Partners in Crime

Don and Lari attempting to look innocent

The first of my friends, Larissa, or Lari as she’s always known, is due to join me here today later in the afternoon. The train tickets are also meant to be arriving too, so I wind up staying in Alisha’s apartment, surfing the web, looking out the window, reading and doing very little. Around three in the afternoon I finally get tired of inactivity and decide it must be time to go out and meet her. In record time I’m heading for the city and having a bowl of soup and a beer when my mobile buzzes with her message asking where I am. I tell her to head for Alisha’s train station and travel there myself to meet her. Alisha kindly agreed yesterday to let Lari stay at her apartment as well and this morning she’s letting my other friend, Don, stay from tomorrow too. Alisha is rapidly becoming my favourite host ever; her calm, relaxed approach to everything is addictive and fun. I find Lari outside the Metro station and greet her in Russian with “Welcome to St Petersburg”. I introduce her to the way of the marshrutka and advise her about the hot water situation as we head for the apartment.

I’ve known Lari for about fifteen years, a Darwin local always up for fun, parties and travelling adventures. She’s of part Serbian extraction and had spent a year living in the town her father came from; which had both made her curious to visit Russia and wary of Slavic men. So travelling with a six foot tall, huge, crazy Australian like me seemed the best way to avoid problems. We can always pretend to be a couple as required, which generally makes life easier. She is fairly tall and slim with a fantastic figure and broad, cheeky smile. Her eyes speak as much as her mouth does and she still hasn’t entirely gotten over a pushbike accident that left her with some light scarring on one side of her face and her arm. That wasn’t enough to stop the Russian men trying it on with her and I still think her beauty always shines through those huge, soulful eyes.

When she unloads her backpack on the floor she rummages inside it to produce an Australian power adapater for me. I give her a huge hug and thank her profusely for remembering. I plug it in first and then plug in the four point powerboard I’ve brought with me. Her eyebrows rise as I search for my phone and mp3 player chargers and plug them both in,
“That’s a good idea, can I use one of them for my phone?”
“Of course, that’s why I bought it. I figured we’d all want to charge things all the time and this would make it easy.”
She plugs her phone in and we sit and have a beer as I acquaint her with the wonder of Alisha’s window.

We soon make the short trek to the local supermarket and buy a stack of food, wine and beer to last for a few days. By the time Alisha returns home from work we have dinner ready, dessert planned and the wine flowing. It’s at this time that I realise that the tickets haven’t arrived and we’ve had no note or sign that anyone even visited. I jump on the internet again, beginning to feel the anger of desperate helplessness set in. I wrote what I really felt in an email, then deleted it and phrased a simple, but direct and more polite query asking what had happened. I’m more amazed to receive a response in under five minutes telling me that DHL had visited, would visit again the next day and I could check on the website for verification. It seemed I’d managed to miss them in the time I’d been in the city waiting for Lari. Don is arriving in the morning, so we agree to just wait at home until the tickets arrive, then we’ll launch ourselves into the city. It will also be a chance to catch up, since the three of us haven’t been in the same room at the same time for a number of years. With that, we rearrange the loungeroom and pass into a gentle rest.

I meet Don outside the station and we share a hug as I greet him with a ‘Welcome to St Petersburg’ in Russian. He wants a shower and I tell him about the hot water issue. He shrugs and says,
“When in Russia do as the Russians do. Got any vodka?”
I laugh and admit I don’t. Don’s long black hair reaches almost to his waist and he’s cared for it like that for as long as I can remember. His face is narrow and elongated enough that he can do a mad impression of a rodent whenever he chooses; which fits is wiry, tiny body perfectly. His eyes are always alert, watching everywhere and absorbing everything; meaning he can be easily distracted by shiny objects. There are streaks of grey appearing in his hair and I get to hassle him about that since I’m definitely the older brother and still showing no signs of grey. He’s not my brother by birth, he’s my brother from another mother. And father for that matter…and country. Don largely grew up in Jamaica and Africa, before a stint in Fiji leading to Darwin in Australia; which is where we had met at University. I’ve travelled with Don across Australia before, shared houses for three years in Darwin and Melbourne and been involved in countless festivals, parties, events and trouble together. He saw the same Total Solar Eclipse that I did in the desert of South Australia, at the week long trance festival that was held to celebrate it. So it when I was planning my Russian adventure he jumped to join it.

