Saint-Petersburg is HUGE. It was the biggest city I had ever visited and easily needed 10 days to get into it. Also it made me undestand how HUGE Russia itself is. Having previously visited just Kola Penisula (not counting my short visit to Vyborg 10 years ago), Saint-Petersburg felt really western. The architecture is strongly influenced by European cities and even walking from one part of the city to another made me feet like I was in a different city (or country). Sometimes it looked like France, sometimes like Venice or Amsterdam (as the creator wanted it to look), sometimes just Russia. Western companies were spread across the city, including KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Starbucks which haven't even made their way to Finland. My western friends quite disagreed with me: in their opinion it was totally non-western, but a trip to other parts of Russia makes it feel like USA.
The culture shock against culture shock
Last summer when I arrived in Alakurtti and Kandalaksha in Kola Penisula I was shocked how undeveloped it was and I felt the place extremely intimidating. I was happy I had a friend back then with me. This time I was alone and had to survive it alone, and I was a bit concerned. I went there with Russian minibus ("marshrutka") so the trip began with total language barrier: 7 hours in the car without understanding anything, luckily I remembered how to proceed in the border control. I must say, when I saw Saint-Petersburg for the first time, I was shocked, just as I was when I saw Alakurtti. But this shock came because it looked so awesome: the outskirts of the city had shiny new highways going on top of each other and tall, at least 20 floor brand new appartment buildings along American- style detached houses. Just.. what?! I arrived in the evening and the sunset colored the city beautifully red, I was awestruck. All my life I lived just a couple of hours from this and I never decided to visit it? The widest road, Nevskiy Prospekt, goes across the whole city center and is so long you can't see the end of it. Beautiful, huge buildings and monuments everywhere. I was excited to get of the minibus and start to find my way to Nastya who was going to host me.
While nothing seemed to work out in Kandalaksha, I felt it even too easy to get money, buy tokens and get myself to Primorskaya where Nastya lived. I once took a wrong road, but a friendly babushka took me to bus and showed me the address, even though she didn't talk English. The area where Nastya lived was also rather western and full of new buildings, although the one where she lives was definitely one of the older kind. Nevertheless, it was clean and warm (or even hot) inside. She was a great host and extremely friendly, having never traveled outside CIS she just wants to host travelers from Europe and practice her English that way. And she had been to all over Russia from west to east and north to south! That is much more traveling than I have done in my life, but just inside one country. The first night got epic: just after few hours from my arrival I was sitting in a limousine with 10 Swedish sipping sparkling wine and later clubbing until sunset. Crazy, but great start!
The next 3 nights I was couchsurfings in two locations in Vasilyevsky Island. First Daniil and Dima hosted me for two nights and they were absolutely great hosts! Their flat was really nice and just a short walk from Vasileovstrovskaya. Daniil showed me some local night life with his friends and we were riding with random cars from one bar to another, impossible to even say where I went. I need to mention one particular bar/café, which he called the "IT-café", you had to knock on the door to get in, there was Bill Gates in the toilet and people were playing video games from the early 90s. Of course they had to bring me to "Helsinki Bar" as well, and teach me all the Russian bad words. And test how much Finnish people can drink. At last I somehow started to feel increasingly tired.. So, the next day was spent mostly sleeping, strolling around the city aimlessly and eating traditional Russian sushi watching American baseball on TV. Weird.
I was there so many days that it's useless to try to explain each day. I will again start telling my impressions.
Roaming around the city
I had plenty of time to just roam around the city without much aim. I don't like sightseeing, I hate any guided activities. As some people have maybe noticed, I mostly enjoy just walking alone and going to places I find interesting, like courtyards of houses, which are so different than the outside, or children's playgrounds in the middle of old, rundown houses (yes, I do love playgrounds a lot!). I was trying to find something I experienced when I was staying in Apatity and Kirovsk, but it was hard to find. In Apatity there was hardly any beautiful buildings, in Kirovsk the architecture was some absurd combination of all the architectures and colors mixed with Russian civil engineering. Roads were badly paved if at all. Only in the food market I felt quite the same, otherwise Saint-Petersburg could be as well another country. So I decided to go to the food market and buy some chocolate, "syrok" and a piece of bread and go to eat that on the stairs of some building. I was trying to picture this moment when we came out of the store in Kirovsk, sat outside on sunshine and ate 3 syroks at one stand, because they were so good. These activities gave me little flashbacks how it was, and I do miss it! It's true that without a guide I don't really know what the buildings or monuments stand for, but these are not really the things I want to know. Daniil and Dasha explained me interesting detais like what kind of troubles it causes that the green metro line is built like that (not trying to explain how) and what kind of problems the opening bridge causes at summertime. These are the facts I want to know!
