Sorry for the Group Email

It’s possible to walk a very long way in St Petersburg. What looks like nothing on a map takes an eternity on foot, and it’s quite possible that you’ll walk a long way before you realise that you’re miles from the nearest Metro station, with no choice but to unhappily trudge home through the slush.

We struck out in the morning with the intention of visiting the museum of the St Petersburg siege; by all accounts a harrowing collection of artefacts from the time in World War II that the Nazis had the city so hemmed in that a million people died.

Unfortunately, it was a Wednesday, which for unclear reasons is the day that the museums of St Petersburg take a breather. It took an hour from our hostel, but we found nothing but locked gates and an invitation to come back another day.

We consoled ourselves by heading to the nearest tourist trap restaurant and spending altogether too much money on mediocre food. With the exception of Mendy, that is, who spent altogether too much money on spectacularly bad food: undercooked herring, boiled potatoes and onion did nothing for either of us.

St Petersburg was planned as a Venice of the North. To that end it’s run through with canals. The footpaths are liberally scattered with a quite astonishing variety of dogshit. We saw an old woman diligently scoop up her dog’s leavings, only to heave the plastic bag over the railing into the canal. Of course, the canal is frozen over, so anything dropped in (countless vodka bottles, cigarette cartons and the odd traffic cone) sits half in, half out of the river, confusing the ducks and adding to the city’s unloved air.

Two days, of course, isn’t really enough time to make a decision about anything much, much less whether an entire city is nice or not. Some of St Petersburg feels spectacularly unfriendly, with its silent locals, hostile traffic and brown-tinged buildings. But it’s incredibly good-looking in the winter, with its rivers and canals turned into glaciers, albeit ones with the occasional petrified bag of dog turd.

We left on the midnight train to Moscow. It was, by quite some distance, the most comfortable night’s sleep I’ve ever had. The Russians might count the Lada and the Kalashnikov among their engineering accomplishments, but their trains are from another planet. Scrupulously clean, spacious and warm, the bed was easily hotel-quality, and the gentle suspension of the train had me sleeping the best I had in weeks; including sleeps in, y’know actual beds. The journey to Moscow takes eight hours (exactly as advertised), and it beats the heck out of paying for a hostel. Through the window we could just make out silent, dark villages sliding by in the blue light; all Fiddler on the Roof in their isolation. It was great, and we got to Moscow far too soon.

Dave is writing this from the Godzillas hostel in Moscow, where he’s staying for the next three and a half hours, before getting on the three-day train to Irkutsk. Anyone know any card games?

More pictures, as always, in the set on Flickr.