Russia: Palaces, the Arts, and a Lost Phone

Note: this one’s really long. Grab a drink and get comfy. There’s gelato waiting for you if you make it to the end (not really).

So, Russia. I did not get off to the best start in Russia.  As I mentioned in my last post, I was taking the overnight ferry to St. Petersburg, staying 2 nights in the city, then ferrying back to Helsinki overnight. The ferry trip itself was fine (and I’m writing this as I wait for the ferry to leave SPB), and then we docked Thursday morning and prepared to disembark.  It was a madhouse.  I’ve cruised before on some of the big ships, and I swear, they would’ve been appalled by the complete lack of order and structure for disembarking.  It was a mass exodus and it took a full 30 minutes just for me to get off the boat, after waiting in line 30 minutes prior to that, with people pushing and shoving and cutting in the non-existent lines along the way.  I had heard from my new Australian friends’ daughter that it took her 3 hours to get off the boat and through customs, so I was somewhat prepared for the chaos and managed to find most of my zen (not that I have a lot to begin with).  It was still ridiculous, though.  We were all shaking our heads while we waited forevvvver in line.

Once I was finally off the ship, I got in line for customs and watched as people coming in behind me completely disregarded the line I was at the end of, and just cut in front of all of us. Some cultures do NOT understand how to line up, and it’s infuriating. It happened to me all over Europe. I’m not sure what culture is the main culprit, but I pretty much hated everyone equally at this point. Still, I managed to get through customs after about 70 minutes so I was well ahead of the 3 hours I had been mentally prepared for. Then, my life went to hell in a handbasket because OH MY GOD, I LOST MY PHONE. I remembered setting it down after customs so I could make sure to secure my passport (Russia’s not really the country you want to lose your passport in), and I apparently never picked it back up. I grabbed all of the considerable shit I had set down on the floor and headed for the shuttle buses to the city center.  Halfway through the ride, I realized I did not have my phone. Many expletives later, I took the shuttle back to the ferry dock and found an English-speaking woman from the ferry line to try and help me find it. She was extraordinarily nice, and so were the many customs guys that let me back to search for it and asked around and tried calling it (wouldn’t go through). No phone. I managed to keep it together but inside, I was kind of freaking out.

I have relied quite heavily on my phone throughout this trip. I used it in a number of cities figuring out public transit and getting directions, and orienting myself when I didn’t have a map.  I used Google translate a fair amount, and I had planned to do all of this A LOT in Russia. To suddenly find myself without it was unnerving and rather scary.  I’m traveling alone, obviously, so I can’t rely on my traveling companion’s phone or having someone help me figure things out.  My phone was also my camera, and I hadn’t backed up about a hundred photos (no wifi on the boat), so I was going to be out all my Helsinki pictures and some Tallinn ones.  As I made my way back to the city center, I was mentally trying to figure out how I could compensate without it – get a good map, use my actual camera, etc.

Of course, the first thing I did after I got to the city center was get lost.  Like, really lost, in a way I hadn’t at all for the last 7 weeks.  I had a really limited map in my guidebook and of course the street I was standing on was not named in the book, so I walked the wrong way. Isn’t that always what happens?  You never guess right when you need to.  I hadn’t been able to find an ATM yet, so I had no rubles and couldn’t grab a cab or even a bus.  In the end, I stopped in a hotel where a very nice lady traded me some Euros for Rubles, pointed me at the bus, and got me on my way.  When I finally made it to my hotel, they gave me a free room upgrade. Finally, something’s going right!  I got into my room, cried a little because I’m stressed and scared, wrestled with the wifi (because OF COURSE it wouldn’t just connect with a simple password), and got the brilliant idea to see where my phone is on Google maps – I have an Android and it’s linked to my gmail account.  By this time, I was 50/50 whether I had forgotten the phone or I’d been pickpocketed.  When Google maps showed it was right near the ferry dock, I realized it hadn’t been stolen and was in fact lost by my idiot self. I decided to have my mom call it and see if anyone answered; of course, it’s only 630am in Chicago but too bad, mom, this is the perks of having a kid, even an adult one.