The big babushka theory
BABUSHKAS! They are everywhere! (If you didn't know, babushka means an old woman). Russia has found a great way to employ people. In the hermitage there is probably 100 babushkas looking after the paintings. In the bus there is one babushka collecting money and shouting "money money money" if you don't understand her. In the metro station there is one babushka (or sometimes even a younger, a becoming babushka) watching that no one is running at the stairs. Sometimes we were not sure what was the duty of some babushka. We created a babushka theory which allows you to count man-hours in form of babushka-hours. For example, it takes 1388,88 babushka-hours to count how many items there is in the hermitage. With western man-hours it would be far less, but because babushkas are cheaper workforce, it's cheaper to count in babushka-hours (and yes, we are industrial management students). The babushkas with their handbags can also be compared to Russian army. We invented a new Russian word: "podrushka", this means an older man. Well, if you don't have social benefits by government, it's a good way to give people little bit money to employ them in all kinds of useless jobs.
Chai, no water!
I missed nothing as much as I missed water. I missed cold, still, pure drinking water that we have unlimited amount in Finland coming from our taps. Is there nothing worse than waking up after partying hard and there is no drinking water in the house? What do they drink then? CHAI! Chai with food, chai without food, chai after foor, chai before food. If you didn't know, chai is tea. Once I asked a water and what I got was a cup of hot water! I had to put it outside to cool down. But this also reminds me of how I learnt to drink tea: it was indeed last summer in Khibiny when I had nothing else to drink except chai. Luckily in the mountains you could drink water from the rivers and lakes without boiling and that was excellent. Once we were eating in a pizzeria and our drink options were pepsi or tea. We asked for water: "there is no water, you will get a pepsi". How funny it seems, bottled still water is more expensive than other drinks. But, these are cultural differences you need to live with and adapt to, in the end I learnt to drink tea with dinner and I even tried that in Finland after returning home. It's true that it's not healthy to drink while eating, we Finns usually drink 3 glasses of milk during meal, maybe we're wrong in this matter!
The people of Saint-Petersburg
An important part of the experience makes the people who live there. I was glad to be able to meet and talk with various kind of people: teachers, students, programmers, unemployed. I met people from Siberia, far-east Russia, the southest tip of Russia. They look all very different, there is no single "Russian" outlook. I heard I look like a girl from northern Russia. People live in such different worlds. I stayed in 5 different places, from flats that are much more luxorious than mine in Tampere, to flats were hot water is not a self-evidence and tenants have tried themselves to fix the little holes in walls and ceilings. It's also alright to boil water on stove and then wash your hair with that. I saw first time of my life that hot water is heated using a flame made by gas (don't know the correct word for that, never saw that in Finland), but then I heard this is actually widely in use in Russia. I must say I like the people of Saint-Petersburg very much. Unlike I expected, the people were curious towards foreigners and eager to talk to me. Even if their English was limited, they wanted to practice it with me. And I don't mean cashiers, they won't show you any sympathy, but it didn't take more than 30seconds after someone close to me offers their help without asking and then asks where do I come from and what is my purpose of stay. Although the city is very "hard" and for me polluted, noisy and a bit dirty, the people make it very welcoming and nice.
What the seminar taught me
It's important to know that I went to seminar to learn something. We had few extremely un-interesting lectures about harbors in Russia and international multi-modal container shipping (??) and the professors spoke so bad English I was even afraid to ask anything. I discussed with the company representative about my thesis which is connected to decreasing CO2 consumptiob of road freight, and his opinion was that this whole CO2 decreasing is going to ruin the economy in Russia and whole Europe. On contrary, the rest was quite nice. The STILL day was just golden. Three company representatives from STILL had come from Germany to spend a day with us, and I realised I even know one of the guys from Council Meeting Belgrade. The biggest yield was probably how they taught us to have a vision. Through interactive workshops we forecasted the future of logistic through different mega trends and they showed what is their vision of a forklift truck, their main product. They also gave an important remark: always have fun at your work. They have managed to do it quite well! It was an interesting day, I must say, and I always love to have workshops with companies.
