 |
| Grand Cascade at Peterhof Palace |
I probably wouldn't have planned this trip if I had known how much extra work and planning it would be. Russia is the only country we have visited that requires a visa to enter, and the application process is confusing, tedious, expensive, and time-consuming. First of all, you need an invitation to enter the country. Some hotels will issue the invitation and provide you with the necessary paperwork, so the first step was to secure lodging. I found a website that promised free visa support paperwork if you book one of their partner accommodations so I went that route. Next I bought flights on S7, a Russian airline. Reserving lodging and buying plane tickets took extra long for this trip, because each step requires that you enter passport information for each person.
After receiving the support documents from the lodging website, I got started on the visa applications. There were about 10 different sections of questions I had to answer, many of which I didn't fully understand and had to research online. I wasn't sure how specific I needed to be; could/would they try to verify my answers? Would they deny my visa if I answered in a way they didn't like? Would they deny it if I omitted something, accidentally or on purpose, and they discovered it? For example, "Are/were you a member of a professional, civic or charitable organizations or do you cooperate/cooperated with any of these organizations?" Talk about a broad question! I could spend hours answering this - is that necessary? In the end I decided to list only a token one. I also had to list every educational institution I have attended, and my past three places of employment, including address, phone number, supervisor's name, and dates of employment. I dug up old resumes to answer these questions, and googled the businesses to find their current addresses and phone numbers. They wanted to know which countries we have visited in the last 10 years, and the date of the visit. Really?! 10 years??? That is Haley's entire life. We have been all over the place since we have moved to Europe, and some of us have been on trips that the others haven't, for example Dan has traveled for business. Do I really need to list all this???! And if we have been places more than once, do I need to list them each time we visited?? So many uncertainties. In this case I decided to do it. So I went back through our picture archive looking for trip photos in order to compile a list of countries with dates. Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Kenya, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Spain, Slovakia, Croatia, United States, Austria, France, Italy, Kenya, Hungary, Greece, United States, Austria, France, Netherlands. Whew!
The next snag I came across was a question about travel insurance abroad. I wasn't sure if our health insurance would cover Russia, and if it didn't would we be denied our visa? It took several days of back and forth with our insurance company and Dan's company to find out that our insurance doesn't cover Russia but that we had supplemental insurance that would cover it. I contacted them and got them to send me a certificate verifying coverage during our travel period. Another week had gone by.
Finally I thought I had answered the questions to my satisfaction and submitted the online application, planning to make an appointment at the Russian embassy to apply for the visas. Luckily the online interface allows you to duplicate your application, so I didn't have to start from scratch for each of the 4 of us; I could start with my application and make changes to the others as needed. Of course the kids' applications were much less complex because I didn't have to fill out the work and secondary education history, military service, etc. But after all the applications had been submitted, I realized that there were no available appointments at the embassy for the foreseeable future. There is another option in Berlin, a visa service center, which charges a fee for their services but had available appointments. But any change to the application, including a change of the location of application, requires that you create a new application ID and resubmit the paperwork. So I changed the location to the visa service center and then resubmitted everything, times 4. After some confusion over the online interface and some back and forth in Russian, German, and not very good English, I made an appointment at the visa services center to submit all our paperwork: passports, 4-8 page application documents, visa support documents, proof of residency in Germany, proof of health insurance valid in Russia, and a bank account statement (presumably to show that we have money in Germany and wouldn't be interested in giving it up by overstaying our visas in Russia and never returning to Germany).
The visa can be denied for any error and you aren't allowed to make manual corrections by pen, so I sat down with all the papers and looked over them again with a fine-toothed comb. Something caught my eye - was the Land Voucher # the same for all of us?? No, it was a copy and paste error! We each have a different number on our support documents! I opened up each application online, duplicated it, got a new application ID, changed the Land Voucher #, resubmitted the documents, times 4. I caught a couple of other small errors and had to repeat the process; you get the picture, this was tedious and time-consuming!!! Maybe even more so than it is to read about it. ;)
 |
| The hard-won Russian visa! |
And so the day arrived. May 25, the day after my birthday, we flew to St. Petersburg direct from Berlin. Easy! Figuring out a cab to our apartment was a little challenging, but not worse than navigating any other location where you don't speak the language and aren't quite sure what to do. The cab dropped us off at the address, but we weren't sure what to do then. The man we were renting from had told me to call him from the airport, which I had done. But now there was no sign of him. Hmmm. We looked for him in the convenience store next door and up and down the street. I called him again, and this time he said he would be there in 5 minutes. When he got there, he led us through a locked gate into a dingy, run-down courtyard. Hmmm. Then he unlocked an ill-fitting heavy metal door and led us up a dark staircase that stank of musty urine. Hmmm. We entered the apartment, which smelled only slightly better than the hallway and were given a tour. It was spacious enough, but had no real bedroom; only a loft, a futon, and a pullout couch. Hmmm, why didn't I notice that when I booked it? He told us the drain in the shower didn't drain well but was no problem. There was no soap or shampoo. Hmmm. He asked if I would pay with cash or credit card. We had picked up 5000 rubles at the airport which sounded like a lot, so I told him "either". I hadn't done the math yet to convert Euros to rubles, so I wasn't sure how much cash I actually needed. He sat at the kitchen table and did the conversion, which ended up being 23,000 rubles. "Oh, I don't have anywhere near that much," I told him. I would rather pay with a credit card. "No, you can't," he said. "Cash only." Wait, what? You just gave me the option! "Cash only," he said. You can only take out 5000 rubles at a time from an ATM, so to make a long story short, I had to visit 2 different ATMs and make 5 different transactions to pull out the cash to pay him. After returning to Berlin, I checked my bank statement and Deutsche Bank charged me €5.99 for each withdrawal. The trip wasn't off to a good start.