On our return to Alisha’s apartment we sit down to have some late morning beers and catch up on Don’s adventures in Moscow.
“I noticed one beautiful moment when I was in the Kremlin too”, he begins,
“There’s a McDonalds right near it and I saw a pack of sick, skinny, feral looking dogs sniffing around the bins. There was meat and leftover burgers there, but they turned up their noses and kept going. Even pack dogs in the Kremlin won’t eat that crap.”
Don also has his own illustrative story about trying to get a train ticket in Moscow. After an hour of crawling forward in line he finally lurched to the window and presented the piece of paper with his desired trains on it to the sour faced middle aged woman. She looks at the piece of paper, looks back at him and emphatically announces,
“Nyet.”
Don looks at her and at the piece of paper, then points at both the train departures listed and looks hopefully back at her. The answer returns equally surely,
“Nyet.”
Having exhausted his knowledge of Russian and reservoir of ideas he points at where it says ‘St Petersburg’ in Russian on the ticket, then at the date.
“Nyet.”
He pushes the paper through to her, thinking maybe she can’t read it properly and she gets a new idea. She picks up a pen and carefully writes, in Russian, ‘Nyet’. Now he produces the piece of paper in question amid peals of laughter from myself and Lari.

The three of us talk until after two in the afternoon and then begin to wonder if the tickets are on their way. I check on the web link the agent had given me and now it does say they had tried to deliver it the previous day. It also says it’s been dispatched again this morning. Taking some hope from this, Don and I take some time to wander to the shops to find more beer, food and general supplies. Over the next few hours, time slows down to a trickle. Our joint tension grows as the fear of not having these tickets becomes more and more real. We begin talking about what else we can do and how we could find the guy in Moscow. This had been on my mind for more than ten days now as the tickets continued to remain conspicuously absent, so I’m feeling flashes of anger. Lari points out that we can all post incredibly bad references for him at the website we had used to buy the tickets in the first place. I’m actually drafting the reference when the doorbell rings. I answer it and a voice says, “DHL”, in a suitably Russian accent. My heart leaps into my mouth, I can’t believe this might be the end of the torment. I buzz him into the building and sign for the envelope a minute later. It’s just after five in the afternoon, we’re over 10,000 kilometres from Vladivostok, it’s light and I’ve got my sunglasses on. I tear the packet open to find three envelopes inside; one for each of us and I distribute them so we can check through everything. It’s all there, for all of us. Our Trans-Siberian adventure is now officially ready to begin.

Mammmoth Ahoy!

I wake up late, feeling particularly calm and relaxed.  The day has other ideas for me that it lets me in on when I try to have a shower.  There is no sign of hot water.  I think that maybe the heater might need to refresh after Alisha’s shower and wait for a while.  Still no sign of hot water.  I wonder what’s going on and send a message to Alisha asking her if she knows.  Apparently I’m now enjoying one of the privileges of living in Russian apartments.  They use hydronic heating, which pumps hot water throughout the building, this same hot water is the supply for all the showers and kitchens.  During summer they turn the system off for weeks at a time and claim to perform some kind of maintenance on it.  Alisha thinks they just do it for the hell of it since it can happen in winter as well.
“So what do you normally do?” I ask, unfamiliar with the experience.
“Boil a kettle of water, pour it in the broad plastic container you’ll find in the bathroom and use that with the hand towel to wash yourself. You get used to it.”
“Does this happen often?”, I puzzle aloud.
“Every year, all the time.  This is very normal for Russians”, she explains in a resigned tone.
”You should be happy to have the real Russian lifestyle experience”, she chides with an impish giggle in her voice. 
I smile to myself and put the kettle on.

I think I could sit at the window all day doing nothing but absorbing this ever-changing view.  It’s a meditation on the ephemeral nature of existence and I enjoy it immensely.  I finish the Nasi Goreng (Indonesian fried rice) I’d made for us the night before and decide that since I find myself in one of the most famous cities in the world; I had better get outside and see it.  On my way out of the building I notice a sign in Russian that declares the hot water will be turned off for three weeks from today.  I don’t remember seeing it before.  During the marshrutka ride a beautiful, young Russian woman gets on and demands to exchange a thousand rouble note for all the driver’s small change.  He resists and a few people support him, I don’t understand her answer; but he does eventually give in.  I suppose that’s another way to get small change in Russia, but the rules change everywhere for beautiful women.  On the train I spend some time thumbing through my guide and eventually resolve to check out some of St Pete’s Metro stations before heading for the Zoological museum to get amongst the mammoth collection.  Mammoths have always fascinated me, so the chance to see a whole collection of them can’t be missed.

