Administrative changes
“No problem, we will be getting into St Petersburg on the 15th so can you recommend some hostels?”
“Um, looking at the computer we can only book into this one hotel in Moscow, it’s $200 each per night.”
“Sorry, you’re trying to tell us that in the largest country in the world you only have access to one hotel in one city?”
“That’s right, you said you were going to be there for five nights right?”
Cue looks of disgust merging into slightly panicked. This is how you run up a fifty email thread just regarding supposedly straightforward visa applications.
Dreaming of the destination.
Back to the in country follow up. The whole registration requirement is supposed to be an annoying you simply met piece of officiousness. The main problems seem to mainly strike the backpacking community as if you are staying in a flash hotel they will automatically take care of the paperwork for you. Hostels seem to add on a charge for doing this as they have to outsource it to as agency as they are not counted as proper accommodation or something. One of the reasons we had chosen Cuba was because they had an in house travel agent who could do this very simply but of course nothing is ever such and especially not when you show up on a day with a power cut that somehow puts all the computers out of action going on four days now.
With an attitude reminiscent of the Latina meňana culture, actually that is exactly what we were being told every morning. As the 72 hours came and went the pressure started to grow, mostly because of the worry about what would happen at the Mongolian border, a place with few alternate options once you are there. Of course there were wildly conflicting stories ranging from it doesn’t really matter anyway through to US$500 fines. This led our breakfast friends the Australian couple to seek outside help which set them back R1200 each to get the stamp an outlay that would seem very reasonable in the face of a fine or else a total rip off, we banked on the latter. Ah, the unkown.
To make it a full day of official dealings it was decided that the afternoon would be dedicated to purchasing our first train ticket inside Russia. After much consulting of respective phrase books and train guide a ticket window was selected. Discovery number one was that queues form very differently in Russia with the line hugging the counter until it meets those who are being served at the next window along and only then swings out into the palacial marble hall. This only took about half an hour to work out mostly due to the minimal forward movement of those around us, an interesting mix of the inherent feel for queuing from our British heritage and centuries of training for those around us.
Now no longer standing in no mans land it started to get exciting when others in front started exiting the line moving us up to one away from service. Further hope was gained from the competent air exuding from the lady behind the glass. That was before she disappeared through the door in the back of the booth – for fifteen minutes. No-one blinked. She returned, much paper was pushed through to her, she disappeared again. We asked someone if we were in the right line and got a weary “Да” in response. Seemingly every piece of information from every peice of paper was being entered into a computer as the clock pushed on past the hour waiting mark and steadily towards 3:30 when the whole place shut for afternoon break.
Jeff and Mike showed up and went to a window on the other side of the hall, people seemed to be actually receiving tickets from this one. To change windows was taking a chance through with them being fourth in their line with only 20 minutes left. When two of those in front were handled within five minutes we made the switch. Then they were up and things started to go wrong. I looked wistfully back at our old queue where the lady was still entering stuff into her computer, maybe it was because the couple in question looked as though they came from the country. At our new window the lady didn’t understand something and we didn’t understand what she didn’t understand, but instead of the expected “нет, затем” she went and got the one from our initial window who fixed everything up. Then it was our turn but now it was 3:28 and the good lady was about to leave again but she relented to our pleas and 5 minutes later were were holding three platscart tickets to Moscow, slightly later that we wanted but manageable. Looking over as we exited the rural couple who had held us up for over an hour were still standing there.
Success!!!
After that ordeal it was decided that some culture was needed. The Canadian (she of the snoring mother) had found a performance of Swan Lake on that night, surely a must do in Piter if ever there was one. Dressing up as best we could we set off to find the St Petersburg State Theatre of Musical Comedy, name looks a lot better in Cyrillic, yet another amazing Rossi building that only added to our feeling of being very underdressed. Amazingly this was the second ballet that I was attending within three weeks and with my connosieurs eye was a little disappointed with the opening act compared to the Royal New Zealand company with a number of performers visibly missing steps, not quite getting right around on their turns, or wobbling as they tried to hold a position. But as the show moved along, the story developed and the lead dancers had more time on stage and we realised that after all this was just some company performing on a Thursday night it was really quite nice. Also there is only really one dance that everyone comes to see, the one with all the swans, and that was flawless.
In being critical of the performers in the first act we really let ourselves down as audience members later on. None of us really knew the story at all beyond the barest of guesses and so were left with puzzled looks when the curtain dropped for a second time and there was a brief curtain call. Puzzled because the story did not feel complete, or if it was then it was a much darker ending than expected. Thankfully we were not the only ones in this situation with the two Swiss girls seated behind us also querying what was going on. Fortunately as they were spending three months in the city learning their fifth or sixth language one was able to translate the programme and found that there was a third act with a more traditional conclusion. Even with our limited knowledge of the art form I would heartily recommend going to see a ballet if you are in a country where you do not speak the language. The stories are simple or well known and conveyed visually and as an art form is quite amazing. Of course everyone in this city already knows this.
Tags: ballet, culture, myths and legends, Russia, St Petersburg, Trans-Siberia, Travel
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