As I am sitting in the bus from Saint Petersburg Pulkovo Airport to the city centre and I notice the last sunbeams colouring the city outskirts in a welcoming orange shade, the realisation hits me… this is it! The journey has begun!
I don’t know how your holidays generally commence, but in my life these are notoriously dictated by a shortage of time and an excess of little things which are still to be arranged. It is generally self-inflicted as I schedule the departure dates as earliest as possible to make the most out of the trip. In this case it was particularly stressful as I was not only winding everything up at work and saying goodbye to my valued colleagues, but also clearing my apartment and trying to get my passport back from the Mongolian embassy (which was closed due to a national holiday period). It was not until that bus ride through the outskirts of Saint Petersburg that a fully realised that all the preparations were over and that I was actually driving around in the first Russian city on my itinerary.
Fly-by…
That is the thing with flying. You enter the plane with a lot of excitement in your home country, spent some hours avoiding unpleasant contact with your neighbours arms on the shared armrest, try to act as normal as possible at the border security, collect your luggage in a -hopefully- similar condition and then suddenly get attacked by illegal taxi drivers wanting to take you to the city centre for the premium price. Albeit very effective and quick, you hardly get the time to realise that you are actually in a different country. I trust that by undertaking the rest of the trip via train, it will give me a better sense of the real concept of the geographical distance that I am travelling.
… and ride underground
After turning down the ‘thoughtful’ offers of the taxi drivers with my first couple of ‘Нет’ (nyet) I managed to find the bus with the right number and pay the unforgiving ticket lady 50 rouble (about € 0,70). To get to my hotel I had to go to the city centre (Nevskiy prospect) and walk another 15 minutes. Not wanting to back down from the true Saint Petersburg experience I decided to undertake this via the metro, which is renowned for its ease to get from point A to point B. I must say that travelling in peak rush hour, fully packed, trying to make sense of the Cyrillic alphabet whilst wearing a coat ready to beat the Siberian temperatures made sure I had a very WARM welcome in Saint Petersburg. Big thanks to my friend Lyuba in Batumi (Georgia) for providing me with the appropriate Russian sentence in writing to get the best metro card which lasted for the entire visit. Tomorrow it is time to explore the city, for now: доброй ночи (dobroy nochi), good night!
