What a circus (part deux)

After nearly ten months in Helsinki and only a few hours by car away, I was finally able to actually visit St. Petersburg. You may remember that I had initially attempted to get a double-entry visa for Russia so that I could visit both Moscow and St. Petersburg but that my plans were thwarted by the collision of my naiveté with the bureaucratic and inefficient mess otherwise known as the Russian consulate’s office. The worst part about the visa screw-up is that it meant I had to go back to the mess and start the whole process over again. I had been hoping for more of a “forgive and forget” than “rinse and repeat” after my first experience there.

Frustrated but undaunted and hopefully a bit wiser, I went back to get another visa for my visit to St. Petersburg. I went to the same Russian consulate’s office, walked in the same door, stood in the same maddening line, came prepared with the same reams of ridiculous paperwork/pictures/proofs, and spoke to the same Russian woman at the desk. “We do not make visa for Americans.” Right. Of course you don’t. “I have a Finnish work permit for longer than 90 days so you do.” She was unwavering, “No, no make visa for Americans.” I was insistent, “But I already got one here…just last month…from you.” I flashed my last Russian visa in front of her. She paused and came back with what I suppose she expected would be the knock-out blow for this little fight, “But you must wait 10 days for visa. No visa faster than 10 days.” Ah-ha! Gotcha, lady! “That’s ok,” I replied with a smile, “I can wait.” She looked surprised. “Is ok?” “Yes, is ok.” She sighed and started waving the documentation in…passport, picture, invitation to visit the country, application. She took a look at my application, the exact same one I had filled in and she had accepted a month prior (and then promptly threw away because “application no matter – only invitation matter!”), and pushed it back under the window at me. “Wrong application. Cannot be used.” She pushed another one under the glass and pointed me to the side of the room to go fill it out. Ugh. Now I’d have to stand in that line again!

I had learned over my last few visits to just play the game and not ask questions even though the application she was making me fill out was identical to the one I had already completed despite being a few questions shorter. I quickly scribbled my information on the new application, got back in the now longer line, and finally made it up to the window again. There was a man in front of me trying to get his visa and to whom the woman at the desk was attempting to explain the whole payment procedure (down the road and in a bank requiring the receipt be brought back to the consulate’s office within two hours). Her broken English was only adding to his confusion so I jumped in quickly to explain. No need for someone else to suffer! I had worked hard for my insider’s knowledge and this would probably be the one time I would be able to use it to help someone else! He thanked me profusely and then it was my turn. Blessedly, there were no other major hiccups, new policies, or documentation changes and it went relatively quickly. When she pulled out the map to show me how and where to pay I put my hand up and said, “I know where to go. I will be right back.” I wasn’t up against quite the time limitations this time as last so I didn’t even have to run to the bank. This was turning out to be an almost leisurely experience (when you have the previous one to compare it to almost anything sounded nice in comparison)! I showed up two weeks later, waived my pick-up form at the woman from the back of the line knowing that she’d pull up any quick transactions like simple pick-ups (this was my seventh time in this line, after all), got immediately waved up to the front, and had my passport with new visa in hand within ten minutes. I thanked the woman, she nodded and smiled, and I walked out of that office nearly as happy about the fact that I would never have to return as I was that my visa was issued correctly and I’d finally be able to visit St. Petersburg.

I was even more appreciative of my visa as I stood in line to board my flight and the British woman in front of me, who had already flown the three hours from London to Helsinki, was denied boarding to St. Petersburg at the last minute because her visa had been issued with the wrong entry date. The airline employee tried her best to be sympathetic but the woman was inconsolable, “I have my invitation right here with the right dates! The consulate made a mistake! I have a two week trip planned and you’re not going to let me board my last 45-minute flight?!” “I am sorry but they will not let you into the country if your visa is wrong. They would just send you back here.” What followed was a lot of expletives, bouts of crying, and spastic kicks to her bag as the woman tried to figure out what to do and if this situation could be resolved from Helsinki or if she’d have to cancel the whole trip and go back to London. It made me very thankful that I had at least noticed my first visa was wrong before I tried it! What a disappointment!

