Adventures by Amanda: St. Petersburg

On Sunday I braved communism to visit Russia. I know that technically Russia is no longer the USSR, but if no one told you, I wouldn’t believe it, other than the technicality that I was able to visit the country. Though to be fair, I applied as a resident of Denmark and otherwise would have only had a chance at a visa after a two-year process. Don’t tell me communism is dead.

My plane ticket and visa, complete with my name in cyrillic

We arrived to cold and rain and took a bus to our hotel. The drive down the Moscow Prospekt was incredible. The architecture in Russia is HUGE. Buildings that have maybe 4 or 5 rows of windows are the height of 7 story buildings. Giant Lenin statues everywhere, columns and USSR star and sickles still cover the marble and concrete buildings that make me feel like an ant. I mean, Copenhagen in no means makes me feel tall, or even adult sized. But St. Petersburg was literally like “Hi, little Amanda, WE ARE RUSSIA”.

We spent the first two days doing standard sightseeing, palaces and cathedrals and government buildings. I feel like I walked to Russia. Please see my Facebook for a terribly ordered display of gold covered everything and pictures of me in the rain.

Next we started using the metro. It is the most amazing thing, and also very large. It is the deepest metro in the world, 105 meters, which is something like 350 feet. The escalator down takes a full 6 minutes. I happen to love metro systems and thought this was pretty cool. The best part is that their metro stations are also there to remind you that “you are in Russia and Russia is great”. They are marble and stone, with gold details and, weirdly, massive statues representing communism and war triumphs.

Long way down

All of us on the escalator

Seriously, this could be an opera house. But no, its a metro station

Tuesday was my favorite day in St. Petersburg. We took a “behind the façade” tour with out Russian assistant Masha. She is the most adorable person I think I have ever met. She is 29, so I asked her if she remembered living in the USSR. Her memories were so interesting. She was aware of bananas, but because nothing was imported, they weren't available. She also remembered her first cheeseburger, which was when the first McDonalds came to St. Petersburg in the early 90's. She said that lines was blocks long.

Masha telling us about the market

We went with her to a shared apartment. This is something that is left over from the USSR, where the government basically took large, fancy apartments owned by rich people and redistributed them to everyone. So an 8-bedroom apartment would suddenly become an 8-family apartment with shared common rooms. These still exist because when the USSR fell, everyone took ownership of whichever room they lived in. Now, the only way to change them back is for someone who has a lot of money to buy out all the rooms and then renovate it. We visited one that is still shared, and needless to say, collective ownership means that no one gives a shit. It was one of the most interesting things I have ever seen.