We visited also an enterprise that produces composts out of recycled material, and learning how primitive the recycling is in Russia was quite shocking. There was no separating waste and it was just done mechanically or manually at the recycling center. I was really curious to hear how the future of recycling looks like in Russia and what is the potential of biogas, but unfortunately our company representatives couldn't give me any concrete answer but looks like the near future is not very bright. It's sad how such big amount of waste from this big city goes to landfill. On the last day we had a debate workshop about moving industry and enterprises outside the city, which was extremely interesting and the conversation went on even after the debate. All in all, I'm really happy how much discussion the whole seminar raised about sustainability. Myself I delivered a workshop regarding decreasing the CO2 consumption and this remained the main discussion topic over the whole event. I'm satisfied, I think I came back with some fresh ideas and more knowledge in my head. :)
The end of everything
I must say I made many great new friends during this event and I tightened my friendship to some already existing friends. This is why I didn't like the ending part. The gala dinner was one of the nicest I went in ESTIEM, we did it Eurovision style so all the groups were performing some songs and everyone was thanking the organizers, the participants and so on. Last night party was epic. They had hired us a party bus for 3 hours: a disco inside a bus, driving around the city to the most beautiful places, free drinks. A putinka bottle was finished in the crowd in 15 minutes. This party bus was one of the most unforgettable, best parties I had, honestly speaking. Knowing that everything was going to end soon and I was going home, we all wanted to party as hard as we could. We continued to a club, and sadly the club was quite a disappointment and many of us fell asleep on the couches having partied too hard in the party bus. I lost my shoes. In uncertain circumstances we returned home and I woke up realizing, that there is certainly too many people in my room and they are not at all the ones they should be! Obviously people were too tired to think where they lived and just went to sleep somewhere. BUT nevertheless, it was totally plenty of fun. The next day at the hermitage, however, was not that much fun, and I just kept finding corners where I could go to rest. Corner is a safe place to stay.
HOWEVER, I had just made a deal with Yusuf that I won't buy a bus ticket to Finland, instead we bought tickets from Saint-Petersburg to Tallinn and also from Helsinki to Tallinn. Wait, what?!? Yes, in a moment of missconcentration, I had bought wrong tickets. So, we had to find an affordable to call to Finland and change the tickets. We managed. The bus was going to leave at 7 so we decided to not sleep at all. It was certainly a very funny night: everyone too tired to think, laughing at everything, talking weird Hansiskiy language, learning to speak russian, hugging at each other to say good bye. So the sun started to rise and that's when I jumped on my bus to Tallinn and said good bye to Saint-Petersburg. No doubt it was great 11 days and if there wasn't this stupid visa issue I would come to SPb every now and then to spend time with these great people.
The conclusion
Well, first of all I came to conclusion that from every trip you need to learn something, you need to bring some ideas and knowledge back to your home country. Sadly, some of the ESTIEM events were too busy, too packed with work hard and play hard that there was no time for "experience hard!". For example I regret I couldn't feel Serbia as I should have during my stay there. Now I was happy I decided to change my travel behaviour and take Russia as experience. I read a Russian book before going there, I tried to learn some language, listened to music. Then I decided to meet different kind of people and have at least few days to just wander around the city. This proved very good practice and I could say that I somewhat know Saint-Petersburg. What is the mean to visit some place if it will just remain the city without any emotion or feeling? I felt so happy that in the end I could navigate without using a map, somehow remembering which street comes after which and what metro line I should take. I knew which words to use when buying a token or a "pirok". SO, in the future I will keep up with this habit of staying in one city long enough to get to know it and not changing the place constantly.
Saint-Petersburg is at it's best at night with great people. Driving along the city with random car (in Russia there's more black taxis taking you from one place to another) gives really great views and a walk along Neva is superb. Especially if you can walk along someone who knows the city by heart. The night hides all the pollution and the city seems surprisingly quiet. I mean, where are all the fighting and shouting drunkards Finnish cities get filled with aftet the bars close their doors at 3.30?
Well, nothing is as sure as that I will return to Saint-Petersburg one day! And in addition to SPb, I want to get to know the small towns, because the hectic city life is killing me. I'm just worried how my life in Buenos Aires will be. When the bus arrived in Narva, Estonia, I just wanted to dance around the city because I could see white snow, hear birds singing and see no cars at all. City is not for me, that's what I know for sure.
Some tips when traveling in Russia
I have now spent total 3 weeks in Russia and faced several drawbacks, so maybe it should be the time to share some tips how these drawbacks can be avoided.
1. Learn Russian
They don't speak English in any services (banks, post offices, train stations, busses, cafés (except the expensive ones), not even in most restaurants and hotels). Only people who have studied on the university are expected to know English. Even knowing the alphabet, numbers and basic phrases helps a lot. People used me sometimes as an interpret because I had studied myself those things and it was a huge help.
2. Book tickets in advance
I couldn't go to Petrozavodsk where I wanted to go because I hadn't booked my tickets in advance. So, if you want to train travel, go to http://rzd.ru/ (yes, the Russian site, it gives better answers and prices than the English site), translate with google translate the names of the stations you want to go or with the help of a Russian speaking to book the tickets. There are different classes, and the cheapest ones usually gets sold out quickly. One or even two weeks before should be good.
3. Stick with the locals
Russia can't be experienced the way it should if you're not with the locals. It will remain really superficial or you end up struggling with language barrier and the trip is not that enjoyable. This helps you to get better service, better prices, understand things, go to non-touristic places... For example even SPb is so much more than just Nevskiy Prospekt and everything around it. If you don't know anyone, try couchsurfing, I put an open request and around 20 people wanted to host and hang out with me!
My tip: Go! It's an exciting culture with so many varieties.