A short 45 minutes later I landed in St. Petersburg and it really is amazing what a difference 45 minutes and only 450km can make! I left a very slick, high-tech, western European country and before I could even finish my little cup of water on the flight was literally on another continent and feeling like I had flown around the world. St. Petersburg, with nearly five million residents, is the third largest city in Europe and is about ten times bigger than Helsinki. It’s also about ten times less streamlined, efficient, and (seemingly) modern. This makes things a bit more inconvenient of course but also makes it feel much more exotic and culturally interesting. I met my friend John there who currently lives in London and, miraculously, we found each other in the airport without any prior coordination. (Thank goodness for small airports!) I went to the information desk to find out about taxis and while we were relaying our destination to the coordinator a woman behind me chimed in, “Are you going to Petro Palace?” I nodded, “Yes.” “Petro Palace Hotel?” “Yes.” “Are you staying there?” “Yes.” “I am staying there too and am traveling alone. Would it be possible to share a taxi with you?” I immediately responded with, “Yes! Of course!” John looked more suspicious but I had the ticket for the taxi and I’d already said she could share so we all headed out together. I gave the ticket to the driver (with agreed destination and price so there would be no “discussions” about this later) and we all hopped in the taxi. Our new travel buddy lived in Cambridge, had perfect British English, and was in St. Petersburg for an educational conference. I chatted with her a bit when all of a sudden she said, “Excuse me,” tapped the driver on the shoulder and out came a barrage of Russian. Wow. Where did that come from?! Both John and I had assumed she was British!

Turns out that Irina was born and raised in Belarus but had moved to the UK 15 years prior for work and had then just stayed (she told us, “There is nothing in Belarus.”) Her son was actually in college in St. Petersburg so she was able to kill three birds with one stone – hit the conference, visit St. Petersburg for the first time, and visit her son, coincidentally on his 21st birthday. We got out of the taxi at the hotel and I paid. Irina had to run to her conference which began in just a few minutes and she didn’t have rubles on her anyway. We agreed she could just pay me later that weekend, either leave it at the desk or slide it under my door, when she got a chance to go to an ATM. We said our nice-to-meet-yous and farewells and she was on her way. John gave me a look that said, “You just got had. She’s not paying you!” (He might have actually said this out loud – I can’t remember now!) but I was confident that Irina would come through.

I wanted to go to the circus and the ballet while in St. Petersburg - the circus because Moscow’s was so crazy and St. Petersburg’s is even more famous and the ballet because St. Petersburg is the birthplace of ballerina Anna Pavlova and the home of the Mariinsky Ballet (formerly the Imperial Russian Ballet). When in Rome! John was happy to go to the circus and said he could be convinced to see the ballet. I told him that it was of course up to him but I was going to both. Lucky for John the circus was first.

I had looked up tickets for the circus a week earlier but was then locked out of the pre-booking a few days before the show so hadn’t actually purchased the tickets. I asked the concierge if we could just get tickets at the door and she replied with the very helpful, “You can try!” I had her check the address I had looked up and its location on the map and then we were off to “try.”

The reason I had initially planned to go to St. Petersburg in September is because I had wanted to avoid the very hot summer (heat wave and fires in Russia all summer this past year – yikes!) and tourist crowds but was hoping to get in before the winter weather took hold. (Autumn is an unbelievably short season on the Baltic!) John and I headed out to walk the two to three kilometers to the circus just as it started snowing/sleeting. I have to say that it wasn’t very pleasant and was really the worst case scenario as the snow was so wet…light enough to be blown sideways and into your face but just barely at freezing so it was really more like freezing rain, making it wet, miserable, and very cold. We walked quickly because of the weather but had plenty of time to get such a short distance away. There was some solace in knowing that we’d be inside very soon.

