A Traveller's Tale: St Petersburg
I
went to St Petersburg for the first time on a field trip organized by
my faculty at the university of Moscow. I went with a group of
friends and other students; all of us studying History of Art. This
trip is an essential part of such a course as the city is rich with
art galleries and many of the buildings are significant because of
their architecture. In Russia we actually call this city, The Big
Museum, because everywhere you look you are just surrounded by art in
all its forms.
When we arrived
the most striking thing apart from the beauty of the city was the
difference in the way that the people of St Petersburg are so
different from those we were used to in Moscow. We were used to rude,
unfriendly people, just like us! But here the feeling was a much more
relaxed one, where it was even possible for you to get a smile from a
stranger.
We stayed on one of the city's side streets that ran off from Nevsky Prospect, which is the most famous street in the city. Nevsky Prospect is a street all Russia knows about as many of our most famous writers mention it often in their work.
The Palace Square and The Hermitage museum were just a five minute walk from the hostel. It was The Hermitage that we had really come to see. Here you find the biggest collection of European art in an amazing palace layout. Each room is different but all are filled with gold, marble and incredible decoration, and then you have the art itself. The problem here is that in the peak season it is just too busy and while it is incredibly beautiful, the air conditioning is non-existent and it quickly becomes quite a chore to move through room after room.
We had to go back to The Hermitage every day as part of our schedule and with over 3 million paintings we could still be going back there now and not have managed to see it all. It was pretty tiring to follow this routine each day and it made it difficult for us to properly enjoy the city. It wasn't difficult us for to realize just how much more varied this city was to our own though.
We had coffee in little cafes and bought little gifts for our friends from the little boutique shops that just don't exist in Moscow. Our favorite cafe was Kipyatock which was on Dostoevsky Station, this was a cosy place to relax; pretty cool and fashionable, and it serves great breakfasts from 9am to 12.
One
of my friends had a birthday while we were there so we ran away from
our professors one night and got a little taste of St Petersburg
night life. Again the sheer variety of places amazed us. The bank of
the river Fontanka was the perfect place to hang out, full of
restaurants and bars. Blizzard bar here was like nothing we had ever
seen before. The doorman wear funny masks and inside they celebrate
New Year every day at midnight in true Russian style with free
champagne for everybody. They play the national anthem and everybody
dances. We were exhausted from our studies but this was a good way to
forget about all of that for a little while.
The days passed too quickly and soon we were on the way back to Moscow. The artistic vibe and atmosphere of this city really had me wanting to go back to live but I forced myself to remember that it is really only for the two or three summer months of the year that this kind of energy and life exist there. All the cafes, bars, and clubs stay open all year but the weather is much less kind and I couldn't imagine suffering the cold and grey for a full nine and ten months. Instead I decided to return in a year, and I did. It was a great trip; fun, tiring, and productive- and I got an A grade for the university project that we did based on our experiences there!
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Author Bio:
Alisha Webb on behalf of Baltic Travel – Baltic Tours, Holidays, Cruises and travel to Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Russia.
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