 |
| Our living room with the pullout couch. Looks nicer than it smelled. |
 |
| Our apartment was on the second floor, left side, at the back. This courtyard was far from inviting, but we didn't have any issues. |
 |
| Russian beer, nice ambience |
 |
| Drinking the broth from khinkali |
 |
| Closeup of the picture on the wall next to our table depicting a dumpling meal |
Dan and I continued the walking tour and got a feel for some of the sights in the area, but also got a feel for how large and crowded the city is. I hadn't really thought about its size prior to our visit, but St. Petersburg is the 2nd largest city in Russia, with more than 5 million people. I think it had the busiest sidewalks of any city I have visited. We were usually walking in a crowd, especially on Nevsky Prospect, and when we piled up at a street crossing to wait for the light to change, once it did a veritable sea of people would always be coming across from both sides, making each person navigate their way around row after row of oncoming pedestrians. It was here that I began to notice that I seemed to be the one to always step out of the way of the person coming at me. This is a peculiarity that I noticed during our stay in Russia: walking seemed to be a game of chicken, and I got the impression that the person who stepped out of the way was the weaker one. Is it a cultural thing that every encounter on the street is a chance to prove your strength? I also noticed that personal space is less sacred, and no apology seemed necessary for bumping into someone else, even roughly.
Even more than the crowds we noticed the noise. There was a lot more auto traffic than I'm used to, and there was a steady din of engine noise, punctuated frequently by an ear-splittingly loud motorcycle revving (often while popping a wheelie to show off.) Add the microphoned salespeople hawking tour boat rides in Russian and the blaring of music from cars or apartments and you get the picture. This video doesn't really do it justice, but it shows how loud it is even in this peaceful-looking setting right on the water near the Winter Palace with relatively little traffic.
Saturday morning we were scheduled to meet our tour guide at 9:00. I had figured that with the language and alphabet barrier we might do well to spend one of our days with a guide, plus there was so much history to cover that I thought a guide would be able to pull it all together for us in a meaningful way, and also keep the kids entertained. I guess that was a lot to ask. Again, the day didn't start well. We were late getting out of the apartment due to slow-moving children (nothing new there. A side note: on every vacation the kids never get up and get dressed when they are supposed to, and inevitably we end up angry and late as we leave the hotel. I distinctly remember doing this when I was a child. Dad would wake me up and I would go back to sleep, lying there for as long as possible and thinking that if he was letting me do it, it must be okay. Until he would start yelling that we were late and why didn't we get up when we were supposed to??? Dad reads my blogs of course, so I'm sure this phenomenon is very familiar to him. Maybe this happens in all families??) Anyway, we weren't sure what Russians eat for breakfast or where to go, so I went out ahead and scouted for a place. I had found a place close by with an English menu and they had told me that we could have breakfast in as little as 15 minutes, so when everyone was finally ready we went straight there. But it took a while to get menus, and way longer before they took our order, and way, way, way longer before any of our food or drinks were brought. In fact, only the kids got food. I asked 4 times for milk for my coffee before I finally got it. When we finally realized that they weren't going to bring our food and we asked about it, they begrudgingly brought mine but by now it was past time to meet our guide so Dan cancelled his order. Was this just poor service? Or something more? After 3 days in St. Petersburg we came to feel that we were unwelcome in the restaurants and therefore were served poorly. We were consistently served after other patrons or not at all. More on this later.
Things continued on the wrong foot when we met our guide. "So, where does your interest in the Bolshevic revolution come from?" he asked me. Ummmm....I wasn't sure how to answer the question. I told him what I had told the owner of the company when I booked the tour: that we were interested in all of Russian history, from the tsars through the world wars, to the cold war and communism, and into the modern era. I told him the kids knew of Catherine and Peter the Greats through the computer game Civilization, that we had traveled to Normandy to learn about World War II history there, and that we currently lived in Berlin where we were pretty familiar with the cold war. So we were interested in broadening our knowledge of all these things we already knew about and learning more about the Russian side of the history. "Oh," he said. "I was told you wanted an in-depth tour of the 1917 revolution, so I figured you were professors or doctoral students." My heart sank. This was going to be a long day. As with the apartment, the taxi service, the food, and practically everything else as we would come to find out, the language barrier was truly a barrier, even when both sides were speaking English.