Or so we thought. Even though I had asked the concierge to verify both the written address and its actual location on the map, she had led us astray. After about 10 minutes of wandering around in the flying slush and getting to where the circus should have been, and then another 10 minutes of asking locals where it was (not so shockingly, very few people speak any English but very shockingly, no one knew where the circus was), we finally figured out that it was another few kilometers along the canal crescent. Basically, we had walked southwest and we needed to go southeast so now had to make up the other leg of our unfortunate triangle. John was dressed for London rather than St. Petersburg so was already not very comfortable or happy and even though I was dressed for the weather it was really cold. We ploughed our way heads down through the sideways sleet and finally got to the circus about 15 minutes late. We were somehow able to buy tickets which involved lots of incomprehensible Russian/English babbling but no understanding after which a woman miraculously appeared from a hidden ticket window and opened up shop for us late arrivals. (I also noticed that the price we paid at the door was around $8 vs. the pre-booking price of around $60…somebody’s making a lot of money as the circus ticket middleman!) We were given half printed and half handwritten but 100% unintelligible tickets and then left to fend for ourselves. We found a door and grabbed a couple seats, assuming it was open seating since at least nothing looked like a seat number on our tickets although, really, who were we to say?

We arrived just as the cat tricks began with a Mary Poppins-looking blond woman coaxing cats with little bits of kibble to jump through hoops between platforms and to leap off of a many meters high pole. Then came the monkeys dressed in monkey suits (appropriate) who could walk on two feet on a tiny pole between two platforms, do somersaults and front flips down a balance beam, perform a lay-up from high up on a pole, and back flip into and out of their trainer’s arms to and from a small podium. The cats and monkeys were cute and innocuous and I was wishing that we hadn’t gotten kicked out of our front row seats (turns out at least some tickets did have numbers on them) when four full-size and frothing at the mouth (literally) camels were unleashed into the small arena. Keep in mind that the arena is very small, indoors, and completely unprotected with spectators, many of them toddlers, literally only a few feet away. In only a few seconds four galloping camels had entered and were running around the arena in full-on Arabian costume regalia, one carrying an “Arabian princess,” and all being chased by a crazy guy with a whip which he wasn’t at all afraid to use (hence the angry frothing). The camels ran around the arena in unison, then ran around with two hooves in the arena and two up on the arena walls, and finally posed in front of the crowd still up on the wall but on only one leg…quite seriously one nudge away from toppling on about five small children and a few parents. There were no fences, no leashes, no nets, no tranquilizer guns, no nothing…except for the badly costumed and mean whip wielder.

This turned out to only be the beginning of the bizarre…we saw an amazingly talented and seemingly very happy seal do everything from dancing with his trainer (upright on his back fins) to throwing a beach ball up into the air while he did a quick somersault on the floor before catching the ball again on his nose, exotic birds which played “dead” and allowed their trainer to juggle them, and then there was the grand finale…“dancing beers” (“dancing bears” when said sans Russian accent). Three full grown brown bears came toddling out to the middle of the arena dragging a cart, again with no protection or barrier between the animals and the audience, wearing goofy looking tutu collars and then made to arm wrestle a member of the audience, successfully navigate a table maze, jump rope, hula hoop, and finally wrestle and then slow dance with one of the (human) performers. (The hula hooping was my favorite!) It was amazing both because bears can actually be trained to do these things but also because no one in either the circus or the parental audience had any qualms about unleashing three brown bears in an open room of people. The pictures are unbelievable and definitely speak for themselves. I don’t know what I would have done had I been the audience member pulled from the stands to arm wrestle a bear! (For the record, the bear crushed the guy. And no, they weren’t actually holding hands but handles set up on either side of a “non-claw” arm-wrestling contraption made just for this purpose. However, the guy was still sitting directly in front of and about one foot away from a full-size brown bear to arm wrestle.) It was another incredible show if a bit disturbing with respect to the humane treatment of animals as well as toddler safety!

