St. Petersburg, Russia
The last time I was in this city, it was 1986. The last time I was in this country, it was 1994.
Things have changed a little since then.
Russia doesn’t feel as spooky as it used to, perhaps due to the fact that the KGB no longer stalks you. In 1986, my room at the Hotel Leningrad (now the Hotel St. Petersburg) had a radio you could turn down all the way, but could never turn off. I’ve heard stories of people who turned up the volume and found themselves eavesdropping on conversations in other rooms. (Personal note to the KGB: If you guys ever reunite, you might want to work on your electrical wiring.)
At age 17, having grown up in Cold War America, I couldn’t help but feel paranoid. And really, wasn’t that the point of coming to the Soviet Union? Paranoia was a cultural experience.
I felt paranoid as well in 1994 when I came to Moscow. The Soviet Union had disbanded, and glasnost was in full swing, but crime was rampant. Swarms of aggressive pickpockets filled the subways. Foreigners unfamiliar with the city and language were advised not to take taxis, especially at night.
Taxis feel safe now. The drivers now rip you off in an honest way. You agree on an exorbitant fare before you get in the taxi – exorbitant by Russian standards, but when I stop to remind myself that what they are charging me is fair by Western standards, and that they are not driving me off into the woods, stripping me of my valuables, and removing my kidneys for sale on the black market (which is exactly what they did 12 years ago, at least according to probably-blown-out-of-proportion horror stories I heard) I can’t complain.
My brother Steve and I disembarked from our cruise ship yesterday and showed our passports at customs. The Russian government still loves its old school bureaucracy. Getting a visa was a cultural adventure in and of itself.
Our visa experience began several months ago, when I went to the Russian consulate in Seattle with my passport, my visa application, and a hundred dollars in cash.
The application asked, among other things, for me to list every country I have visited in the past ten years, and the dates I was there. I’m an international tour guide. My list was longer than there was space for; furthermore, my brain is too cluttered with other useless information. It can’t recall every country and every date. So I wrote “European Union: Most years since 1995,” and tossed in a few non-EU nations as well, to make it look like I had given my answer sufficient thought. My application also asked if I had any training in biological warfare. I wondered what would happen if I checked “yes.” Would they deny my visa or offer me a job?
I went to the consulate with everything they asked for and tried to hand my materials to a man behind a desk.
“You need an invitation,” he said.
This was a new rule. It didn’t used to be this way. Now, to get a tourist visa, you must have an official invitation to visit the country.
“How do I get an invitation?”
“You go three floors down to the Russian travel agency and pay them 45 dollars.”
So I did that. A friendly guy named Sasha took my money, sent an e-mail to Moscow, where it was 3 a.m., and 10 minutes later, he received a fax inviting me to visit his country.
I went back upstairs.
“I have my invitation,” I said.
“You need cashier’s check. One-hundred dollars.”
“Oh,” I said. “Your website says you take cash.”
“Yes. You need cashier’s check.”
So I went to the bank and got cashier’s check. I returned one week later to retrieve my passport with a new, foreboding looking sticker in it.
* * *
Cruise ships in St. Petersburg dock in a gated shipyard. The gate to the shipyard is more than a mile from the ship, through a wasteland of rusted cargo containers and huge piles of scrap metal. The city center was a 20-minute drive beyond that. If we would be exploring the city on our own, I was told on board the ship, the most efficient thing to do would be to bribe the Russian mafia.
Taxis are not allowed inside the shipyard, but a few drivers who know how to wink at the soldiers the right way (and slip them some cash) make it inside. Find a driver with connections at the ship, the onboard travel consultant advised me. Taxis have no signs and no meters, so agree on a price before you get in the car, he said. The fare to downtown should be around 25 bucks.
To cover the same distance in Moscow 12 years ago, I would have paid around three dollars. But 25 didn’t seem so bad. I saw the extra 22 as a keep-your-kidneys supplement.
Sure enough, a guy with a green van was there and he only wanted 20. Kidney protection for only 17 dollars! What a bargain!
We sped through St. Petersburg’s crowded streets, getting out at the fashionable Nevski Prospekt. I must admit I was out of my element. I’m used to traveling in countries where I have at least minimal comprehension of the language, and where, in a jam, you can always find someone who speaks English. Here, I was lost. I felt vulnerable.
