After walking to the supermarket earlier to pick up some things, I realized that it is too muggy outside to do anything. Currently I am in Moscow, leaving tomorrow night for Riga. But I wanted to take some time to finally reflect on my time spent in St. Petersburg during my first 3 days in Russia.
After having a few hours in Moscow, which was spent traveling from the airport to another of Boyfriend's cousin's apartment in northwesters Moscow and having a quick bite to eat, we left to the train station to board the overnight train bound for St. Petersburg. At the moment, I was more excited to sleep on the train, since there were beds. While still in the states, Boyfriend's family made the train seem horrible. I had pictured it probably worse than a 3rd-world country train. But in reality, it was rather nice, well, compared that that original picture I had: linens, pillow, and mattress was provided for. Although the beds were probably less than 2 meters (which I knew because my feet hung off and people constantly kept running into them while walking the narrow passageway), I survived the night with little sleep.
The first day in St. Petersburg was probably the best introduction to Russia I could ever ask for.
We met up with a friend of Sasha's who, although from Moscow (originally from Tomsk like everyone else we were to met that day), knew St. Petersburg rather well. We grabbed "breakfast" which consisted of soup and pizza. The pizza tasted like plastic, but at least the soup- borsch (Борщ) was rather good. Borsch is basically a beet soup with some beef bits and other vegetable goodness. I don't even know what the pizza was made out of. Probabaly horse-glue and sawdust. Just like during the blockade of Leningrad during WWII.
St. Petersburg can be done in 2 days. 3 if you want to hit up museums, which we did not do. As much as I wanted to see the interiors of the Hermitage, I kept running scenes from Russian Ark through my head. I also kept telling myself that next time I will. I just hope and pray that there will be a next time. I also realized why the city is dubbed "the Venice of Russia." It really is- with its canals and main river. But that also makes the city a little chilly and windy, even when the sun is out for summer.
That evening/night was my first experience with White Nights. Because St. Petersburg is situated just far enough north, the sun sets rather late into the night. Very late into the late. And dusk lasts way after- like past midnight. We spent most of the evening in a part in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral (Исаа́киевский Собо́р), meeting up with more and more friends. All of them, except for one, are originally from a city in Siberia called Tomsk, where is also where Boyfriend is from. Funny how St. Petersburg brings people together. Even someone from California. At some points, I felt like a deaf-mute since there is obviously quite a language barrier, but I picked up on some familiar words that I usually hear in conversations from Boyfriend's family. I would continue feeling like this through Moscow, and probably will be the same in Riga.
We finally slept around 3 or 4 in the morning, and didn't wake up until after 1pm. It was the best sleep I had since Sunday, and at the point I didn't care if the day was cut short. We decided to take a river-boat tour of the city, which was nice and photographic, but I didn't understand anything the tour guide said. It seems like in both Moscow and St. Petersburg there isn't too much tourism in English- contrary to how it is in most of Europe. But that is all part of the experience, right? At least Sasha acted as a translator for almost all the trip, except for the river-boat tour- it was just too fast to translate, and I was fine with that.
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