Given the way my day was going, it should come as no surprise that my mother had silenced her phone before going to bed, so she did not hear me calling on Facebook messenger. Multiple times. THANKS, MOM.  Ok, new plan – I’ll create a skype account, add some money, and call her that way.  (About 3 hours later, I realized I could’ve just called my phone myself at this point, but I was rattled and clearly not thinking straight.)  She answers and asks who I am several times. YOUR DAUGHTER.  Jeez, mom. Quit relying on caller ID.  Anyway, she calls and a nice Russian customs lady answers (not a “bad guy” as she originally thought – thieves don’t answer when they’ve stolen your phone), and she tells my mom my phone is there and I can pick it up until 6. THANK GOD. My hotel calls me a taxi, explaining in Russian where I’m going, and he promptly takes me to the train station.  FML.  Apparently, the names are very similar.  I finally got to the ferry terminal, collected my phone, and all is right with my world.

And that was my trip to Russia. The End.

Haha, just kidding, I had 2 more days. I did, unfortunately, lose at least a half day of sightseeing, so while I’m doing all this phone stuff, I’m also frantically reorganizing my itinerary for the next 2 days.  I ended up seeing all the major sights I wanted to see, but I did have to cut some stuff.  It doesn’t help that St. Petersburg is HUGE.  The main street, Nevsky Prospekt, is SIX lanes across, and more in some spots. Some of the intersections are so wide and busy, they have pedestrian tunnels underground for crossing the street.  It was always busy, even at 10 at night.  Part of that might be due to the weather – it was 60s and sunny the entire time I was there, and it’s getting close to White Nights, where the sun is up for like 23 hours and it never gets fully dark. It wasn’t quite there yet, but there was about 18 hours of daylight.  The city is very European-feeling, with colorful, frilly (I think Baroque style) buildings and canals that made me think of Venice. Peter the Great built the city after spending considerable time in the West, and he definitely wanted to modernize what at the time was a backwater nation, so he based the city bearing his name on the most modern places he visited during his travels.

I wasn’t able to talk to many locals very much due to the language barrier. I’m not usually chatting strangers up anyway, but I would’ve liked the option in Russia.  However, most people speak minimal English.  Those directly in the tourist trade (at hotels, museums, etc.) have varying skill-levels of English, but I never felt like anyone wanted to stop what they were doing and tell me all about life in Russia so I didn’t try to ask much.  Everyone I did speak with was very friendly and helpful, and no one seemed to mind I was an American.  I felt safe at all times, though I was a little concerned about breaking the law and getting sent to Siberia, so I avoided jaywalking and other petty crimes I typically indulge in.  I was more conscious of pickpockets than I was in the Baltics, too.  One frustration for me is they use the Cyrillic alphabet, so I couldn’t even sound out words or try to pronounce things.  I started to figure out a few Cyrillic letters, so I knew the word for restaurant and exit, for example.

I focused a bit more on culture in this city than I have in most of the others this trip.  St. Petersburg is known for being a sort of cultural capital of Russia, so I wanted to experience that, which meant I went to the ballet and to an orchestra concert at the Philharmonia.  It was WONDERFUL.  The ballet was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was great for me in that it wasn’t a heavy, downer ballet and I was vaguely familiar with it having read the play in high school (thanks, Wikipedia, for the refresh).  I’ve seen The Nutcracker in Chicago, and I really enjoyed that, but this was just amazing.  The prima ballerina was effortless and en pointe pretty much every time she was on stage.  Her partner would lift her and I knew logically she was being lifted, but she just seemed to float all on her own. Of course, she probably weighs less than my left thigh, and I think I had more calories for dinner than she did all month, but STILL.  She was amazing.  I’m not going to lie, I nearly teared up when the two of them did this duet (?) in the second act, it was so gorgeous. Anyway.  If anyone wants to go to the ballet in Chicago, let me know!