We wandered the streets for a while, visiting street markets and placing bets on which of us would get pickpocketed first. But Petersburg isn’t as crime-laden as rumors would suggest. People were friendly. I would ask for directions in my six words of badly pronounced Russian. They would fire off an answer, and if I was lucky, they would point while talking. “Da, da,” I would say. “Spasiba.” That is Russian for, “Yes, yes. I have no clue what you just said, but I am going to pretend I understood.”
Then we would walk in the direction they pointed until we were more lost.
Eventually we made our way back to our pre-arranged spot to meet our driver. As we waited, an elderly man stepped out of a battered Soviet-era jalopy.
“Dave,” Steve said, “there’s a guy walking toward us.”
“You wait green truck to ship?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“Yes. You come with me.”
I looked at him perplexed.
“Aleksandr busy. I take you instead.”
I was skeptical, but he seemed to know who we were.
“How much?” I asked.
“Same price. Twenty dollars.”
I have been ripped off many times while traveling, and taxi drivers have been the most common ripper offers. But I have also learned over the years to trust my instincts. Whenever I’ve been robbed, I’ve had a feeling something was amiss beforehand. This guy knew too much about us to be hitting us at random.
“Come on,” I said to Steve.
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” he whispered as we got in the car.
“No.”
But the man drove us back to the ship. He got out of the car at the shipyard gate to shake a soldier’s hand. I showed my passport. We were in.
* * *
Boarding a cruise ship after a day in St. Petersburg invokes massive reverse culture shock. These ships are like floating American islands. English is the official ship language. The dollar is the official currency. There’s a taco bar by the swimming pool.
* * *
That all happened yesterday. Today I learned that for five bucks each, we could take a special shuttle van into town that was “specially arranged” for the ship’s crew. My guest lecturer credentials were close enough.
We got lost some more today. We got lost twice in an hour. The first time, it was in the Hermitage, a sprawling art museum approximately the size of Helsinki.
Actually, we were lucky to get into the Hermitage as effortlessly as we did. The museum has two entrances – one for groups, one for individuals. The group entrance has no line. The individual entrance has a long, long line. We went by accident to the group entrance where I attempted to ask a security guard how to find the entrance for individuals. He spoke no English, but a local tour guide overheard us.
“If you want,” she said, “I can take you in here. I tell him you are in my group. You pay me when we are inside. Same price as regular ticket.”
She winked at the guard, and we were in.
After two hours of art overload, we spent an additional two hours attempting to find the coat check and exit. Every now and then, I would stop to ask one of the grandmotherly ladies who guard the paintings, “Do you speak English?” I would ask them in Russian. They would answer in Russian. “Nyet.”
So I would flash my coat check claim ticket and say, “Gdye eto?” Where’s this? They would give me a highly detailed answer. Or perhaps they were telling me about their grandchildren. I wasn’t sure.
“Da, da,” I would say. “Spasiba.” And we would then do a few more laps around the Picassos, smiling sweetly to the security ladies as we passed them for the 12th time.
Eventually, we located the exit. We were back on the street with an hour to kill before the last shuttle van back to the ship. So we wandered confidently. We wandered confidently for 45 minutes. Then we realized we were terribly lost. Lost and about to miss our cruise ship back to the cozy West.
But we found another nice grandmotherly lady who told us, in rapid-fire Russian, about her grandchildren as she pointed us toward St. Isaac’s Church. Four blocks later, I spotted a sushi bar we had passed 45 minutes earlier. We made it back to the ship and did not have to spend the night on the streets of St. Pete.
“Kidney check,” Steve said as we passed through customs.
I counted. “One. Two. No unusual scars.”
So I am happy to report that the stories that the mafia will steal your kidneys in Russia are simply not true. At least I don’t think they are, though we never went out at night, which, according to rumor, is when the kidney snatchers are out in force. We now set sail for Helsinki, Finland. My Finnish is as bad as my Russian, but the city is familiar turf for me, and when you pay exorbitant rates for a taxi ride there, it’s because the officially sanctioned meters say so.
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