Our guide did some quick adjusting and decided to take us on a city overview tour rather than giving us in-depth lectures on the 1917 revolution. This was interesting and we enjoyed the day, but it was a bit disjointed and in just "seeing the sights" I'm not sure we really got more value from a personal tour than we would have gotten from our guidebook. I had hoped we would tour the sites in chronological order so that we could understand how each historical stage led to the next. What was the history of St. Petersburg? What role did it play in the wars? What led to the revolution, and what was life like during that time? What was it like during the Cold War and how did it change with glasnost and perestroika? We got some of these answers, but definitely not all, and not in a cohesive way. In retrospect I can think of two plausible reasons why our guide didn't deliver what I was hoping for.
First, we weren't cruise ship tourists. When I was researching guides online, almost everyone I found catered to cruise ship tourists. St. Petersburg is a huge tourist destination for Russian tourists, but most foreign visitors come through cruise ships, which have the sizeable advantages both of providing accommodation on the ship and of not requiring a visa for a visit. The goal of most cruise ship tourists is, understandably, to see the sights in a day before returning to the ship at bedtime. So I think it was natural for our guide to fall back on this kind of tour when his original plan turned out to not be appropriate.
Second, Russia is in the best case a rival, and in the worst case an enemy, and this very obviously affected the information our guide was willing to give us. He had no problem explaining to us the proud history of St. Petersburg: its founding by Peter the Great, its victories in battle, its bravery and sacrifice during the siege of Leningrad (in what he taught us is known in Russia not as World War II but as the "Great Patriotic War"). But when it came to more modern post-war history, our very obviously proud and nationalistic guide wasn't interested in telling us about things that foreigners consider negative. We heard very little about Lenin, nothing about Stalin, virtually nothing about communism or its fall, and certainly nothing about current politics. We asked some questions, but he went pretty silent when the topic was uncomfortable for him. There was a tension between us, even towards the end of the day when we had spent 6 or 7 hours together and might have otherwise developed a rapport. It would have been nice to have a guide of another nationality who could have been more objective, but I don't know if that exists in Russia.
At some point during the morning Dan was starving, having left breakfast without being served, so we asked Vladimir if we could get a snack. He pointed us to a small sandwich shop which he said was excellent. They had a glass counter with various yummy-looking pastries under the glass and on approaching the counter we asked "English?" The girl behind the counter shook her head rather fiercely and (was I imagining it?) narrowed her eyes. No problem, we proceeded to order by making numbers with our fingers and pointing to the item we wanted (one of these, two of these, etc.) She fumed and glared at us and I missed the last part because I went to the bathroom but Dan said she practically threw the bag of food at him. We walked back where our guide and driver were parked and asked Vladimir if the average person here dislikes Americans. He didn't exactly answer the question, but told us that Americans and British people often think Russians are unfriendly because they don't smile. He told us there is a saying "If you smile for no reason, it means you are not far from a fool." Literally you must be crazy if you smile without a good reason, and a customer walking into your shop is not a good reason. In fact, Russian workers typically avoid smiling as a rule because it is frowned upon (pun intended!) by management; if you are smiling you are obviously having too much fun and therefore not working hard enough. Moreover, Russians don't smile at strangers in general. Smiling indicates interest, often sexual interest, so smiling at random strangers is just not done unless you are trying to convey a message. Very interesting and I think it explains some of the unfriendly vibe we felt, but not all of it. There is a difference between not smiling and just barely concealing your disgust, and we really felt the latter.
 |
| Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, where tsar Alexander II was assassinated. |
 |
| One of two Rostral Columns on Vasilyevsky Island, flanking the approach to St. Peterburg for incoming ships. The things sticking out from the column are the hulls of ships, to represent naval victories. |
 |
| Imperial Academy of Arts |
One building we visited, somewhat randomly it seems, was the Imperial Academy of Arts. Vladimir took us inside because he said the building was uncharacteristically open to the public that day because of an end of semester exhibition. He took us into a couple of classrooms where students' art and architecture projects were exhibited. Then he told us he wanted to show us something really cool. He led us down several flights of stairs into a poorly lit basement hallway. The building looks nice on the outside but it has seen better days on the inside, so the thought occurred to me whether or not we could escape if the building collapsed. Then as we ventured down a long hallway that got darker and darker until the light completely disappeared, I started to be nervous about a completely different type of disaster. Did he lead us down here to dispose of us??? Fears about the Russians that I didn't even know I had came to light during this little episode. I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight, and he took it from me and went ahead, shining the light around. My senses were tingling and I couldn't help thinking of the book Devil in the White City about the serial killer during the time of the World's Fair in Chicago. Some of his victims had probably lived to tell the tale because they refused to follow him when he tried to lead them somewhere, say into his office or up onto the roof. Others had presumably followed to their deaths, maybe even if they felt weird about it, rather than have to have the awkward moment where you refuse to go with someone and therefore they find out that you don't trust them. When I read that book I figured I would have been one of the victims, because I am someone who would follow even if it was against my better judgment, just to avoid an awkward conversation. So I thought of this as I followed Vladimir into the darkness underneath the Academy of Arts. Needless to say, Vladimir had no evil intentions. He was trying to show us a room full of discarded statues, but the room was locked. We returned to the surface and continued with the tour. I asked Dan the following day if it was just me, or if he got nervous down there in the cellar and he simply answered "I was looking for escape routes."
