Train Tickets; Russians & Walking

The next day, I decided to save desert for after dinner and took care of my not-fun stuff before the fun stuff. I didn't have a ticket from St Petersburg to Moscow. I was planning to be on the 11pm train on Friday night, but the possibility existed that the train company was unaware of my plans. :) I headed down to the main booking site, next to the Kazan Cathedral. I managed to locate the correct window (number 98 - upstairs to the left), and discovered I'd forgotten my passport. 20 minutes later, I was back and talking to a very nice lady.

The funny thing about Russians is that they are either extremely nice and helpful or complete assholes. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium the way that there is in most countries. The lady at the train ticket place at first told me that she did not speak English. I then told her: Adin (one) Bilyet (ticket) Moskva (Moskow) Kupe (sleeping compartment) Zaftra (tomorrow) and night (night). She laughed so hard at my attempt to speak Russian that it magically jarred loose her command of the English language. This was my first clue that people might be having fun with me and just not deigning to speak to me in English.

My work done for the day, I stopped off at the hostel for my second free breakfast. In deference to the late hours of the Russian Summer, breakfast ran from 10am-2pm. This was hard on the early birds, but nice for anyone looking to make 2 free meals of toast and yogurt. There, I met 2 lovely German girls. We had the usual backpacker's conversation: 1) where are you from?; 2) how long have you been here? 3) how long have you been travelling?; 4) where are you going next?; 5) when do you go home?; 6) what are you doing today?; (optional) 7) what's your name? At point 6, it came up that today was the monthly free day at the Hermitage. Ack! Why didn't someone tell me before I paid 300p yesterday?

I decided to get my free money's worth and go back for a second look at the temporary Merovingian exhibit. Very good. Unfortunately, I was caught taking a picture of a 6th century bead necklace and was physically dragged over to the 'no photo' sign by a docent. She fell into the asshole category not just by manhandling me, but also by making fun of me when I apologized. Harrumph! Not shamed in the slightest, I continued to admire the craftwork of early civilization while I was watched with an eagle eye in case I might go crazy and start photographing everything. Note: you are free to take photos of almost everything in the Hermitage. Only special exhibits are the exception.

After a quick circuit of my favorite sites to make sure that I hadn't missed anything, I left the Hermitage behind and set off on foot. I decided to cross a bridge. Well, that brought me to the Strelka. There, I saw a not-dancing-at-the-moment bear cub and many many brides. The custom is for people to get married in the morning and then spend the day going around the city to all of the famous sites taking photographs. The entire wedding party comes along with bottles of champagne. There is also a professional photographer and usually some sort of musician. Crazy. There were brides everywhere. Apparently, August is a popular month to get married in since it is not too hot and not freezing and up to one's waist in snow.

This was also the first time that I witnessed the phenomenon of the beautiful bride with the hideous groom. I was told that this is because there is a gender imbalance in Russia (many more women than men) and because a woman is considered over the hill if she isn't married by 25. This is the reason for all of the gorgeous Russian women with beautiful hair, nails, makeup, clothes, accessories, etc. They are stunning, and the best they can hope for is to beat out all of the other stunning women for the chance at an ugly, but hopefully rich, guy. Yikes! The pressure! Men take advantage of this by typically not getting married 'til they're in their 30s.

That aside, I watched a lovely ceremony of one couple releasing doves and then kissing. I felt so happy that I decided to walk some more. I crossed another couple of bridges to the Fortress of Peter and Paul. This fortress was built by Peter the first after taking this land from the Swedes. The fortress was meant to repel a counterattack which never came. Instead, a whole city sprang up around the fortress. Soldiers bring women, bring babies, bring service industry, bring families, bring city... Simple.

Since the fortress was never used for it's intended purpose, it was filled with prisoners instead. It's a little grim, and like everything else in Russia, is under construction. Everything is under renovation. I'm not sure if it's to provide jobs for manual laborers or if everything is falling apart, but you'll see workmen everywhere.

After the fortress, I crossed another bridge to the Summer Palace and Gardens, billed as the best garden in the city. After Petrodvorets, it was a bit of a dud, but still, it was on the way, so why not? Then, I rested in the park until my feet could face more walking and then continued. There are an amazing number of cobblestone streets in Russia. This combined with the invariable high heels worn by Russian women must lead to one of the world's highest broken ankle rates. For some reason, I'd thought that cobblestones would be nice to walk on - a bit of arch support. No. Not so. Awful. My calves were knotted and aching by the time I got them back to the hostel and into a shower.

For dinner, I went off to a kitsch Russian place with 2 folks from the hostel, Katie (French Canadian) and Phil (Australian). I had blini with red caviar and potato pancakes. Yum. Then, the restaurant started turning into a club, complete with DJs; funky lights; and bad 90s US music. Cher was prominently featured.

After going back to Quo Vadis, I decided to have an early night & was home by eleven. That is very early for St. P. I did my laundry to the sound of raucous passersby wafting in through our balcony. However, I resisted temptation and was in bed by 1am.