We were all woken up by the train staff at 4.30 to give everyone enough time to use the bathroom, pack and change and be ready to leave the train at 6am in St Petersburg. I have not been getting enough sleep recently and I was tired.It was pitch black and raining heavily when I departed from the station and I had to cycle across the city to drop off my stuff at the couch surfer that I was staying with before he left for work. Not the best way to wake up in the morning.
I used the link provided on the CS website to find his address and biked to there. It was only about 10km from the station and I took my time as I knew that the CS guy (Ilya) did not wake up until 8ish. I stopped off for a coffee and chatted with a friend on Skype to get out of the rain for a while. I called Ilay when I was right outside the address on CS only to find out (with help from some other Russian passers-by) that I was in fact 15km from the right place. The link on CS was incorrect. 
I then had to race across town to get there before he left for work. I did not realise it but Ilay had called into work and decided to use some of his flexi time and take the morning off to wait for me. I turned up at 9ish absolutely soaked through and covered in mud to find a man in cream trousers and a cream jacket looking at me like I was an alien. I tried to convince him that I did not always turn up like this (well at least some of the time I don't anyway...). 
We had a chilled breakfast together and I showered and washed my clothes. As I only have one pair of trousers and they were soaked through I had to wear my thermal leggings with shorts over the top and hiking shoes - interesting fashion statement going into St Petersburg where all of the women are immaculately dressed and all made up! 
I walked with Ilya in the subway and we went into the city center together. Once again I noticed how the people are all white in St Petersburg! There is very little ethnic diversity in the whole country.
I was really over tired and when I have not had enough sleep my body craves food (when all it really wants is more sleep!) and so I gorged myself for the day. I ate pizza for lunch and 2 pieces of cheese cake and many coffee's. It is still a treat for me to have these things after the gruel that you get in Mongolia and Siberia - where food is just for calories rather than an enjoyable way to spend some time.
I wanted to catch up on my blog entries but when I tried I did not get very far as I was too tired. Instead I chatted online with friends and booked my flights back to India in November :-)
I tried to stay out of the rain and when it cheered up I went for a wonder around the major sights. I did not much fancy going in to places where you had to pay and so just wondered round. The architecture is very impressive even on a gray day. There are many canals and statues. The city was build by Peter the Great as a new capital of the country and then the capital moved to Moscow during the soviet times. The architecture in the center is beautiful where as the surrounding areas are very ugly with ex-soviet housing blocks and shopping centers. Like Moscow, it was extremely expensive. I enjoyed treating myself though having not spent much for the last 2 months.
The sun did shine for about 5 minutes :-)
Good that you can still get a traditional English Pub in every big city!
I found a large supermarket but still no peanut butter since UB!
I got the subway back with Ilya about 7 and we had an we spent an evening chatting. He was very interesting to talk to. He had very different opinions to many other Russians I had chatted to over the last few weeks. There were many things that he said about Russia that were the same though - like gap between the rich and poor, low wages and corruption. I have detailed all of these thoughts on the country summary page (???).
I was very tired when I eventually got to bed about 11. I had only had 8 hours sleep in the last 48 hours...
No comments:
Post a Comment