Hi from St Petersburg! I should be out doing touristy stuff but I needed a coffee and to check email. Not that I can actually get into my email from this place, it’s an EasyInternet style place and I can’t open the putty exe.
I’ve spent two days in the Hermitage and still haven’t seen it all. Today the museums are closed so I’m going to do some walking tours. The others are going to the ballet tonight but at 100 quid a ticket, I’m giving it a miss. I leave for Novgorod tomorrow, stay overnight, then head to Moscow later that day.
I’m not as worried about arriving at 5am now I’ve seen that it’s easy to find 24 hours cafes, and I figure it’ll probably be light by then anyway. It barely gets dark here, it’s still light at 1am and the sky is getting light again by 3am. So my plan is to head to a cafe, drink lots of coffee and avoid getting robbed until the museums open, then dump my bag in a museum cloakroom until I can check into my hotel. My hotel is right near the Kremlin so I might be able to dump it at the hotel early in the morning. I should be meeting up with Sergey later that night.
S and I went to Russia’s only lesbian bar on Saturday night. It was quite fun – a really mixed crowd, like every sub-culture of the lesbian world was thrown together, which I guess is exactly the case. There were some fairly amazing outfits, and some strippers/performers. There are some gorgeous Russian women around, even before the vodkas kicked in.
I’m slowly learning to read Cyrillic, a few letters a day. I’ve eaten a lot of blini, and eaten at a Georgian restaurant (better range of vegie food) as well as at Russian places.
It was the City Day on Saturday – the anniversary of the founding of St Petersburg. There was a big street parade, and lots of entertainment stages set up along the way. Mostly playing dodgy Russian pop – a lot of it seems to be covers of dodgy Western European songs, so doubly dodgy. We saw the Russian Ali G, unfortunately the real thing, in his mind, not a satire.
Happy birthday Karen, if you’re reading this!