Moikka! I’m finally back, a month later, to let you all know about my trip to Russia! It was an incredible week full of new experiences and adventures, so I hope you enjoy!
Monday March 26
We left Jyvaskyla on the bus at around 6:00am local time to begin our trip to the ‘three capitals’ of Russia – St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Moscow. Each of these cities is packed full of history, and they have all been Russia’s capital city at one point in time. To be honest I did not know too much about Russian history before the twentieth century, so I definitely learned a lot throughout this trip. We had a great guide who lives in St. Petersburg join us for the whole trip, so I think we really got some insight into what it’s really like in Russia.
Our bus arrived at the border around 1pm or so, and we had to get out and show our visas to the border security. This was the first time I’d had to show my passport at a border crossing since arriving in Europe, so it really felt as though I was going somewhere new. The border crossing took a while, but I think that was probably because there was an entire bus full of people who had to go through.
We ended up arriving in St. Petersburg around six. We stayed in a really nice hostel which was pretty much right in the city centre. The rooms were ten people, so it was even more fun because I got to be with all my friends!
At around 8:30 or so, we headed out to the first event of the tour: The Traditional Russian Evening, with dinner and a show. This was our first introduction to Russian culture, food and of course, vodka. We had a three-course meal of traditional food, but my favourite was definitely the pancakes for dessert. In between the courses, there were song and dance performances which were really neat to watch. One interesting thing we learned was actually about the vodka and toasting traditions. According to our guide, when someone is making a toast in Russia, it’s not always about toasting a person or an event. It’s more of a chance to tell and story or share an experience with your friends and so it can last much longer than what I would consider a toast.
We ended the night in one of St. Petersburg’s nightclubs for a couple drinks before heading back to the hostel.
Tuesday March 27
We got up around 8am this morning and left the hostel for our city tour around 9:30. I thought the tour was pretty good and took us to a lot of the classic sights in St. Petersburg such as the St. Isaac square and cathedral, the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul and the statues of the sphinxes in the English embankment. As I mentioned, St. Petersburg was the capital of Russia for about 200 years, between the early 1700s until the Russian Revolution in 1917. It was the Tsar Peter the Great who founded the city, in order to be closer to their main enemy, Sweden. At this time, Russia had just taken control over Finland, and so having the capital of the city in St. Petersburg made it much easier to defend. Peter the Great not only founded the city of St. Petersburg but also helped to expand the Russian empire and led a cultural revolution that changed a lot of the traditional medieval and political systems of the time. This made the city much more European in style and architecture. Our guide told us that St. Petersburg is thought of as the cultural hub whereas Moscow is seen more as the heart of traditional Russian lifestyle.
Although we all enjoyed the city tour, it was more of a bus tour and so I think we were all pretty happy when we could get off the bus and explore on our own. We went for lunch at a little restaurant that served traditional filled Russian pies, and then spent a bit of time walking through the city centre. We didn’t have too much time though because we had a tour of the State Hermitage Museum at about 2:30. The Hermitage Museum was originally the official residence of the Russian royal family, but today is the second-largest art gallery in the world. The gallery was founded in the 1760s by Catherine the Great and was first built as an extension of the palace Today, there are five buildings open to the public, and I think the buildings are very impressive on their own. They were very different than the typical European style I’ve gotten used to over the past few months. Much more detailed and colourful, and the inside is very over-the-top in terms of decoration and definitely shows off a lot of power. The tour took about two hours and I was definitely excited to see the art in person, especially the original Rembrandt paintings.
After the tour, we had to go straight back to the hostel in order to get changed for our final event of the day which was the ballet “Swan Lake.” The ballet was in the Hermitage theatre, and I was really excited about the show. When I think of Russia, I definitely think of the ballet, so it was very cool to get to see a real Russian ballet. I was definitely a bit confused at first about the storyline, but overall, we all thought the performance was really impressive.
Wednesday March 28
We headed out fairly early again this morning to visit the famous Catherine’s Palace in the town of Pushkin, about 30km outside of St. Petersburg. The palace was the summer residence of the Russian royal family. The construction started in the 1700s, right after Peter the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg. In my opinion, the palace looked a lot like the Hermitage in terms of architecture and colour, although it is much grander than the Hermitage. Even though it is called Catherine’s Palace, it was really Catherine’s daughter Elisabeth who built the structure that is still seen today. The palace is over 300m long, and more than 100kg of gold were used to decorate the façade. It’s easy to see why the palace became so famous at the time because even today it is an incredibly impressive building.
The inside of the palace is even more impressive. The whole place is split up into a series of different rooms and each has a different theme. For example, one room is decorated completely with amber (sadly we couldn’t take pictures in this room), one is completely full of mirrors and others have a monochromatic theme. This kind of style, where each room leads to another, and there is no outer hallway to connect them was a little strange to me. To get into any of the rooms you had to walk through every other room, but I imagine this was the idea Elisabeth had so that anyone who visited would get to see the whole palace.
After our tour, we had some time to visit Catherine Park which is basically the grounds of the palace. It was very nice, and we got to see some more buildings but I do think that it would be much prettier in the summer when all of the trees and flowers are alive.
We got back to our hostel at about 2:30pm, and Kayla, Barbara, Moritz and I decided to go on our own walking tour to visit some of the churches and cathedrals around the city. Again, I was just really blown away by the architecture and style of the buildings. We had lunch at a classic Russian chain restaurant called Tepemok that serves pancakes and soup, before going back to the hostel for a nap.
Our last activity in St. Petersburg was the one we were looking forward to the most and was probably the least educational of the whole trip. It was the limousine tour followed by a trip to a local club. It was definitely the most fun, and I think we all enjoyed it. The limo also had free sparkling wine and took us to see all of the sites at nighttime. It was cool to see the churches and buildings all lit up and we took a few more pictures. We weren’t able to go to a club after the tour because they were all closed to commemorate the shopping mall tragedy that had occurred just a few days earlier. We did end up finding a bar though and had a few more drinks all together.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time in St. Petersburg. It’s so nice to be able to travel with a group of friends because it makes the experience much more fun and way less lonely. I hope you all enjoyed this post. As always, thanks for reading :)
