Fine(d) in St Petersburg
Less than an hour in Russia proper and I have already been fined by a very severe looking railway official. The crime was taking a photo of an, on reflection kind of average, wall mosaic of Lenin. The site Finland Station where the great leader had arrived back to from his exile, gave a speech on a tank and proceeded on to do some stuff that you can read about elsewhere. The punishment 100 roubles, a sixth of the money that we had just changed upon arrival. The sequence of events was as simple as get off train from Helsinki, drag others outside to take photo of statue of Lenin on spot of aforementioned speech, change money, line up for subway tokens, pull out camera, get pulled by the scruff of the neck into a booth filled with unidentifiably uniformed officials, have piece of paper shoved under nose explaining offense and amount of fine, try and explain that personally I have no money on me a situation that’s not covered by my phrasebook, get shouted at, eventually wave over others who thankfully post my bail.
Offending Photo
The most distressing thing about the whole situation is that subways in St Petersburg are so amazing that you want to record just about every moment. From the dizzyingly long escalators all beautifully paneled with wood, to the mural lined corridors and the imposing stations themselves it’s all quite wondrous. I’ve been on escalators and staircases where you can’t see the bottom before but nothing like this. In the centre between the ascending and descending lifts are lamps mounted on lathed posts which I estimated to be spaced four to five metres apart and so counting twenty as we went down approximately a hundred metres (confirmed by wikipedia), apparently it’s the deepest metro in the world as they had to dig down through the swampland that the city is built on. Then you get on the train itself and blast along at speeds I wouldn’t have thought wise in the confined space of a tunnel for four or five minute periods – this city must be enormous. The real art though is working out what your stop is because when they were busy decorating the place they kind of forgot about signs, maps or any of the other indicators you usually get. Trying to make out the station names in the burst of Russian that comes across the speaker we somehow managed to change at the correct station and also get off at the right one first time.
Joining the literal river of people we got swept through the station and up another wondrous escalator – they are all wooden and make a truly satisfying rumble, none of that harsh mechanical screech of metal – and out onto Nevsky Prospekt the cultural heart of the empire. Straight away you are hit by how beautiful the city is in that uniform way where all the buildings are quite similar and so seem to work together to make each other look better.
The train ride from Helsinki was straightforward enough, the only real difficulty making it to the station for the ungodly departure time. All the trepidation over visas and what the Russian border was going to be like came to nothing. Passports were collected, train doors were locked, passports were taken into a building, an hour passed and then there was a new orange stamp clashing in an interesting way with the brown visa. A couple more hours and we were in St Petersburg.
Arrival at Finland Station
Before you go to Russia you have certain preconceptions about the place, most people would probably go as far as grim. For someone like me who appreciates a certain decrepit element very important in creating atmosphere this can be a good thing. It was definitely one of the founding principles of the building that housed our hostel. Even more so because there was no power for the first few hours we were there which led me to be sitting on the landing between floors having a cigarette, cold wind blowing through the missing pane of glass, reading Dostoevsky by torchlight. (pretension is something to aspire to) Which is where I met Dutch Joel who had just come from our destination and who also brought me down to my doom. When you have no power in Russia the only option is to drink vodka, well that’s what the reception girl who went out and bought the bottles said. So first introduction to Russian style drinking.
Waiting for the power to come on.
I am not really sure how many people three bottles of vodka would usually set up for a night, but a cumulative of about seven seems on the low side. Puts pressure on those four in the group who are around for the duration to get through most of the work. This involved a normal drinking glass about two inches full shotted at five minute intervals. It is dangerous having yummy zakuski, in this case pickles, that can only be eaten after a shot. We learned the order of toasting in Russia – to friendship, world peace, beautiful women/love, parents, then take turns around the circle until done. A couple of hours later and the power was back on which earned a toast of course, dinner had been cooked and consumed, the bottles were lying empty in the empty dormroom and I was asleep/passed out in the kitchen where the other two, egged on by Jeff, thought drawing on my face with the vivid I had leant them earlier would be a fun passtime. Silly people, there is a lot of trip left and there are sure to be moments when they would really like to be picked up from the toilet floor which is unlikely to happen now.
Washed of graffiti I joined the main group from earlier, consisting of Dutch Joel, Raul from Brazil and the red headed reception girl, for an exploration of the nearby bar scene. I remember a conversation about love, throwing roubles around and being surprised how quiet it was around Kazan Cathedral on the walk home. First night in the country and we’re off to a good start, I may not be thinking this tomorrow morning.
A toast to the first night in Russia.
Tags: border crossing, drinking, Finland, metro, police, Russia, St Petersburg, train, Travel, vodka
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