Pushkin in Pushkinskaya metro

The St Petersburg Metro stations are all deeper than the Moscow versions; you stand on the escalators for over a minute heading down.  Apparently this is partly to get the subway lines far enough under the river and partly to serve as bomb shelters.  Whilst sporting some fine statues and marble walls, I never found one as purely excessive as those in Moscow.  The mammoth museum I’m heading for is positioned on the strelka, ‘spit’ of Vasilevskiy Island just next to the Naval museum and very close to the giant rostral columns in front of that.  The columns were originally lighthouses used to guide shipping through St Petersburg’s busy port.  They stand about thirty two metres high, are painted coral pink and have the prows of boats protruding from them – just like the one underneath the giant statue of Peter the Great in Moscow.  Apparently each boat represents a naval victory, but there’s no simple way to tell exactly which victories these might be.  Probably not the under 20s kayak championship.  Maybe more like something involving warships firing cannons at each other and perhaps the occasional skirmish of men with swords swinging onto the decks of an opposing boat yelling ‘Arrrrrgghhh’.  In any case, at their base are four sculptures representing four great rivers of Russia; the Vodka, Beer, Urine and, of course, the Big Vodka.  Well, I’m sure that’s not entirely true, but the Russians I meet on the train later think it’s probably more accurate.

The zoological museum is a lot larger than I expect and contains a vast array of stuffed and preserved animals.  The horse that Peter the Great rode in the battle of Poltava in 1709 is stuffed and mounted in the entry stairway.  I briefly wonder if horses ever think to do the same for their humans, before realising they have no opposable digits and wouldn’t really be that good at taxidermy. 
“You’ll do better next time Ned… I know it’s hard to hold the knife in your hoof”
“Mbruuuuuha.”

On reflection, I suppose language would help them learn more too. After that introduction the museum has everything from mammals to birds and reptiles, whale skeletons to mounted dioramas of Rockhopper penguins.  Okay, so I love penguins and I often use a photo of this particular kind of penguin as my avatar on the internet.  Imagine my joy and surprise at finding a whole family of them mounted in a rocky landscape inside a glass case in the middle of St Petersburg.  I then stumble across a glass cabinet filled with albino animals, including a peacock and, unbelievably, an albino emperor penguin.  My penguin fetish well and truly satisfied by this completely white version of one of my favourite animals, I look harder for some hot mammoth action.

I’m delayed by a display of Australian birds and pause to check the labels, all written in Russian.  I’m dismayed to find a few of them are incorrect, but not entirely surprised.  I’m not entirely sure how good Russian-Australian scientific relations are, but if what I hear from other disciplines about how carefully the Russian government prevents scientists from sharing data, then I’d be more amazed if the labels were correct.  Just when I thought I was at the mammoth section, buried deep inside the building, I come across a stuffed angler fish.  These denizens of very deep ocean have a bioluminescent globe suspended in front of their mouth on a long antennae-like stalk; just like a fishing rod.  Scientists are divided on whether this is just to attract food or their mates, but the reality is any light in the absolute darkness probably does both.  I think they actually run deep ocean nightclubs with tiny shrimps acting as DJs inside their mouths; they turn the light on and off rapidly to create crazy effects for the tiny dancing fish. I also begin to suspect that cold showers do strange things to my thought processes.  My arrival at the mammoth section comes suddenly and with a strange feeling.

They have preserved baby mammoths that had been trapped under the Siberian ice for about 40,000 years.  This is a strange idea for me.  Mammoths have always been gigantic, hairy elephants with excessive tusks.  This diminutive version is the size of a large dog.  I am caught by this anomalous entity for quite a while before finally noticing the array of full sized mammoths beyond it.  I hope some scientist somewhere is working on bringing the world a tiny mammoth through the wonders of genetic engineering; mostly so I can have a little one at home.  I already know that scientists have already isolated the genes that control size, so you can make animals eight times bigger or smaller than they normally are.  So imagine a one foot tall mammoth running through your house to meet you as you arrive home from work.  Your young children could ride it around for fun as it sprays them with water from its trunk.  This thought keeps me distracted for the remainder of my visit as I wonder how you would order a mammoth around and what language would be best suited to the task.  As I leave the museum I’m picturing myself and a group of friends, each astride an adult mammoth charging through the Siberian tundra – yelling commands in Russian.  I just think Russian would be the best language to order around mammoths.

