Go, go Schlüsselburg!

In a few minutes we will be leaving for a day-trip to Schlüsselburg. Let’s see how it will be! – Well, to really explore the city, we have just time till around four o’clock since it’s getting dark then.

(carianna)

Moscow

Last week, on Tuesday, we took a night-train to go to Moscow. I was really excited about this trip. I had heard a lot of different opinions about Moscow, some people told me that they didn’t like it, because it was too big and crowded and people were rather gloomy, others told me that Moscow was really cool. I couldn’t wait to go there myself to get my own impressions.

Taking the night-train was quite alright. The old, big lady sleeping very close to us was snoring quite badly all night long, so I didn’t really sleep well. We met girls from Moscow with whom we chatted for a little bit befor the lights in the train were turned off. It felt so good to just be sitting there and having a talk, which made me realised that my Russian had indeed improved.  Our trip started off really well.

In Moscow we found the way to our hostel without any problems. It was quite interesting. We basicually stayed in a private flat that must have some kind of licence to be a “hostel”. There was one private room with a double-bed (Carina and Markus stayed there) and two rooms with bunk beds. Students of PR from some Siberian city (and I am sorry for not recalling the name) stayed in the hostel, as they participated in some PR workshop for students from all over Russia.

We were really lucky as far as the weather was concerned. It was colder than in St. Petersburg – or least it felt like that – but the sun was shining. It was nice weather to walk around.

I was a tourist in every possible way. Spending three days in Moscow is quite little time and although we did a lot of sightseeing – yeah, we went to the Red Square and Kremlin – we didn’t quite manage to cover all of the important sights and landmarks.

I went to a really nice underground art store, where former Soviet objects are re-used and either new commodities or design objects are created. I bought a really cool bag, individually designed (actually sprayed) by some young Russian artist.

It’s really hard to say what it is, but somehow being in Moscow felt different to being in Piter, and I am not sure if it was only due to the fact that I was a tourist in Moscow and thus had a different feeling or attitude or if the two cities really differ that much.

Moscow is definitely worth a trip and I have already decided that I have to go there again, because there is so much more to see and I just liked the first impressions I got from it. Moscow has definitely caught me. It’s a cool place.

Back in St. Petersburg we had a really cool weekend, throwing a party (ветеринка) with lots of people in our small, but very cosy dorm room and lots of dancing. Carina made delicious “Topfenknödel” (curd cheese dumblings) on Sunday, that were so delightful that they are worth being mentioned here.

(anna)

Peterhof

We haven’t really done any sight-seeing in St. Peterburg itself, but on Saturday we did our first excursion to see one of the many summer palaces: Peterhof. It is one of the best-known. Andrea from Canada and Varpu from Finland, who are exchange students at the journalistic faculty as well, and Heather, a Canadian student of Russian and Fine Arts, came with us.

Peterhof has fantastic gardens that are really huge. Although we did really quite a lot of walking, it was not possible to discover all the corners of the parks. The fountains at Peterhof are very well-known and we were lucky that they were still turned on. They were really worth the trip. It was very nice going there and we finally experienced what we had been told before: as a foreigner you have to pay different prices than Russian people for both the park entry and the palace entry. It is the same with tourist spots everywhere – you are asked to pay for everything, even for the toilet.

In the palace, you weren’t allowed to walk around by yourself, but you had to join a group. We didn’t even have enough time to ask for an English tour, but we were instantly required to come along and thus ended up in a Russian tour. We enjoyed the walk through the palace and we were happy about the words we could understand, but once more we realised that we better start taking Russian classes soon!

We went back to Petersburg by ship. We missed quite a lot of it, because we fell asleep, but a few glances of the city from the sea were enough to realise that Petersburg offered a lot of beauty and charme. We really want to get started discovering the city.

(anna)