Czar’s city

As a teenager I was often confused by Gogol’s decision to put all that’s bad about the human kind in a character of a bureaucratic clerk. As soon as I tried to get the visa, I understood why. Let me tell you, if your invitation to enter the Russian Federation is not perfectly in order, you will get to see one of the cycles of hell at the consulate, where masses of people wait to get the visa. After three such visits I got the pink sticker in my passport and could start arranging my travel to northeast, towards the Gulf of Bothnia where Sankt Petersburg lays. I’ve never believed in stereotypes, especially about fellow Slavic nations, but I could not but smile, when the first thing I saw when the taxi took me across the city limits, was a prostitute, talking up a guy in a car on a filthy street. 

Sankt Petersburg is a city that gives the feeling similar to any Slovenian city – except that it houses 8 million people. There’s classicistic and secession architecture everywhere, with boring concrete blocks of socialist realism… with a few parks in between and many churches, shrines and cathedrals. The city has a glorious history and if you don’t care about the human side of the story, this city is not for you! It is named Petersburg, but it wasn’t Peter who established a settlement here. It was his military commander Alexander Nevski. Actually there used to be a little trading settlement in these marshes even before, but could never measure up to the greatness of Moscow. It was not until Nevski defeated the Swedes there, at the river Neva, that the city started. And the main street still holds his name – the Nevski prospect in Sankt Petersburg. The city was mostly marked by two emperors: Peter II the Great and Katarina the Great. You can hardly find a park that would not have one of their statues in it. As the centrepiece of Ljubljana is the statue of Prešeren, so the square Ploschad Dekabristov in Sankt Petersburg features the bronze rider – Peter the Great on a horse, fighting the devil in the shape of a snake. Next to the admiralty there is the Hermitage, the winter palace of Romanov’s, with a huge museum inside, where you can spend long winter afternoons and enjoy the richness of the Russian spirit such as the paintings of the great Kandinsky. 

Despite the red terror the Russians are still a very religious nation and the chosen religion is the eastern Russian Orthodox Church, with numerous glorious churches that inspire awe. The most astounding are the church of St. Isaac and the virtue of Petropavlovsk (the fortress of Peter and Pavel), with the last resting place of the Romanovs. Unfortunately the charm of the place gets lost with hordes of loud tourists stepping around the marble tombs. The only typical Russian church is the one influenced by Mongolian culture. It’s the temple of the blood of the saviour, built at the place where the anarchistic movement of the Dekabristi used a bomb to kill the czar Alexander II. On the island of St. Basil there is a beautiful mosque next to the park with buried horses of czars and czarinas. 

I made a strategic error when planning my trip in summer. Why? Sankt Petersburg is within the Arctic Circle, meaning in July and August the sun doesn’t really set. Let’s analyze now! Sankt Petersburg is in the swamp and there’s sunlight 24/7 so we get very humid days, the air is heavy with smoke and on a single island of this city there are more people than in the whole of Slovenia. We had to cook our water, because the tap water is notoriously unhealthy. We didn’t feel like waiting for it to cool down, so we kept drinking tea. So I spent warm and wet days in a city with no nights, high on caffeine. The weather was probably the biggest shock I’ve received, for I could not get used to white nights and swamps. I nearly cried of joy, when upon returning to Slovenia I saw a sunset in the evening.

Unlike Slovenia, where everything closes at eight, or if you’re in luck - nine, all the shops and local pubs are open the whole night. The only rest time they take is that they don’t open before nine in the morning. This means the night life is very vivid. Next to the Nevski is the Dumskaja street that has nothing but pubs. There are fancy pubs with imported beer from France and Belgium and right town to sleazy joints you can read about in Crime and punishment, where nobody asks your age or if you carry a weapon. With a few mental students from Italy we ended up in a pub, I nostalgically chose, called Belgrade. It was there that I was able to order Laško pivo from Slovenia! And along with many pubs you can also find an abnormal number of night clubs and discos. Some of which even don’t play Russian lolly-pop. I really liked one in a former warehouse, with sand to look like a beach. That’s right – a beach. With sand, water and Russian girls in bikinis. So there are many places to spend the night. And speaking of which, I have to tell you that in Russia, that never featured and feministic revolutions (Pussy Riot?), there are many fancy looking girls, most of the men seem rather scrawny. It’s because there’s a ration of five women to a man (who would have thought Stalin’s executions and alcoholism would have such long lasting effects) so the women have to work hard to find a husband.

For all literature lovers, there is also the literary café with the historical name Wolf und Beranger, where famous cultural and intellectual giants of Russian history had fun. The most famous stories are about Alexander Pushkin, who had his last drink there before going off to the duel… and it is also the place where Piotr Tchaikovsky had his last meal. Among others Sankt Petersburg was the home of Dostoyevsky, who loved to gamble on the city streets and dreamt of axe murders, and Vladimir Nabokov, who spent his youth there. There homes are all museums now, worth a visit. But if you really want a treat, I suggest the Faberge museum, where they made the famous Faberge eggs, the czars bought at the time the people were starving to death in the streets. 

Still, the best way to get to know the city is to simply walk out there and get lost in this incredible place. This is how I found a great park next to the cathedral of St. Isaac with a plastic bear for each country of the world, painted by an artist of that country. All of them were bizarre, but some were still beautiful. The Slovenian one was especially ugly. Later on I even discovered a restaurant with exotic Russian food, where I tried bear and salmon. For those of you, who fear you might get kidnapped by Russian mafia, let me put you at ease. One of m Italian friends passed out on a really hot and humid day. When she woke up, she realized her wallet was gone, but still somebody (probably the pickpocket) took her to a bench and left her with a plastic bottle of water

 

Sankt Petersburg is a city every culture lover must visit, for it really is the place of grandest novels of the 19th century and some of the best Russian operas. It’s the cultural heart of the nation, and even though very few people speak a language apart from Russian, they are very open to foreigners and really do away with the sayings of how cold the Russians are. It’s a city bursting with culture, fun and unexpected adventures and even though it’s the most European city in Russia, you still get the flair of Russian spirit on its streets.