St. Petersburg, Russia

Wednesday to Monday, 20 - 25 September 2006

We arrive in St. Petersburg early on Wednesday and kill a few hours in the Baltiisky train station trying to master cyrillic by converting kiosk signs into the English alphabet. (A big thanks to a Greek bishop called Cyril who had a hand in this migraine-inducing alphabet - it's not so much the new symbols that are difficult; it's the old reliables - pronounce "H" like an "N" and "P" like an "R" - that are the real difficulty!)

Russia has given us the biggest culture shock of the trip so far. A few examples: St. P. has nearly 5 million inhabitants and, in some sort of impromptu attempt at getting into the Guinness Book of Records, the whole city crammed into our carriage the first time we take the metro. Shaken but otherwise okay, we finally make it to our apartment, which is well located, a 10-minute walk from Nevskiy prospekt, the main tourist strip. Then we try to master the subtle art of buying bread in one of the produkty cornershops. The system is as follows: point at the bread you want, get a piece of paper from the shop attendant responsible, take this piece of paper to the cashier and pay for the bread, take the new piece of paper you receive from the cashier to the attendant and exchange for the loaf of bread, which at this stage has gone stale. Kafka is turning in his grave that he didn't think this one up!

We are slowly adjusting to the strangeness of the place and St. Petersburg, although fairly run-down in spots, has plenty to show-off. Two of the high points have been the Hermitage Museum and Peterhof. The Hermitage, located in the Tsars' Winter Palace, has a breathtaking art collection, including works from Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Matisse and other big names we might have recognised if we knew anything about art! Peterhof palace and gardens are 30 km outside of St. P and are Tsar Peter the Great's spectacular effort at creating a "Versailles-by-the-sea" - we make the trip out there by hydrofoil, which was a good way of seeing the more remote parts of St. P.

On Sunday we watched the last bit of the Ryder Cup in the Shamrock pub. All of St. P's 8-strong Irish ex-pat community was there. Enda, a Clareman, who has
been working with Aer Rianta in St. P. airport for the last 5 years and is now returning to Ireland, gave us a good take on life as an Irishman in Russia. Martin, the owner of the pub, a Corkman, entertained us with yarns about celebrities who had passed through. These included Bertie Ahern, who ducked out of the nearby Mariinksy Theatre for a pint after 40 minutes of a 3 hour ballet saying that the performance was "a bit long". We were also introduced to Russian opera star Mikhail Petrenko. Despite not having a clue about opera, we cornered him for a photo - you never know, it might be worth something on eBay a few years from now.

A group of Russians also invited us to drink with them. Despite the language difficulties they were very friendly and big fans of Guinness, Jameson and Dublin (mentioned over 300 times in the space of 30 minutes). One of them, Sergei, a 22 year-old oligarch with a fleet of planes to his name, wanted to show us the city in his Mercedes with the rest of the lads. Having been assured that this was not a kidnapping but normal Russian hospitality, we hopped in for a high-octane night-tour of the city involving five Russians pointing at various buildings, shouting in a mixture of English and Russian and occasionally mentioning Guinness, Jameson and Dublin. All of this was to the ear-drum bashing backing of Depeche Mode's Greatest Hits. A calm descended as we were shown the nightly bridge-raising - between 2 am and 5 am the bridges along the River Neva are raised to let cargo ships through the port. This can mean that people are stranded in the wrong half of the city until breakfast time and is a favourite excuse for teenagers out past their bed-time and philandering husbands. For their great generosity, we have to plug the lads' band, HAT3K: "we play loud, like Blink 182". Check out www.hat3k.narod.ru at your own risk.

Our next stop is Moscow.

For more photos, click here.