We arrived at around 5.30 am and we needed around 40 minutes by metro to the house of our Couchsurfer host. He was a real treasure. Andrei got up early for us and picked us up from the station. As we arrived to his home, his first words were: "Would you like a cup of tea?" and "Please make yourself at home. The food in my fridge is also your food. Please don't ask if you can use anything, just help yourself." - a real treasure, like I just said. After he had shown us the most important places to visit, he had to leave to go to work. So let's go, let's explore St. Petersburg!

Here are some first expressions. St. Petersburg has one Main Street which is called "Nevsky" and along this street you can basically find anything. Shops, astonishing buildings and practically anything you can wish for. Though we felt like we want to dig a little bit deeper into the history of this city, we decided to join a Free Walking Tour, which pays itself by donations. Our group was great and our guide even better - she literally knew everything. To every question we had, she knew the answer. For example we realized that there were many Belgium pubs and in general a lot of foreign kind of beers and foods. She explained that by telling us about how there were many guest workers who have been ordered from Europe - mainly from France, Germany, Belgium, etc. Due to that also many Russian words have their origin in those languages. Did you know that Russians say "Bruderschaft" oder "Gastarbeiter" in their language? For us this was very exciting to learn. The guide also told us that Russia has one of the biggest art exhibitions in the world, after the French Louvre. We actually managed to visit some of the biggest artists paintings, such as Picasso or Van Gogh.

I (Chantal) was quite overwhelmed when I was able to see this piece by Van Gogh in the Original Version, since my grandparents had it in their home all along. So basically we just want to mention that culture and arts are not coming too short on our trip!

St. Petersburg was very pleasing to us. Our host Andrei has shown us really cool Russian music, that had a huge impact on our journey - dancing wise. We will talk more about that when we release the blogpost about Moscow! Anyway, on our second day we further explored this massive city. St. Petersburg has about 5,35 Million people living in it, so you can imagine how big it is. See what we have found whilst walking around the town: (Slideshow)

We found this building called Isaakscathedrale and as you might be able to see - you can climb up it to have this astonishing view over the city. As ISIC-Studentcard holders we are even able to get some discount. Very important notice though: In Russia they always want to the the actual card, the online version is not accepted. Therefore apply for it on the website (https://www.isic.org) and spend a few euro more on getting the plastic card. We didn't do it and partly regret it now.

After days of exploring, we wanted to spend some time with our host. He invited us to this cool pub quite close to his home. He had warned us that, since we were German, we would kind of be the highlight there. He didn't promise too much - after just a few minutes of being there, the Russians were not only talking to us, but buying us drinks, playing table football and darts with us. It was a great night and we had a lot of fun. It looked like this more or less:

The first picture shows us with Andrei and his friend, who had time to join us. The second one is us blowing away the Russians in a game of table football. We actually taught them the Hannover way of saying it - "krökeln". The third photo shows two very funny and open minded Russian girls who were also very excited about us being there. It was a blast.

On our last day we went into a so called "Anti-Café", which allows you to pay per minute, rather than per drink. Andrei, Franzy and me were drinking a lot of coffee. We also found ourselves a little friend, whom we called "BÄRnd".

We were like a little family of travelers! Though as time runs really fast whilst exploring, having a great time and amazing experiences, sooner than we wanted we had to leave St. Petersburg.

Nevertheless we keep this awesome place with a lot of laughter, wonderful people and beautiful places in our memory. Keep shining! Chanti & Franzy

Take your Chanzy

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