Off-White Nights of St Petersburg

...reusing material which was originally a course assignment (written this morning!) but passes the PMC quality control (i.e. has it been run through spellchecker?) on more or less all counts..describes day one of a recent trip to St Petersburg.

It's hard to apprehend the fact that I've arrived in the biggest country, by land area, in the world. By far the biggest; Russia is twice the size of Canada and yet the arrival here couldn't be more underwhelming. It starts gradually, and sullenly, like the people. The main road from the border to Petersburg has the consistency of a flapjack left in a rusty tin for nine months, I discover much later that corruption is such that all the backhanders at each stage of production make it such that it would quite literally be more cost effective to build a road surfaced with caviar, or a canal flowing with cognac. So noone invests in roads. The tangle of forest that begins where a pavement or verge would be in other countries is quite different from Estonian forests. This is Tolkienian bad forest, not a place to wander romantically yearning to bump into dryads, satyrs or Herne the Hunter.

Petersburg starts gradually too; I was expecting it to rear up suddenly like the concrete wall of Manhattan, for no particular reason, but it doesn't. Indeed I still thought I was in yet another small town for several kilometres, before I saw the light – of the sun bursting off the golden cupolas, real gold, of the signature Orthodox sobor, plonked down, not incongruously, but only as Russians could, in an area which at an uninterested glance could be mistaken for the west midlands. Except there would be a mosque there not a cathedral. Slava bogoo. But it seems Petersburg is a big village too, not only Moscow.

The hotel is megalithic, which suits me because I'm only small, and perfectly spruce and businesslike inside, but not a place to spend a lot of time in, Alan Partridge-like. We head out, in spite of the fatigue which makes one feel cheated for having spent so much time and effort to travel such an insignificant distance on the map, and all is gloriously chaotic after the calm and order of the Finnic lands.

Claustrophobic shopping arcades, minus the familiar chains of banks or pharmacies, the smoking ban in cafes has yet to reach Russia, but oh how zealously it might be enforced if it ever does (unlikely think). This gives eateries a shiftless feel that evokes to me the boarding house landscape of London in the 1950s, fortunately for me I'm neither black nor Irish, nor a dog; this phenomenon is however offset by a rather more verdant and healthy menu – soups with sour cream to mix in (I never do). Chopped dill, melted cheese, potatoes potatoes...

The canals and cobbles – when will they film a Bond movie here?! A kid screams past on a jet ski, under bridges, to hammer the point home. The Saviour on Spilled blood church, an ill fitting piece of muscovy in this most European looking of cities, as if small boy, being one action man short for the skirmish he has in mind, substitutes one of his sister's barbies..

The long evenings; the white nights proper haven't begun yet but these off-white nights can be deceptive too. It's late already. Trying to get a meal at 9pm; everything is shut. One old Russian woman addresses us, unsolicited in the street. The Russians are much friendlier and more open than in Tallinn. 'Eto doroga?' - I ask if it is expensive – it isn't, it turns out, but it IS shut when we arrive. Settle on a place full of young people. Two boys dressed as sailors walk by. Actually they ARE sailors. Survivors of the Kursk? Of course not. I wonder what their lives are worth to their superiors. More than the borsch which I'm slurping down? Not much I fear. As Leningrad more people died here during the siege of world war two than currently populate Estonia. Eating rats and soup made from the glue scraped from cheap furniture. I shudder.

Deep, choppy, guiness-coloured water, the skeletons of the cities builders are getting restless, and surreally bronze sunlight. The spire of the church of the Peter and Paul fortress fulfills the role of the ubiquitous TV tower in the Baltic capitals. Stranded in the centre because the swing bridges are up. That never happens at Tower Bridge in London, as if cabbies need any excuses not to go south of the river. But we can't get back to the Vasilevsky island, in the absence of a boat. How long will we be stranded here, could be hours. Espresso from a kiosk to stay awake. Empty beer bottles everywhere, the detritus of what had been a huge crowd not half an hour ago, watching the party ships coming up the Neva, now dispersed like so many pigeons or starlings. A friendly drunk accosts us. Two Lamborghinis, no Ferraris. An unstable toilet truck behind the Winter palace. Haggling with a taxi driver to take us back to the hotel (for the bridges are coming down!) He is very pious, not only an icon on the dashboard of the virgin with child but another of Sai Baba. So I guess we'll be safe, despite his kamikaze hurtle towards the impending roadblock (the bridges are coming up again already). Back at the hotel. It's deserted. I think Petersburg was like this on the night of 25^th October 1917, despite what that film depicts. I have my my three revolutions walking tour, 1905, February and October 1917, planned, but I think that has to go out of the window. Petersburg is still Russia. I don't want to blaspheme by planning anything..