 |
| St. Bean coffee stand, in the shape of a large coffee cup |
 |
| Park on Vasilyevsky Island in between the two Rostral Columns |
 |
| The Peter and Paul fortress is on Zaychiy Ostrov, "Hare Island", named for the animals that used to live here in large numbers |
 |
| Peter and Paul Cathedral, resting place of the Romanov tsars |
 |
| Tomb of Peter the Great. The circular medals commemorate important dates |
 |
| We toured the prison at the Peter and Paul fortress. The cells were surprisingly large, but Vladimir explained that the political prisoners held there were mostly affluent and would have been accustomed to large estates, so relatively speaking this cell would have seemed torturous. |
 |
| A prison uniform. The red diamond acted like a target in case of attempted escape. |
 |
| Walls of the fortress on the banks of the Neva River. This is a popular spot for sunbathing. Apparently many Russians sunbathe standing up, presumably because the sun is so low in the sky! |
 |
| Very beautiful pre-meal tea |
 |
| Lunch feast on the Neva |
 |
| Apparently these little fishies are only available in April and May and are a specialty. You eat the whole thing - head, tail and all! |
I knew that I wanted to see a Russian ballet during our visit, so one of the first things I did at the start of my planning was research the ballet. Somehow through google I ended up at the website http://mariinsky-theater.com/, which I took to be the official website for the Mariinsky Theater, but which turned out to be a ticket broker. There were many red flags along the way that should have clued me in to the fact that I wasn't using the official website, not the least of which was the exorbitant pricetag for the tickets. I was shocked at the cost, but I thought maybe the prices were inflated because we were visiting during the Stars of the White Nights festival. (Being so far north, St. Petersburg has "white nights" during the summer season, where it never really gets dark. There weren't white nights while we were there at the end of May, so this festival is poorly named or at least poorly timed.) In the end I decided that this was a one-time experience and if that was the price then we would suck it up and pay it. There were other flags though: I had to put my name on a sign-up list to be notified when the tickets became available and I would receive "VIP pricing"; when the schedule did become available, the link they sent me to purchase tickets didn't work; I was receiving direct communication from someone named Alla Petrova, not robot communication from a large theater operation; after purchasing the tickets they offered us free transport to and from the theatre, and they continued sending me emails about this over and over when I didn't respond (This sounded too good to be true. We were afraid they would kidnap us or something. I looked all over Google to try to find out if this was standard practice, and I also asked the man renting us the apartment, but I couldn't find any indication that this was a standard service from the theater.)
 |
| Gilded balconies at the Mariinsky |
So yes, I'm a dummy. It should have been obvious that this was not the professional ballet company's ticket operation. I certainly thought it was all very strange, but I thought maybe they were a little backwards or maybe they were just a small operation, I don't know. It never occurred to me that I had been doing business with a reseller until we were actually at the theater with tickets in hand, and we had been in St. Petersburg for a day so we knew the approximate conversion of Euros to rubles, and we realized that the ruble price listed on each ticket was only 1/4 of what we paid. This was so frustrating, and most definitely detracted from the cost-conscious adults' enjoyment of the show. Too bad, because apart from that it would have been a really fun evening. The kids were very excited from all the build-up to the evening and the dressing up and the glitzy gold decor and crystal chandeliers. And it was a very entertaining ballet, The Fountain of Bakhchisarai: a ballet adaptation of a famous poem by Alexander Pushkin. In addition to some beautiful traditional dances, there were several very energetic group dances with lots of movement and color. It held the kids' attention for all four acts and also spurred conversation afterwards. I was surprised, though, that I was able to pick out some mistakes in the performance. I had expected perfection from the Russian ballet, something more beautiful and well-executed than I would have seen somewhere else, but in fact there were noticeable flaws: a couple of extra steps on a landing from a jump, legs of two dancers at unequal heights, a group not completely in sync. Surprising, but still a great performance. (Update: since as usual I'm running late getting this blog finished and published, I can report that I complained to the ticket seller and they refunded about 1/3 of our money. Not perfect, but it was a better outcome than I expected.)