Friday night, I went to see the St. Petersburg Philharmonia perform.  I had researched and booked this in advance, as well as the ballet, and when I discovered what the performance was that night, I knew I had to go. It’s like the Philharmonia heard I was going to be in town these dates and specifically planned the performance for me: Ravel’s Mother Goose and Prokofiev’s Cinderella, Suite from the Ballet, which were lovely, BUT then it was Shore’s Suite from the Lord of the Rings, and Wiliams’s Suite from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Suite from ET, and Suite from STAR WARS!!!!!  It took all of my self-control not to dance in my seat during the performance.  Other people were excited by Star Wars, but I seemed to be one of the few who knew, or was at least thrilled by, the others.  Whatever, I fly my nerd flag high. Plus, my inner band geek was raging seeing the orchestra, especially the French Horns, who have really beautiful parts in LotR and Star Wars.  All in all, these were two of my favorite nights of the whole trip, and some of my favorite experiences, well, ever.

In addition to enjoying the Arts, I also checked out some museums – namely, the Hermitage and the Faberge Museum.  I had to cut another one due to lost phone-finding time but I wasn’t too excited about that one anyway.  The Hermitage is a collection of over 3 million pieces of art, and it’s housed in mainly in the Winter Palace, an imperial residence built by Peter the Great’s daughter Elizabeth, as well as the smaller, adjacent Small, Old, and New Hermitages that Catherine the Great added to house her art collection. She apparently collected art at the same rate I do, just a heck of a lot more expensive. There’s also the General Staff Building across the square that houses the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection.  The lmpressionist exhibit was at the top of my list, even more so than the Winter Palace, and I arrived Friday morning eager to see some works by Renoir, one of my favorite painters.  Only to be informed that the General Staff Building was closed for 3 days for a legal conference.  My awesome Russian luck continued.  But, I could bring my ticket back on the 18-20^th and get in when it reopened. I, not knowing what day it was, thought the 18^th was Sunday and I was out of luck.  After I finished exploring the Winter Palace 2.5 hours later, it dawned on me that I am, in fact, an idiot, and I would be able to come back Saturday, THE 18^TH, and see the Impressionist paintings. Which I did, and they were lovely.  So was the Winter Palace.

Russia: wherein Katherine loses her phone and her brain.

In addition to the museums, I also visited 3 churches and took a Neva River/canal cruise (which was really pretty, at least when I wasn’t napping).  I am pretty much church-ed out after this trip; Italy has a freaking duomo on every corner, and even the Baltics were full of churches.  I think I spent more time in churches over the last 7 weeks than in the last 25 years combined.  Fortunately, lightening did not strike this atheist, and I got to appreciate a lot of history (and a lot of opulence).  My favorite church in SPB was the Church on Spilled Blood, which was built on the spot where Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, hence its name.  It has the famous Russian onion domes and is one of the most iconic images of St. Petersburg.  It’s full of gold and mosaics and really gorgeous.

One of my biggest disappointments is that I didn’t have time to get out of the main tourist area and see a little of the “real” St. Petersburg.  I just didn’t have time.  St. Petersburg is big, and even though I was comfortable with the bus system (thanks to my phone), it still took a while to get places in the city center.  I knew going in that it was going to be tight with only 2.5 days to begin with, and losing the half-day to my phone really limited what I could see.  You might be wondering why I spent such a short time here: Russia requires Americans have a visa; the process to get one takes 30-60 days, costs several hundred dollars, and requires parting with your passport for several weeks while it visits a Russian Consulate.  This was not feasible for me given that I would be traveling leading up to this, so I took advantage of a loop hole that allows visitors arriving AND departing by ferry to enter the country for up to 72 hours without a visa and without being accompanied by a guide (which you have to be if you arrive by cruise ship).  It was a fairly straightforward process, except the ferry company requires you book a hotel through them and they were rather inept at sorting out the booking of my hotel.  So while I didn’t have a ton of time in SPB, I did get to experience Russia, and I know I do want to go back eventually and see more of the country.

So, that’s that! Hard to believe that 7 weeks of traveling is just about finished.  It went really quickly.  I think I’ll do another post when I’m home to sort of summarize all the highlights and just kind of debrief myself.  I still have to post all of my SPB pics, but they will be here, along with all the Italy pics.  And, of course, there’s Instagram.

If you’ve followed along for all, or even part, of this trip – THANK YOU!  I liked doing this as a journal of sorts for myself, but it’s nice to know other people actually read it, too.  But hey, I’m in HR – I’m used to writing things that no one reads!