Ya Mammoth!!

Nevskiy and the Canals

After our very relaxing Monday together, Alisha decides she will return to work in the morning and hands me the spare key to the apartment.  This allows me a delightful sleep-in before launching my first real journey into St Petersburg.  I decide I’ll return to the city and walk along Nevskiy prospect to absorb the feeling of the place again and allow whatever takes my attention to consume my day.  I pass through the St Petersburg Metro like an old hand already – thanking my foresight in learning to read the Russian alphabet for the fortieth time.  I emerge in the middle of the city again, through Nevskiy Prospect Metro station and into the surging street.  I can see the spire of the Admiralty building at the end of the street, sitting on the edge of the Neva river; St Petersburg’s river and heart. 

Because pavements are for cars too...man.

I spend the next few hours drifting and floating on the waves of people crowding the city.  I decide I’ll walk away from the river first, back down to Vostanniya square and Moskovskiy station; where I had arrived the previous day.  I pass a huge building that has scaffold placed along its entire frontage and wonder what it is.  There’s no signage I can find, so I consult my guide to discover it is the huge bazaar they call Gostinyy Dvor.  Inside is Russia’s answer to the department store.  Broad passageways about twenty metres wide lead around the whole building on two main floors.  You can move between the floors via regularly placed stone staircases.  In those passageways are an endless series of stalls and shops of various sizes and types; each one run by a different person or people.  Sometimes the whole passageway is taken up by an electrical goods supermarket or a fabric shop.  Other times there are just a couple of benches or display cabinets with a single, bored looking shopkeeper hoping someone will stop.  I find one that only sells batteries and take the chance to stock up, since they are less than half the price of exactly the same battery in Australia.  I find myself wandering through the passageways faster and faster, enjoying the endless flow of different shops with people swarming in every direction.  There seems to be one shop I see over and over again that sells the same set of jewellery, umbrellas and t-shirts.  I wonder if its some kind of weird franchise stall as I sail into a hobby shop filled with radio controlled devices.  The experience is strange to me, different from the bazaars in Istanbul; somehow more modern and consumeristic. 

Then I turn around and amble along most of the length of this fabulous road to land at the Admiralty and the statue of the Bronze Horseman.  Crossing the Fontanka canal at the Anichkov bridge I wish the amazing four statues on it weren’t under restoration.  The statues on the bridge are by Pyotr Klodt and are all very beautiful renderings of men taming wild horses; engaged in the battle of strength as man bends the natural world to his will.  This is a particularly appropriate place to have them displayed so centrally; in this city that represents that idea to perfection.

After Peter had travelled in Europe for a year (1697-98), working to learn boat building and absorbing culture everywhere he went, he returned to Russia with an astonishing plan.  Russia would have a port on the Baltic Sea that would be the equal, or superior, of any European city.  This was the first time any Russian leader had taken this view.  So he did what any six foot eight inch Tsar with a mission does; he started a war with Sweden.  In just a few years, in 1703, he had secured the mouth of the Neva River as the location and started building the SS Peter and Paul Fortress (the double S there is for the two Saints) on an island there.  Opposite was a shipyard that he planned would become the birthplace of Russia’s navy.  He fought Sweden and enslaved prisoners for another six years until the battle of Poltava where he led a decisive victory against their forces; Sweden had been one of Europe’s most powerful countries at the time.  Amusingly the fortress was never actually used or defended during that war, but by then, the city was being planned and built at a reckless pace.

There's more than one way to TAME a horse

 

His determination to see this city come into being drove him for the rest of his life; and considerably shortened the life of the tens of thousands of Russian serfs he conscripted to the cause.  The land was a foetid bog that flooded constantly, it is far enough north to have limited sunlight for half the year, as well as the river and ground frozen at the same time.  Despite everything being piled against this proposition, his will held iron to the end, in 1712 he made it the Russian capital, when he died in 1725 there were 40,000 people in residence and many more in labour camps nearby.