 |
| Stylin' |
 |
| The Mariinsky Theater |
 |
| We happened upon a fireworks show for the birthday of St. Petersburg, which happened to be celebrated during our stay |
Friday was such a long and tiring day that we decided to take it easy on Saturday. We planned for a casual mid-morning breakfast and then a trip to the Peterhof, Peter the Great's suburban palace and gardens, inspired by Versailles. Vladimir had recommended this as a day trip, and had written down a list of things he felt were worth seeing there. Once again the day started out poorly, however, because we ran into problems with the meal. Dan woke up earlier than the rest of us and ventured out to get food. The kids and I planned to meet him there, but he ended up walking out of the restaurant after 45 minutes of sitting and waiting for his order to arrive. The kids and I found another place that was nearby and highly rated on TripAdvisor and tried again. The service seemed friendly enough and we placed our order in good time, but once again the food just never came. We were one of only 4 or 5 groups of patrons in the place, so crowds weren't the issue. And all we ordered was oatmeal, eggs, etc. After asking about our food and waiting a bit longer, we finally got part of it. We scarfed that down and decided to forego the rest of it and ask for the check, since it was now time for us to leave to catch our boat to the Peterhof. Our waiter seemed confused when we asked to pay; then he disappeared and came back with the rest of the food we had ordered. Could it be that in Russia one needs to eat one's breakfast in courses? Like, you can't order oatmeal and eggs and receive them together, you have to completely finish the oatmeal and then eat the eggs? I don't know what kind of cultural misunderstanding had occurred, but by the time we finished this second round of food and paid our bill, we had missed the boat and were looking at waiting another hour for the next one.
Having successfully tried out the St. Petersburg bus system to transport ourselves back down to the river, I bought our tickets on a high-speed hydrofoil to Peterhof. We got lucky and there was a tour group boarding almost immediately with a few seats remaining on their boat, so we were able to take those seats and get going without much of a wait. There were people speaking English on the boat and since I hadn't heard anyone speaking anything except Russian since we had arrived (except our tour guide), I eavesdropped. There was an English-speaking couple who were cruise passengers and another couple who were travelling through Russia on their own but had booked this tour of Peterhof with the same guide. I was curious about their experience in St. Petersburg as Americans so I spoke up from the row behind them and introduced myself. I asked the non-cruise couple what they thought of Russia and if they were enjoying themselves.
They said: oh yes, very much.
I said: Really? We have felt like people haven't been very friendly to us.
Them: Really? In what way?
I described our experiences with either not being served or being served only grudgingly in restaurants.
Hmmm, they said. Come to think of it, we never got coffee in our restaurant this morning. We waited and waited and must have asked four or five times, but they never brought it so we had to go without!
At this point they got to talking again with the other couple, so we didn't speak again for the remainder of the ride. When we arrived at Peterhof we all stood up to leave and I told them I hoped they enjoyed the rest of their trip (they were heading to Moscow next). They wished us the same but the man said to me, you know I was thinking about what you said and that has been our experience too. We just thought maybe the service in St. Petersburg wasn't good, but I can see now that the people around us were getting served but we were waiting and waiting. I felt bad for complaining so I apologized and told him I didn't mean to put a damper on their experience. He assured me that it hadn't, but we both agreed that it was an interesting observation.
Back on land, we prepared to wander the grounds in search of all the different fountains Vladimir had recommended we see. My Rick Steves book had said that it was worth it to buy a map of the gardens for 100 rubles, so we looked around for someone selling them, but didn't see a map posted or any vendors selling them. There was some kind of little museum by the boat dock so I popped in there to see if they knew where to get one. The girl there was nice, but didn't speak English and didn't know the word "map". Next I tried the ticket counter selling return hydrofoil tickets. She told me that she only spoke the English words relating to boat rides, so she also didn't know the word "map". So I made my way back to the dock where we had come through a turnstile with a ticket-taker. "Excuse me, do you speak English?" I asked one of the women there. She stared at me and grunted, which I took to maybe mean "a little", so I proceeded to ask "do you know where I can get a map of the palace grounds? map?" She literally threw up her hands and turned her back to me, shouting "No do you speak English! No do you speak English!" So at this point I decided we would do without the map! But as I was walking away a man ran after me and asked me what I needed. This was really the first helpful person I had met in St. Petersburg. He didn't know where to find a map, but I appreciated his concern anyway. As I continued to walk on I heard him begin conducting a tour in Russian and English, so it turns out he was a tour guide.
