Wednesday, May 22, 2002

RUSSIA - St Petersburg (2002)


St Petersberg: 19.05.2002

Reached this north-west frontier town of Russia at around 4.30 pm local time, via Dubai and Paris. The journey was a bit more comfortable this time as I was travelling business class as per my new eligibility. More comfortable seats for sleeping in, as well as the use of business lounges, were welcome improvements.
.
St Petersburg, also known as Leningrad, is a fairly old town, including an old airport. Very imposing structures lining the streets, but somehow they look quite forbidding. The facades are very blank and convey a 'do-not-disturb' look. But the architecture is quite nice. We passed through some thoroughfares that displayed a conspicuous degree of consumerism.
.
When we landed, the temperature was 6 degC with a stiff breeze blowing. Summer and season-time mind you, and hotel rates have gone up! It was quite cold outside. This is the period of 'White Nights', they said, when the sky remains light throughout the night.
.
The language is a problem, no doubt. Hotel staff do speak English, but the casual taxi-fellow is not expected to speak and understand. There are a large number of tourists who have arrived and our hotel displayed a chart of drama, dance and music programs running in the various theatres in the city. The sight-seeing list also mentions around 15 trips to various places. We will have to be satisfied with some fleeting glimpses.......
.
Our hotel is located on the coast of the Baltic Sea and we can see Finland in the distance. Clouds have banked up and somewhere in the waters heavy rain is pouring down. In St Petersburg too the streets are wet, as it had rained earlier in the day.
.
We slept for a little while. I woke up at 9.00 pm to find the afternoon sun blazing in through the open window. We went out for a peek at the city and when we returned at 10.30 pm, it was still bright enough to take photos. From June to mid-July, there would be no darkness at all!
.
This time we found the city full of life -- at least the stretch of a high-profile shopping area where we went, was. The populace was dressed in fashionable winter clothes, full of fur-lined overcoats and leather jackets. Poverty seemed to be missing altogether. Bistros were doing good business on this Sunday evening, although most shops were closed. The young crowd was like any expected to be seen in an European city. Possibly St Petersburg, being so much of a borderline case, has developed a strong European influence.
.
Big buildings, wide roads, electric busus and trams, medium traffic-heaviness -- not a bad city to live in.
.
We (Rashid and I) were having beer in our hotel bar prior to going up for dinner when two extremely well-dressed young ladies asked us whether we were looking for company. We politely declined. Later it struck us that we were looking for interpreters for the 3 days that we'd be going around and these ladies might have been a cost-effective option!

.We had a good dinner at a Korean rstaurant on the 15th floor, different in taste, not like Chinese or Thai.

St Petersberg: 20.05.2002

This morning also it was an overcast sky and a shivery 6 degC. We were told it was 20 degC a couple of days ago and some unseasonal rain caused this cold spell. While we were waiting for our hired car to arrive I bought a furry Russian cap with side-flaps and immediately the sun came out and the temperature rose to 9 degC. An utter waste of $8/-, as the Russians wear such caps only when the snow-drift is deeper than two feet!
.
We had taken along an interpreter, a girl named Irina, who, after being briefed properly about the nature of our business, did a lot of enthusiastic selling. Rates are quite steep for such services -- $10/- per hour. We'll have to take one for 7 hours every day.
.
We learnt the interesting fact that St Petersburg town, situated near the mouth of the Neva river, is actually a conglomerate of a large number of islands (she said 300, which I don't believe). There are lots of bridges and it is quite confusing as to what leads where. Twenty of these bridges open out to allow ships through and a knowledge of their relative schedules is needed to ensure that the driver doesn't get stuck somewhere. Quite like a computer game.
.
Having got the hang of Russian signs, today I could identify MacDonalds and Baskin Robbins! The city looks prosperous and the riverside promenades are quite beautiful. The buildings, although forbidding from close quarters, look very pretty in the setting sun (11.00 pm) lined up on the banks of the Neva. It's too cold for a river cruise on an open boat, which would have been quite lovely.......
.
Our hotel is now chock-full of tourists of all descriptions and the Hotel Services section that operates tours is perpetually crowded. If we find time, we'll squeeze in a guided 3-hour city tour some day. Ther's a lot of evening programs, costing between 500 to 1100 roubles. Tomorrow we are attending a folklore show, much to Rashid's chagrin, who would have rather spent the money at a night-club.
.
Today I could do the full cycle of Padma and Kriya and was feeling good about it. It was 10.30 pm when all this got over and Rashid wanted to 'hit the town' for dinner. He called our usual driver Uri and we went looking for a restaurant on a boat (which Uri said has a 'show'). We reached a sort of tug-boat moored on the riverfront and a family on board was raising a ruckus and pointing into the water. They were the 'management' I suppose, and their dog, a big mastiff, had fallen into the ice-cold water. We could see it swimming about in the space between the boat and the pier wall. One kid, around 15-16 years old, was hanging from the mooring rope and managed to grab its collar but did not have enough strangth to one-handedly pull up the dog. Uri brought a rope with a hook from his car (why he had such a thing beats me) and the kid tried to slip the hook under the dog's collar, whenever it swam nearer, but couldn't. Finally when they found that the dog was getting disoriented and heading out to the sea, the kid stripped down to his underwear and jumped into the river. It was 11.00 in the night and 5 degC. Just seeing it froze me all over. He pulled the dog to the pier and slipped the hanging hook into the collar and Uri and gang pulled it up. The kid climbed up a rope by himself. A very moving scene..