 Kazan Cathedral

Strolling down the Nevskiy Prospect is something I enjoyed doing quite a few times during my time in St Petersburg.  So many beautiful buildings.  The canals, statues and the constant buzz of the people is addictive.  There is little sign left of the torment and death that went into producing this city, it has been replaced by one of the most photogenic and inspirational landscapes I’ve ever seen.  This is a testament to a further three centuries of history, construction and life in the heart of the empire.    The Dom Knigi (House of Books), Kazan Cathedral and a host of other buildings form a constant flow of visual feasts.  each have their own style about them and all locals have their favourites.

The Fontanka, Griboedova and Moyka canals are calling me to get onto a boat tour.  I notice a sign pointing to an English language one and head for the ticket box.  I’m not sure if the boat will have drinks on board, so I spend the fifteen minute wait acquiring some beer from a local shop.  On arriving at the boat I can’t help but notice that there’s only myself, the captain and two Russian crew members on board a wide canal boat with tables and chairs to comfortably seat forty.  They gesture for me to sit down and wait.  In a few more minutes a beautiful young Russian women descends the gangway and, glancing my way, walks over to speak with the captain.  It turns out I’m lucky enough to have the boat to myself. 
“Hello, I’m Ivana”, she says with a curious smile,
“I may as well just sit here then.”
She joins me at the table as I introduce myself and give her a beer to help settle into the best value for money tour in St Petersburg this year

We travel up the Fontanka, down the Moyka and then out onto the Neva past the winter palace (now part of the Hermitage museum/gallery) and the SS Peter and Paul Fortress.  Looking back and forth across the river I can see the huge, towering spires atop the Admiralty on one side and the belltower of the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul on the other.  Both seem impossibly tall and slender and on top of the Admiralty spire is a weathervane in the shape of a frigate; on top of the Cathedral is one in the shape of an angel blowing a trumpet.  The two spires look particularly beautiful glowing in the warm Russian summer afternoon sun.  I see for the first time the beach in front of the fortress swarming with people in bathers enjoying the day.  Beaches and St Petersburg are still two ideas I find hard to associate, but here they are.  We float gently past gardens and palaces, cathedrals and churches, bridges and waterways.  I discover my guide is doing this work to help fund her university studies and improve her English, which is already very good.
“What hotel are you staying in?”, she asks me. 
It seemed an odd question to me when I first arrived in Russia, but it’s quite common for locals to ask where I’m staying to get an idea of what kind of tourist or traveller I am; a businessman staying in the Sheraton or a backpacker in the cheapest place that has a spare room.
“I’m Couchsurfing with a local, staying for free”, I explain.
“Couch…what?” she replies, looking very confused. 
I spend some time explaining the idea to her. It’s greeted at first with the base suspicion that the unknown always causes, then she warms up quite a bit, enjoying the novelty of a new kind of traveller.
“You have to visit this local franchise pub called Tolsti Fraer!” she exclaims. 
She marks my map where a couple of them are located and tells me to go to one in particular. It’s the one she and her friends often visit on a Friday night.  I decide I have to go there this Friday with a group of Couchsurfers to see what happens.

“Are you familiar with the Russian way to ask for another drink without saying a word”, Ivana asks me pointedly.  I think for a moment and reply slowly, still thinking,
“No.  I don’t think so.” 
She turns the palm of her right hand away from her body and raises it to the side of her neck, where she flicks her throat gently with her index finger.  I smile and say,
“That’s sure to come in handy while I’m here.” 
She returns the smile and adds,
“Do you know why we do that?”
Again I think and admit I have no idea.
“Well, when St Petersburg was a much younger city, not long after Peter the Great started building it, there was a time where storms with high winds were lashing it for days on end.  One day in these high winds the angel shaped weathervane on top of the cathedral’s belltower broke and stopped being able to turn properly.  Peter feared the new spire would be torn asunder as the high winds continually caught the weather vane.” 
I grimace, picturing the towering Tsar being made aware of the problem and likely suffering more than normal from his facial tic.
“So Peter called for someone in the new city brave enough to climb the tower and fix the weathervane.  Soon enough, one crazy Russian man approached and said he would do it, but the price would be free drinks in all of St Petersburg’s bars.  Peter agreed to this, since the act would take considerable courage.”
I had read in my guidebook that the spire rises 122 metres from the ground, glancing at it right now assures me it would indeed be quite a feat to climb it even today.
“The man took rope and the tools to fix it, consulted with the builders (the cathedral wasn’t completed until after Peter’s death) on the best way to repair it and set off.  The winds were still high and no-one believed he would make it to the top, let alone actually fix it.  Somehow he stayed firmly attached to the spire, repaired the broken angel and descended slowly amidst cheers and celebration of everyone present.  Peter arranged for a certificate to be created directing all of St Petersburg’s publicans to honour this man with free drinks, signed it and handed it over personally.”
“So I’m thinking this guy isn’t working very much anymore”, I quip. 
She smiles and continues,
“Well, you would be right, he spent many nights getting very drunk and more than once he lost the certificate and had to beg Peter for a new one.  Peter got tired of this process and arranged to have the certificate tattooed on the man’s neck, right here”, she explains, flicking her throat again,
“So all he had to do for endless vodka was flick his throat! …and all the Russian people still use this action to get another drink today”.
She sat back for a moment as I consider this awesome story and sip at my beer.  I smile suddenly and offer her another beer from my bag,
“Oh that’s not what I meant!”, she exclaims, blushing.
“But..since you have enough for me….”
She trails off as she opens the fresh can.  I look out the window again as the buildings drift past.
“I don’t know if the story is true or not, I only heard this last week and liked it”, she explains between long sips.
“Nothing lives as well as a good story, I like it too”, I agree, knowing that I will be telling it again.

Onwards to St Petersburg!

I say my goodbyes to Anna and Natasha as I have to change trains to get to the inter-city station I need for the journey to St Petersburg.  This is my first experience with these trains and I have no idea what to expect.  I find the station and the platform surprisingly easily; this information is printed on my ticket in Russian.  The train is already there when I arrive around midnight, half an hour before departure.  I acquire a couple more beers for a nightcap and then a litre of water to help me out.  I then find my wagon and hand my ticket and passport to the provodnitsa.  Each wagon has its own provodnitsa who is a combination of ticket officer, cleaner, caretaker and general boss of the wagon and everyone in it.  I experience some trouble finding my cabin, partially from all the beer I’ve been forced to consume and partially because I’m expecting to see four beds arranged in it and can only find two bunks on the left hand side.  The disabled sign on the door also leads me to believe it must be for someone else.  The provodnitsa comes by and indicates brusquely that it’s correct and points at the lower bunk.  This is the first time I notice the number affixed to the wall above it that confirms it is indeed my bed.  Jackpot!  A two bed cabin on my first train journey in Russia!

I stow my backpack by lifting my bed to reveal a ready made storage area.  As I’m doing this, a young Chinese guy enters the room and greets me in Russian.  I return the greeting and smile before continuing,
“Do you speak English?”
He smiles and concentrates for a moment before replying,
“Only a little.”
We move to stand at the window in the corridor and between my bad Russian and his bad English we manage to talk for a while.  He’s a student here in Moscow, but he’s now going home to china for the summer holidays.  His parents are also on the train, since they had come to visit him before they all returned home together.  He shows me the four berth cabin his parents are in and then I head for a cigarette and nightcap before turning in for the night.  Imagine my surprise when I find his parents in the two bunks in our cabin.  I stand, baffled for a while, until he reappears and says we can use the beds in the four bunk room while they sleep here.  I look at my suitcase and wonder where it will go, not happy with the idea of sleeping further than arms reach from it.  I’ve heard bags, or their contents, have a way of disappearing on these trains and Natasha warned me again about this just before we parted.  I must look upset at the idea of moving, because as I’m trying to console myself with it, he moves his parents back to their cabin and tells me to lie down.  I have no idea what else to do and have no energy left, so I curl up on the bed and fall into a black, silent sleep.

I wake up feeling dazed and confused, but sporting a smile in memory of the arse slapping antics of the previous night.  I grab the water I’d bought in the station and drink a litre of it in about ten seconds.  I watch the landscape of St Petersburg roll past as we head for the city station.  Already the place feels very different to Moscow.  Certainly the classic soviet apartment buildings dominate, but somehow here they seem further apart, less frenetic and hurried.  As the train approaches the centre of the city these buildings give way to an amazing array of 18th century architecture still in remarkably good repair – or at least the facades are kept scrubbed.

Alisha, my host, is meant to be working, but she messages me saying she’s sick and has stayed at home instead.  Navigating the Metro here feels easier than Moscow, there are less lines and I only need one change to get to her station.  This does involve walking down a short stretch of the famous Nevskiy Prospect – the road at the heart of St Petersburg.  It’s busy and directed, with the flow of people relentless in every direction.  It seems St Petersburg too is in the midst of a construction frenzy; with scaffold cradled buildings a common sight.  The street feels burstingly alive; like an artist wracked by inspiration and struggling to capture it all and make it real before this moment passes.  This feels like a breath of fresh air after the twisted depressiveness of Moscow and I wonder how much of this style is still the living expression of Peter the Great’s dream of a European capital.  I stroll out of Alisha’s Metro station and message her that I’ve made it; she says she’s still ten minutes away.  I sit with my bag near the Metro exit and immerse myself in the constant flow of people.  This station is to the north of the city centre and right on the Gulf of Finland.  I notice again the flower shops that seem to always exist at station exits in Russia.  I imagine in a country that knows winter too well, flowers are a welcome blessing anytime. 

A woman with dark brown hair and huge sunglasses walks laconically towards me.  Her every movement is a study in smooth efficiency that seems like a lazy dance.  Alisha’s smile comes slowly, with the same calm fluidity, and lights her face from within with a warmth you feel to your bones.  She holds my hand as I kiss her cheek and then explains we have to go and catch a marshrutka.  We walk towards a line of yellow minivans as she explains them to me.
“They run a set route, but you can wave them down and get on or off anywhere at all along it.” 
Her voice is husky and earthy, but her sniffles give away her sickness. 
“You need the number 123 to get to my place, just sit on it until the end.” 
Her accent is fairly soft, but definite.  As we scramble with my suitcase into our marshrukta, I ask,
“How often do they run?  When do they stop?”
“All day as long as the trains are running.  They drive to the other end of the route and wait there and have a smoke or something until some people get on.  It costs ten roubles, which you pass down to the driver after you get in”. 
I settle down as someone takes it upon themselves to sort out change for everyone in the back half of the minibus and passes a single handful of notes and coins to the driver.  In all the times I travelled in these across Russia, I never see anyone try to get away without paying, but locals tell me it does happen.

The trip takes about fifteen minutes and the last stretch is along the coastline next to a large park.  The final stop for the marshrutka is at the end of that road, right in front of Alisha’s apartment.  With much grunting and sweating I manhandle my suitcase out of the van and into the complex.  We enter her building and it again meets the standard of being pretty decrepit on the outside, but giving way to a lovely and recently renovated interior.  Her apartment is on the third floor and looks out across the park and over the water of the Gulf of Finland.  Another friend of hers is waiting for us, a woman in her thirties from near Novosibirsk (the capital of Siberia); just like Alisha who is from Barnaul (a few hours drive to the south of the capital). 

Alisha really is sick, her friend is as hungover as I am and the effort of manhandling my suitcase has drained the rush of energy the city had given me.  We alternate sitting in her loungeroom and kitchen, drinking fruit juice and staring out the window at the ever changing view over the sea.  The view from Alisha’s window becomes an integral part of my days in St Petersburg.  At first I’m watching her staring at the horizon dreamily, then I get caught by it as well.  Every day the combination of sunlight, clouds and the water itself provides endless variations on a beautiful scene.  Adding to that is the small river mouth to the right that features a steady flow of boats and the park in front of us with people walking alone, in couples, with dogs and sometimes in small groups.  Much farther to the left is the mouth of the Neva river (St Petersburg’s primary watercourse) that produces even more shipping and the hydrofoils that take happy tourists to visit Peter the Great’s amazing summer palace.  It’s possible to stare out of this window at any time of the day or night and be rewarded with a view that is at once profoundly relaxing and invigorating.  The slow movement of the water and boating is offset by the faster pace of people walking through the park and down the street.  I try to capture this a few times with my camera, but the relatively narrow view always renders the result at best a dull reminder of the feeling in the moment.  This is one of the first times I truly appreciate what might be captured in a single painting that might take a lifetime to find in photography.