Vladimir had suggested that we take a tour of the underground pipes that run all of Peterhof's grand fountains. He thought this would be the highlight of our day. But when I found the place where tour tickets were sold, it wasn't clear exactly what the tour entailed and there was a long line of people waiting to sign up, not to mention the extra cost. And we were pretty sure the tour would be in Russian, given our experience so far. I tried to ask someone if there was any English information on the tour, but he didn't understand me. So we skipped it.
 |
| Looking down from the top of one of the fountains towards the Gulf of Finland |
 |
| Babies riding on a dolphin |
 |
| Tulips, with Peterhof Palace |
 |
| A triton battles a sea monster |
 |
| Detail of the Grand Cascade |
 |
| The Russian flag billows as people head back to the boats |
 |
| An oncoming hydrofoil, as seen through our window. The front is raised up on skis. |
 |
| Mamaliga, the restaurant's namesake dish. (That's cheese on top, not butter). Not as good as southern grits, but interesting when chopped up and eaten with a yummy Georgian stew. |
Dinner was at a Georgian restaurant that Vladimir had recommended. Dan had tried to make a reservation for us, but had never gotten a reply from the restaurant, so when we showed up and asked for our reservation we weren't too surprised when they said they didn't have one. They told us it would be about a 20 minute wait, so we put our name down and took bets as to whether or not they would ever call it. To their credit, they did seat us in somewhere around the amount of time they had promised, and they even served us dinner - slowly, but it was a busy night so there was some excuse. We had a pretty excellent Georgian meal of some of our favorites, khachapuri adzhara and khinkali, and some new things, mamaliga (kind of a cross between polenta and grits) and some other tasty things I can't remember the names of.
After dinner there was one more thing on the agenda. Every time we came and went from our apartment we had noticed posters of cats in the outdoor corridor, and there was a door with an intriguing cattish name on it. I got curious enough to look it up on the internet and discovered that this was a "cat café" - basically a room filled with cats that people can go visit with, and they can hang out there and have a coffee or pastry. I had never heard of such a thing, but apparently I live a sheltered life because since learning about this I have learned that this is "a thing". Anyway, Haley and I really wanted to go visit the cats if time permitted. Since breakfast took so long we hadn't had a chance in the morning, but it was open until 9:00 and if we left the boys to pay the bill and raced home we could spend about 25 minutes with the cats. I'm so glad we did! The place was run by young girls in their 20's who seemed a little confused and surprised to see an English-speaking woman and her young daughter tentatively entering 1/2 hour before closing time. Thankfully they spoke some English so I was able to explain that we just wanted to check the place out, we didn't plan to stay long, and they were very nice hostesses. It was such a cute place, and it was heaven for cats! The walls were painted with colorful cat artwork, and there were cat attractions everywhere: scratching boards, climbing apparatuses, toys, beds, and cozy places to hide, even a cat wheel (like a giant hamster wheel). We learned that some of the cats there were “Hermitage cats”, descendants of cats who were brought in back in the day to take care of rats in the Hermitage, Catherine the Great’s winter palace. The girls told us that 20 cats had been adopted so far, and there were currently almost 40 cats in residence. There were some really beautiful cats, but they were all a little skittish and not very snuggly, as you might imagine being somewhat feral. Most of them didn’t let us pet them, but we enjoyed watching them race around the room playing, or sleep peacefully hidden away. Probably these cats would prefer to go on living here rather than find a new home!
 |
| A poster of one of the Hermitage cats, posing (where else?) in the Hermitage |
 |
| Cats snooze in comfy beds around the mannequin in the window |
Sunday morning it was time to go. Unfortunately I hadn’t been able to get a direct flight back to Berlin, so we had to make a stop in Moscow. The first flight to Moscow was uneventful and we thought we had plenty of time during our layover, but we quickly ran into problems with passport control, which was necessary since we were leaving Russia. The gate system in Moscow was strange and we had trouble figuring out which line we needed to get into. Again, language was a problem, but we eventually got into a crowd of people loosely gathered into lines about 15 or 20 people deep in a passport control area that looked like it would lead to our gate. We were directed into the first (farthest right) of maybe 20 lines in this area, presumably because we had children with us and this line was labeled as the “family line”. But it was also the line where flight crew could come and skip to the front, and also, being the closest to the ID check area, was the line where official personnel would bring passengers who were late for their flights and let them skip to the front.
For an hour we stood in the same place, not moving, while flight crews moved through and the one family whose turn it was to speak to the agent had some issue that was taking forever. We thought about switching lines but, strangely, the other lines close to us didn’t seem to be moving much either, and we were also afraid to switch because the official had told us to use this line. We started to get nervous about making our flight, because we still had to pass through security on the other side of passport control. Finally the line began to move and it was almost our turn when a man with some sort of official ID around his neck lifted up the line barrier and ushered his family of 4 to the front of the line. Dan tried to stop him, but it was pointless because they didn’t speak the same language and this man was determined that he belonged in the front of the line. Here is where the second helpful person we met on our trip stepped in. Another man in our line asked us in English what the problem was and when our flight was. We explained that it was boarding now, and I could see the ticket of the man who had just gone in front of us and knew that his flight was later than ours. The helpful man spoke calmly to the line-skipping man in Russian, presumably explaining the situation and asking him to let us go first. The man was defiant, angry, but after a few minutes of back-and-forth grudgingly allowed us to pass. We were so very grateful to the helpful man; we absolutely did NOT want to get stuck in Moscow. The thought of having to miss the flight and try to figure out how to get back home, possibly the next day, in this chaotic and confusing airport was enough to cause panic. After passport control, we still had to wait in another “line” (many “lines” in Europe are just unruly mobs pushing ahead until finally forced by space limitations to be single file) for security check. Once through, we grabbed our stuff and ran as fast as we could to the gate. There was a flurry of activity when they saw us coming, people radioing other people and herding us quickly through the turnstile and onto the bus, which apparently was waiting for us. We had made it! Seems like they could have saved us and themselves a lot of stress by paging us, or having someone monitor the passport control lines to clear passengers whose flights were leaving shortly…anyway, it’s water under the bridge and we were ecstatic to be on our way back to Germany.