After this, I at least was in no mood for a 'show' and we went into the city centre where Uri dropped us and went off to take care of some other customers. Sadly there were no open restaurants nearby and after braving the blizzard for around 10 mins we hopped into a cab, came back to the hotel, and had dinner at the Russian restaurant. I had a cheese sandwich that did not have the top bread!

St Petersberg: 21.05.2002
.
Out again at 12.00 noon. From 10.00 to 12.00 we were in our rooms with our new interpreter Anastasia, a pretty young student of Management and Economics, calling up prospective clients from the Yellow Pages. Then off we went in Uri's car.
.
Today we travelled to other sides of St P. The city IS rather spread out and I cannot really tell which side was the 'other' side. The sun was shining brightly and the city looked very picturesque, with all the decorations and carvings on the buildings standing out in high relief. The Neva was twinkling blue, the stiff breeze whipping up small waves all through.
.
The city is quite low on pollution (by Indian standards) because 90% of public transport is taken care of by electric trams and electric buses. The sky overhead is always covered with wires and the road always broken up around the tramlines. The highest fare is 5 roubles (around 20 cents) and they are heavily used. Once we were crossing a bridge built quite like the Howrah bridge and the sight of a tramcar trundling along it with our car trying to avoid the broken flagstones, made me quite nostalgic.
.
We had lunch at a fast-food joint with Anastasia (Rashid insists on calling her 'anaesthesia') translating the whole menu on the wall for Rashid's benefit. I had a small salad and potato fries. Life is so much simpler being a veggie, no?.

During today we were debating whether on 23rd, we should take the mid-day flight to Helsinki as scheduled, or cancel it and take an early-morning train instead, which takes 5 hours and arrives around the same time. Finally our lack of knowledge of formalities about crossing the border by land and then flying out of Finland, and the lack of language (and the prospect of a little more sleep) deterred us. We had even checked out the railway station. Well so much for 'darpoks' (mainly me).
.
We went to see a Folk Show at night at the Nikolayevsky Palace from 9-11.00 pm. It was excellent -- the costumes, the dances, the mixture of comedy with skill -- all world-class. I had practically forced Rashid to go with me and both of us enjoyed it thoroughly. The small hall was jam-packed. This was indeed something worth seeing. There are other ballets running in town, like 'Giselle' and 'Swan Lake', but my interest there was limited..

We finished off with a light dinner at the Sandwich Club at the hotel -- a veg sandwich, salad and baked potatoes with sour cream. Not at all light.

St Petersberg: 22.05.2002

Another beautiful sunny day with the mercury at a succulent 14 degC (succulent because the weather is like ice cream, good enough to eat!).
.
We had a few calls to make in the morning with Anastasia the Second as interpreter. She happened to be a guide as well, so we finished our business by 2.30 pm, grabbed some burgers and french fries from MacDonalds and pushed off to Peterhof, 30 km from St Petersburg.
.
Apart from the seeables in St P, some of which we had anyway seen 'en passante', Peterhof is a must visit place. It is also called the 'Russian Varseilles' as well as the 'City of Fountains'. The place houses the Summer Palace of Peter the Great amidst 100 acres of rolling wooded grounds which has around 150 fountains of all shapes and styles, including trick ones which our Peter used to love springing on guests! We had no time to explore inside the Palaces, but a walk in the beautiful grounds was by itself a grand experience. There are some sub-palaces like one built close to the sea as a sort of 'study' from where Peter could watch ships sail into the harbour of Petersburg nearby. There was also one where he would stay with his second wife, the only palace with a kitchen because his second wife, being a commoner, loved to cook. Thre is a fountain pool where Catherine the Great used to swim in the buff. And so on and so on ...........
.
Germans had greatly damaged the palace during WWII and restoration is still going on. Out of the 120 rooms, 80 are over with 40 still to go. Hope another world war does not come along before that, touch wood!
.
We stopped near St Isaac Cathedral with the famous golden dome and also near the Neva river to take some pics. Then having blown a bit on money on souvenirs and caviar (which I think will spoil) we returned.......
.
The prospect of deliberating over whether to plough through a Russian menu or risk an European dinner was rather daunting, so we ultimately relaxed on our stricture of avoiding 'desi' food on the tour and called for Uri again to come quickly and rush us to an Indian restaurant before it closed. A dinner of veg korma and daal maharani with naan ensued which caused the salad-laden tummy to breathe a sigh of relief. We met an Indian student (Neeraj) working there and also an old-time manager.
.
A word of appreciation for the Russian service-providers is in order. Maybe we have been lucky, but the dedication to service of the three interpreters as well as the driver Uri was quite beyond our expectations. There was never any 'khich-khich' about working longer than expected (in case of Uri, often waiting for an hour for us to finish a meal), nor was there ever much haggling about charges. They have left a pleasant impression.
.
Tomorrow we leave for Helsinki as Putin and Bush arrive to take our place, so the roads to the airport are likely to be jammed. We check out at 9.30 am.

.

No comments: