"St. Petersburg......Not your average city."

Anyways, my friends met me at the airport and we promptly hailed a passenger car. This was somewhat of a microcosm of my trip as the airport was a bit scary with lotsa mean looking customs people and then we casually flagged down a passing car to take us into town for a small fee.

We passed lots of dour, grey, monuments on the way in, about what one is led to expect from the reports of communist Russia we westerners get. We arrived at this courtyard and went up some rickety stairs to the flat where my friends were staying. It was a bit beat up, but serviceable. One strange thing is that they all had mosquito nets as apparently St. Petersburg is built on a swamp.

It was late summer, so the sun didn’t go down until awfully late. We took a walk down Nevsky Prospekt, perhaps the main thoroughfare. I noticed a lot of stylish young women there, and my friends said that a lot of them were after rich husbands. I suppose that never having lacked for money, I couldn’t really understand that.

I looked in the phone book and found this Karaoke place. It was kind of strange as the only guy there when we arrived was an army officer with guns. He let us in and let us play with the Karaoke machine while waiting for the waitress to return. I think we interupted his singing session.

In the coming days, with the exception of a trip to Moscow (Another story), I took time to get to know St. Petersburg. There is a really nice art museum there which used to be the palace where the Czar lived. We were there right after Yeltsin visited the tomb of the czar killed in the Bolshevik revolution, so czar mania was at hand. We went and visited the tomb as well.

I spent some time trying to envision Crime and Punishment in these settings…you could really see how one might go mad with the sparseness and odd daylight.

We went out the last night there to this jazz bar. Popular place and it was nice to see some life. Russia can give you a real deserted feeling. On the walk back home, we came upon this street fair (pretty odd considering that it was 1am) and played some games and rode some rides. We met a couple of awfully young girls who were going to the rave party next door (which we hadn’t noticed). It was a really weird scene and we left one of our number to explore the rave (as we only had money for one) while the rest of us came home.