At the airport in Berlin we laughed and said we had never been so happy to return to the “friendliness” of Germany. No offense to the Germans, many of whom are extremely kind and hospitable, but Germany and especially Berlin are not known for their kindness, at least not until you get to know someone better. But immediately we started noticing people saying “thank you”, people smiling, people yielding to others. Our passport control agent was particularly and uncharacteristically jovial, joking with us about our passport information. How sad to live in a place where this kind of common courtesy is missing. Of course I am not saying that all Russians are unfriendly or that their culture is not hospitable – we were only in one city for a few days. But we certainly didn’t come away in any hurry to go back.
After our return to Berlin, I have been trying to process our experience in St. Petersburg. It was very disappointing to not have the magical experience of palaces and exotic faraway places that we had hoped to have. But I’m not sorry we went. The trip was an interesting and valuable learning experience, even if it wasn’t very fun. First of all, it certainly drove home to me the advantage I have in speaking English. But we have been to other countries (Slovakia, Greece, parts of Italy, parts of France) where people rarely spoke English. What was the difference here? I think it was that in other places people have wanted to help us. When both sides are trying to understand each other, you can communicate quite a bit with a word here and there or hand gestures or whatever. But in St. Petersburg it definitely seemed that people didn’t want to help, and therefore we were left pretty much on our own. There was one funny exception to this: Haley developed a terrible cough after feeling sick that first day, so I went to a pharmacy to try to get her some cough medicine. The pharmacist spoke no English, but luckily “cough” is something easy to pantomime so I did that, and then held my hand waist high to indicate a child. Then it was the pharmacist’s turn to ask a question, so she pretended to cough and spit into her hand, e.g. “is she coughing stuff up?” “No” I shook my head. With this simple exchange she was able to help me get what I needed.
A second thing I have been reflecting on is the average Russian’s impression of us. I believe that people all over the world share some basic feelings and values, so I always tend to approach people from a position of commonality. I was surprised to feel like I was “the other”, even when we were polite and friendly, not giving anyone any reason to dislike us. When I made this comment to a friend in Berlin, she suggested that this attitude could have to do with the fact that Russia has only state-sponsored media. Without the free press, the government can control the information that is distributed to the people and can effectively influence their beliefs through propaganda. This was an interesting thought and not something I had considered; I wonder how the Russian papers characterize Americans?
A third thing I have been thinking about is the trip planning and logistics. I have planned so many trips since we moved to Berlin and for the most part they have gone really well; how could I have made such mistakes with the lodging and ballet? I looked back on Booking.com at the apartment I chose. While it got good reviews, I took a closer look and noticed that it hasn’t been reviewed very many times and the most recent 4 or 5 reviews were a perfect score of 10, which you almost never see and should have been a red flag if I had been looking closely enough. The reviews were also written in Russian and I hadn’t taken the time to translate them. Outside of these perfect reviews, there were some other reviews in German and other languages that gave much lower marks, well below the level I would consider booking for our family. So I think those 10’s are fake reviews, concocted by the owner and his friends to bring up the average score. I learned my lesson, that I need to be wary of perfect 10 scores when I look for lodging, but it makes me sad that I had to learn this lesson. There are shady characters everywhere, certainly also in the US, but it’s the first time I have felt like people in a city were trying to take advantage of me. Both the lodging and the ballet were examples of me trusting, as I have always done without any problems, that people are trying to make an honest living. I felt like in both instances I was cheated, so I will be more careful next time.
All in all, like most things in life, there were good points and bad points to this trip, but I put it in the positive column overall, just for the sheer life experience. I hope that US/Russian relations will improve so that eventually there will be no need to distrust each other’s culture.
