The Beginning of Adventure
I’d spent the previous couple of weeks on a beer-soaked mission in Stockholm and Finland, taking a little bit of a break to explore Aland and its wonderful island of Jurmo, where the main tourist attraction is cows. Highland cows, but cows nonetheless. I loved it. I studied a semester in Finland in 1998 and returned only for a day in Helsinki in 2000. This time I headed back to Keski-Suomi and did more beerhunting. An awesome time, but not really travelogue material. So we proceed directly to St. Petersburg and the serious beginning of my trip.
Back in the (former) USSR
The adventure begins some time in the morning of August 1st in Lappeenranta, Finland. I’d been on the road for three weeks at this point, but it was mainly intense beer hunting. I’d managed to squeeze in a rest day on the bucolic island of Jurmo, in the semi-autonomous Finnish province of Åland. After that, it was more beerhunting as I made my way through Finland. By this point, I was burnt out.
At Lappeenranta you cannot specifically board the train to St. Petersburg. For that, you must go to Vainikkala, which is not far away. I rode a minivan along the farm road for a while, to that point an odd vehicle but the type of ad-hoc public transport I would soon become well-acquainted with. The countryside is a little bit more rolling that is typical in Finland, but my thoughts were on what it must have been like to live here during the Cold War. Finland occupied an awkward position, so close to the Great Bear, a country that invaded Finland and to this day holds territory taken in World War Two.
Maybe life was not exciting at all in this rural corner, but perhaps it was filled with great intrigue as the West and East leveraged this strategic position to gain information on one another. On the train, when we got to the border I looked at the defenses, which today are in various states of dilapidation, and envisioned Russians attempting to flee, over lines of barbed wire fences and with soldiers and dogs. Again, this may be far more romantic than the reality, but it’s the sort of thing I think about when approaching a border that was once closed.
I decided not to stop in Vyborg. I’d given it some consideration, as it seems like a potentially interesting place. But it has a terrible reputation for crime, even in broad daylight, and if I must travel in such areas, I feel it best not to do it with my backpack. Sure enough, even the train platform was a grim contrast to the soulless sleekness of Finland’s modernities. Stray cats wandered aimlessly and old women sat on benches with bottles of Stepan Razin Krepkoe, bombed out of their gourds at eleven in the morning. Even the station itself was only half-heartedly renovated. In my Russian travels last year, it might have been the sorriest, as even the tiniest village on secondary rail lines seems to have an impressive railway station these days.
At this point, the modern world drifted away for good. The sites and sounds that I associate with home would be available only sporadically until the end of November, when I arrived at Bangkok’s shopping malls and fast food restaurants.
Sankt-Peterburkh
I arrived in St. Petersburg and set about scouting the town. I’d been before, in 2000, and wanted to see what had changed. As it turns out, there were significant changes. Vladimir Putin is a Peterburger and in his rein, clearly some law and order has been instilled. With its immense wealth of Imperial-era architecture, canals and riverside promenades, St. Petersburg’s core is a beautiful area, a jewel that attracts millions of visitors a year. On my last visit, it felt Russian. Now, it feels European. The tell-tale signs of Rus are disappearing. Kiosks have been replaced with bar patios, the storefronts along Nevsky Prospekt are all modern, whereas four years ago only a handful were. The smell of urine no longer emanates from doorways and vagrancy has been greatly reduced.
I still love St. Petersburg, though. It is a cultural town, and with the hordes of tourists it is also a party town. Everybody is having fun. I walked up and down the length of Nevsky, what must surely be my favourite street in the world, and noticed that the walk was not nearly as difficult as I’d found it four years previous. Living in the city and walking everywhere you go will do that.
The Great St. Petersburg Wander
Beerhunting once again brought me to a local level. When you partake of international food and drink, you get that bland international feel. Most of those patio bars along Nevsky are the same as you’d get in Toronto, with Baltika substituted for Blue. I found a little hole in the wall that carried a couple of beers from a tiny St. Petersburg microbrewery. Eastern Europe has a surprisingly large number of microbreweries and much of this scene remains undocumented by the West. This one, Vasiliostrovskoye, and another (Kroft, in Nizhny Novgorod), making crazy lagers with huge amounts of house character. Very cool.
The main square has on one side the green Hermitage and on the other side the yellow Winter Palace. I can’t say much besides wow. And, unlike Red Square, this one is open and roomy enough to avoid the crowds.
I visited the Vodka Museum, roamed along the riverbank, tried unsuccessfully to locate the boat upriver to the Summer Palace. When that failed, I wandered across the river, past the Rostral Column and over to the Peter & Paul Fortress.
Back across the river and I found a lush, shady park draped in green and punctuated by statues along its wide pathways. Luxury. Just absolute luxury.
Then I wandered down to the Smolniy Cathedral and generally had a great time. I ate many shawarmas, the staple Peterburger street food. A good time was had by all.
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