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Articles Tagged ‘metro’

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The Artist and the Dictator.

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

One of the most prevalent questions encountered so far has been Moscow or St Petersburg, which do you prefer?  As the title of this post alludes to one is based on the premise of beauty and the other power.  One built as a symbol of aspiration to leave the other in the past only for revolution to reach out its cold fingers and re-establish the elder one as the seat of power and control. Basically Moscow is busy and dirty, everyone in a rush to get shit done and money made.

  CooSoSB  CooSoSB

Which do you prefer the subtle intricate grandeur of the Cathedral of Our Savior on Spilled Blood or the gaudy familiarity of St Basils? [read on]

Fine(d) in St Petersburg

Monday, September 15th, 2008

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. [read on]