For an hour we stood in the same place, not moving, while flight crews moved through and the one family whose turn it was to speak to the agent had some issue that was taking forever. We thought about switching lines but, strangely, the other lines close to us didn’t seem to be moving much either, and we were also afraid to switch because the official had told us to use this line. We started to get nervous about making our flight, because we still had to pass through security on the other side of passport control. Finally the line began to move and it was almost our turn when a man with some sort of official ID around his neck lifted up the line barrier and ushered his family of 4 to the front of the line. Dan tried to stop him, but it was pointless because they didn’t speak the same language and this man was determined that he belonged in the front of the line. Here is where the second helpful person we met on our trip stepped in. Another man in our line asked us in English what the problem was and when our flight was. We explained that it was boarding now, and I could see the ticket of the man who had just gone in front of us and knew that his flight was later than ours. The helpful man spoke calmly to the line-skipping man in Russian, presumably explaining the situation and asking him to let us go first. The man was defiant, angry, but after a few minutes of back-and-forth grudgingly allowed us to pass. We were so very grateful to the helpful man; we absolutely did NOT want to get stuck in Moscow. The thought of having to miss the flight and try to figure out how to get back home, possibly the next day, in this chaotic and confusing airport was enough to cause panic. After passport control, we still had to wait in another “line” (many “lines” in Europe are just unruly mobs pushing ahead until finally forced by space limitations to be single file) for security check. Once through, we grabbed our stuff and ran as fast as we could to the gate. There was a flurry of activity when they saw us coming, people radioing other people and herding us quickly through the turnstile and onto the bus, which apparently was waiting for us. We had made it! Seems like they could have saved us and themselves a lot of stress by paging us, or having someone monitor the passport control lines to clear passengers whose flights were leaving shortly…anyway, it’s water under the bridge and we were ecstatic to be on our way back to Germany.
At the airport in Berlin we laughed and said we had never been so happy to return to the “friendliness” of Germany. No offense to the Germans, many of whom are extremely kind and hospitable, but Germany and especially Berlin are not known for their kindness, at least not until you get to know someone better. But immediately we started noticing people saying “thank you”, people smiling, people yielding to others. Our passport control agent was particularly and uncharacteristically jovial, joking with us about our passport information. How sad to live in a place where this kind of common courtesy is missing. Of course I am not saying that all Russians are unfriendly or that their culture is not hospitable – we were only in one city for a few days. But we certainly didn’t come away in any hurry to go back.
After our return to Berlin, I have been trying to process our experience in St. Petersburg. It was very disappointing to not have the magical experience of palaces and exotic faraway places that we had hoped to have. But I’m not sorry we went. The trip was an interesting and valuable learning experience, even if it wasn’t very fun. First of all, it certainly drove home to me the advantage I have in speaking English. But we have been to other countries (Slovakia, Greece, parts of Italy, parts of France) where people rarely spoke English. What was the difference here? I think it was that in other places people have wanted to help us. When both sides are trying to understand each other, you can communicate quite a bit with a word here and there or hand gestures or whatever. But in St. Petersburg it definitely seemed that people didn’t want to help, and therefore we were left pretty much on our own. There was one funny exception to this: Haley developed a terrible cough after feeling sick that first day, so I went to a pharmacy to try to get her some cough medicine. The pharmacist spoke no English, but luckily “cough” is something easy to pantomime so I did that, and then held my hand waist high to indicate a child. Then it was the pharmacist’s turn to ask a question, so she pretended to cough and spit into her hand, e.g. “is she coughing stuff up?” “No” I shook my head. With this simple exchange she was able to help me get what I needed.
A second thing I have been reflecting on is the average Russian’s impression of us. I believe that people all over the world share some basic feelings and values, so I always tend to approach people from a position of commonality. I was surprised to feel like I was “the other”, even when we were polite and friendly, not giving anyone any reason to dislike us. When I made this comment to a friend in Berlin, she suggested that this attitude could have to do with the fact that Russia has only state-sponsored media. Without the free press, the government can control the information that is distributed to the people and can effectively influence their beliefs through propaganda. This was an interesting thought and not something I had considered; I wonder how the Russian papers characterize Americans?
A third thing I have been thinking about is the trip planning and logistics. I have planned so many trips since we moved to Berlin and for the most part they have gone really well; how could I have made such mistakes with the lodging and ballet? I looked back on Booking.com at the apartment I chose. While it got good reviews, I took a closer look and noticed that it hasn’t been reviewed very many times and the most recent 4 or 5 reviews were a perfect score of 10, which you almost never see and should have been a red flag if I had been looking closely enough. The reviews were also written in Russian and I hadn’t taken the time to translate them. Outside of these perfect reviews, there were some other reviews in German and other languages that gave much lower marks, well below the level I would consider booking for our family. So I think those 10’s are fake reviews, concocted by the owner and his friends to bring up the average score. I learned my lesson, that I need to be wary of perfect 10 scores when I look for lodging, but it makes me sad that I had to learn this lesson. There are shady characters everywhere, certainly also in the US, but it’s the first time I have felt like people in a city were trying to take advantage of me. Both the lodging and the ballet were examples of me trusting, as I have always done without any problems, that people are trying to make an honest living. I felt like in both instances I was cheated, so I will be more careful next time.
All in all, like most things in life, there were good points and bad points to this trip, but I put it in the positive column overall, just for the sheer life experience. I hope that US/Russian relations will improve so that eventually there will be no need to distrust each other’s culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment