After Easter, the next holiday was Majówka, Polish labor day. We had a long weekend off of school, so my coworker and I decided it was the perfect opportunity to plan a trip to a place we had both been wanting to visit - Russia! Normally it's a bit complicated to visit any place in Russia because you must have some kind of visa to get into the country, but there is a loophole; if you take a ferry into St. Petersburg from Finland or Estonia, you can stay in the country for up to 72 hours without a visa. It was perfect for my friend and I, since we only had a short time to visit anyway, so it was off to St. Petersburg for us! We took a super cheap flight to Helsinki from Poland and had a few quick hours to pop into the main churches and grab a quick coffee before heading to the docks to get on the ferry.
For some reason, when I think of a ferry, I think of a small little boat, but the ferry to Russia was huge - there were several restaurants, bars, shops, and even a cinema on board. My friend and I got lost wandering around the labrythine corridors trying to find our cabin. Even though the cabin was small, it was actually pretty decent for one night, and we even had a bathroom and a shower to ourselves. The journey from Helsinki to St. Petersburg was about 14 hours, so my friend and I killed time by wandering around exploring, and then buying a small bottle of wine and drinking it on the deck while people-watching.
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| Our ferry (and a photo-bombing lobster) |
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| Our little cabin |
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| Seafarers |
We arrived the next morning in St. Petersburg, where we were required to take a special bus into the city itself. It was pretty early in the morning, and when we got to the city center it felt eerily quiet as we walked along the streets, at least until we got to the main square where tourists were queuing up to get into the famous Hermitage Museum (our first destination). Since we were so early, the museum hadn't even opened yet, which allowed us to get our tickets in advance from the machines outside. As a result, we were among the first people to get inside the museum, so for the first half hour or so it felt like we had a private viewing of the museum and all it's beautiful art. The Hermitage is to St. Petersburg what the Vatican is to Rome - it's filled with millions of historic items and works by famous artists, including Da Vinci and Michelangelo. The rooms are palatial and we spent hours roaming around!
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| The Hermitage Museum |
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| Lots to see inside |
As we were leaving the museum, we ended up observing a giant procession of people heading to the main square to celebrate Orthodox Easter, which happened to fall on that exact day. Unlike when we arrived, the paths along the main streets were absolutely packed and it took us quite awhile to work our way down the street. Our next destination was the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, the most iconic building in St. Petersburg. The incredible Russian Orthodox church was built at the end of the 19th century by Tsar Alexander III in order to commemorate the death of his father, Alexander II. It was built upon the exact spot where the tsar had been assasinated, and within the church there is an elaborate shrine dedicated to the tsar. The walls and ceilings are completely covered with amazing, intricate, religious mosaics, though some of it has since been restored due to the abuse the church suffered throughout the Russian revolution when it was used first as a morgue and then later as a storage warehouse for vegetables. Apparently during this time, people nicknamed it the 'Church of the Savior on Potatoes.' Now it's back to its original splendor for us tourists to marvel at.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the city and exploring. The other famous church in St. Petersburg is St. Isaac's Cathedral, a huge stone and gold structure in the city center. St. Petersburg itself is a very grand and pristine city. It's full of palaces, monuments, parks, and cathedrals. Everything is big and sturdy, but in a friendly way, with everything painted in a color scheme of pastel yellows and blues. Situated along the Neva river, there are many canals that run like veins throughout the city. It's really quite a lovely city, but it's also easy to get the feeling that a lot of it is especially for show, and we as tourists were getting just a very small, carefully crafted glimpse into what Russia is like.
In the evening, we headed to the Mariinsky theater to see the Russian ballet. They performed La Bayadère while we sat in seats along the balcony, feeling very cultured!
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| St. Isaac's Cathedral |
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| The Mariinsky Theatre |
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| Russian Ballerinas! |
It was pretty late when the ballet finished and by the time we navigated to the area of our hostel. Although we were standing at what we thought was the correct address, we couldn't see any signs or indications that the hostel existed. I decided to just pick up my phone and call the hostel before we could start worrying. A young guy picked up the phone, and I explained the situation: "We're having trouble finding the hostel," I said, "We're on the right street at this address, but we don't know where it's located from here."
"Okay," the guy said with a slight Russian accent, "Are you standing next to a blue car?"
"Umm...yes," I said, not really sure how exact these directions were going to be.
"Okay, turn around," he directed me, and I did. "Now walk straight up the street, yeah that way." By now I was really weirded out, wondering what kind of strange Russian surveillance system we were under, until he told me to look up and I saw him waving from an upper window two doors down where he had spotted us. It turned out there had been a sign for the hostel, but we had walked too far down the street and missed it. We got in just fine, had a good laugh at the weird navigational methods employed, got our keys to our room, and settled in for the night.
We were up early the next day. We stopped at a little deli-convenience store to grab something for breakfast, but it took quite a while to buy anything since everything in the stores is behind glass and we couldn't speak any Russian. We used a hybrid language of Polish (which is slightly similar to Russian) and finger-pointing in order to get some fruit and yogurt to keep us going until lunchtime. We headed to the Russian Museum and spent our morning hours there looking at the works of mainly Russian artists.
Next we headed to the Fortress of Peter and Paul, one of the first buildings ever built in St. Petersburg. As we were wandering through, we noticed a black helicopter heading towards us and followed a big crowd of people to watch it land in the park. For a moment I thought Putin was going to pop out or something, but then I noticed a sign advertising helicopter rides and realized it was just another touristy thing. We didn't stay much longer since we had to catch the special bus back to the docks to get back on our next ferry. If we missed the bus, we missed the ferry; and if we missed the ferry we would be stuck in St. Petersburg for another few days, after our 72 hours had expired. Needless to say, it was really important to make the bus. We made it to the docks with no problems, but when we went to check in to get on the ferry we were shocked to find an enormous crowd of people queued up in tangled, winding lines to get their papers checked and go aboard. It was quite the contrast to our check-in in Helsinki which took us about ten minutes. We ended up standing in line for almost two hours waiting to check-in, stressing out that we would somehow miss the ferry and get stuck in Russia forever.
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| The Fortress of Peter and Paul |
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| Mystery helicopter (time to pretend we're Canadian) |