John forgave me for getting the wrong directions for the circus (partially his fault for not reading the blog and being prepared – this isn’t exactly the first time I’ve gone the wrong way!) and we had a great time with all the little Russian kiddies at the circus. Our next task was to try to find dinner in a blisteringly cold and seemingly empty downtown St. Petersburg. We walked around for a bit and settled on a little Russian tavern near our hotels. I eat almost anything and love trying new foods in different places so I generally don’t have any issue finding something at a restaurant…that is, of course, until St. Petersburg. They handed me a 20-page menu with very little that sounded edible let alone appealing (yet another country/culture in which vegetables were too few and far between for too many years to be a major part of the national cuisine!). I finally settled on an eggplant appetizer - I was doing my darndest to get a vegetable in somewhere - and a kebab thinking that surely a kebab is something that is hard to mess up. I was sadly mistaken. My healthy eggplant turned out to be eggplant skin (which you normally remove!) dripping in oil in covered in some kind of greasy, ground-up nut concoction. The kebab, which I was expecting to be chunks of lamb and (fingers crossed!) grilled vegetables on a skewer, was ground lamb smooshed along a long skewer and three pathetic little slices of limp cucumber flopped over on the side. I tried to eat it but after I saw the fat dripping off the skewer and congealing in big pools on my plate I got disgusted and had to stop. Even given how little I ate I probably had more saturated fat in this one sitting than I’ve had in the last five years of my life combined. Yuck! Unfortunately, this turned out to be only the first of my food woes in St. Petersburg.

The next morning we searched for breakfast and, again, had a hard time finding a restaurant or café. I should be clear here. We didn’t have a hard time finding cafes serving cakes, chocolate crepes, or pastries but we did have a hard time finding anywhere which might serve real (nutritious) food. We settled on bad mystery pastries and a yogurt and moved on with life and on to the Hermitage Museum.

The Hermitage is an absolutely enormous construction of a few very large and elaborate buildings which served as the “Winter Palace” (there is a “Summer Palace” about a 10 minute walk away), art storage, and exhibition space for various Russian Tsars and Tsarinas. While the Winter Palace began as more of a large winter house when initially commissioned by Peter I in 1711-1712 and then continued to grow under subsequent Russian rulers (both in size and impressiveness of its art collection!) over the next several decades, it is Catherine the Great who is known for being well-read in the arts, theology, and philosophy and for developing the Winter Palace into the beautiful monstrosity that it is today. She championed the effort to bring many of the most famous paintings and sculptures to St. Petersburg and was apparently a pen pal of sorts with Voltaire for many years. She invested in bringing Western Europe to Russia’s doorstep and is credited for making St. Petersburg the unique and gifted (literally) city it is today.

The Hermitage was overwhelming both in terms of sheer size and decadence but also with respect to the masterpieces it still houses today. There are ten kilometers worth of walking covering 350 rooms of exhibits housing over nine million individual items and pieces of art in this museum which would take three and a half months of 24 hour days in order to see every item for just a single second. Given that we had only one day, and that I at least have a museum max capacity of about three hours (embarrassing!), the place was intimidating. Thankfully, with some good guide books and a little help from the map we were able to pick out our individual must-sees and prioritize those. Also very nice is the fact that if you get sick of looking at art you can focus on the palace interiors where each room is its own work of art. We saw sculptures by Michelangelo (“Crouching Boy,” specifically), gorgeous paintings by Leonardo da Vinci (“Madonna and Child” was my favorite), Rembrandts, Picassos, Raphaels, and Van Goghs. (Interestingly, the Van Goghs were housed in a completely plain side room void of all of the over the top, luxurious décor of every other palace room, The Russians must not think much of Van Gogh!) We saw Peter the Great’s throne room, piles of ancient Egyptian artifacts, and even a replica of the fantastic gallery in the Vatican created by architect Donato Bramante which Catherine the Great liked so much that she commissioned one of her own. (The building of this beautiful corridor is said to have required expanding the current footprint of the building…right over top of the poor, local people who lived on the property at the time. Not hard to guess who came out on top in that one.) I wasn’t expecting the Hermitage to house so many artistic treasures. St. Petersburg is in the corner of the world after all and isn’t exactly the easiest place to get to! I later researched it and the Hermitage is the largest museum in the world in terms of floor space and number of exhibits in a single building.

We spent a good four to five hours in the Hermitage before calling it a day and heading out of the maze and back out into the very brisk Russian air. We decided to grab a late lunch and stuck to the rather touristy Nevsky Prospekt street which isn’t necessarily highly recommended in terms of quality but at least had many restaurants from which to choose (and in weather like that you don’t want to wander for too long!). We settled on a nondescript café serving everything from pizza to pasta to sushi – turns out even Russians don’t like Russian food when given other options! I ordered a veggie pizza which I figured was difficult to screw up and after not having eaten much at dinner the previous night or at breakfast that morning really didn’t care to take any chances. The waiter asked if I wanted “double-cheese” to which I said, “No, regular cheese is fine.” This turned out to be a mistake as the pizza showed up with no cheese at all. I just wasn’t having any luck at all with food in that city! Without cheese, the “pizza” didn’t amount to much but it wasn’t worth wasting time and ordering something else so I ate some of it and just hoped for better luck at dinner.

We then left for the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood (actual name is Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ) which was built to commemorate Emperor Alexander II who was murdered on the site in March 1881 when a bomb was thrown at his royal carriage. The Church actually juts out into the canal in order to encompass the actual location of the murder and was built in a similar hectic, circus-looking architectural style to that of St. Basil’s in Moscow so looks a bit random and off kilter all together. It is still very unique and exquisitely beautiful, however, the interior covered in fantastic floor to ceiling mosaics made from tiny centimeter square stone and glass tiles.

The ballet was the next activity on the agenda and although we had just missed the very famous St. Petersburg ballet performing The Nutcracker which was to begin in a couple weeks, we were able to see Swan Lake and at the historic Hermitage Theatre no less! After seeing the circus mark-up I had opted not to pre-buy our ballet tickets and to just hope for the best and that they’d be selling them at the door. I also asked a couple different people at the hotel where the Hermitage Theatre was (we already knew where the Hermitage was which was a good start but that complex is huge!) and given that they converged around the same area (but were still a bit different) I figured that if we got to the general vicinity that we’d be able to figure out the rest.

We walked along the outer Hermitage walls along the Neva River and just kept walking and walking, passing the area where the Theatre was supposed to have been. We saw a light and a tour bus up ahead, however, so kept going and when we got to an unmarked but open doorway on a street of otherwise only blackness we figured it must be it. We walked up a few flights of stairs with the crowd and finally got to a woman collecting tickets who we asked if this was in fact the ballet and, if so, could we buy tickets? She looked confused, muttered something in Russian, signaled for us to wait, and ran to the back. She returned a few minutes later with another woman who told us that it was possible to buy tickets but we must pay cash. Perfect! She clearly didn’t sell tickets on the spot very often (or ever) but we worked it out and within a few minutes we were sitting in the Hermitage Theatre about ten meters from the stage. (I should note here that the tickets were about $70 at the door vs. around $180 if bought through the hotel or $160 if bought online – what a scam!) I don’t know much about ballet but I love the cross of beauty and grace with athleticism which is always humbling and unbelievably impressive. I’ve also never been able to sit so close in a ballet and it was really amazing to watch from only a few meters away. John was a good sport and even said he liked it…all except the “girly looking men in tights” who apparently really detracted from “all the beautiful women.” John made it very clear that, in his mind at least, ballet should be restricted to women only.

After a lovely cultural experience, we set out for the third time that day to find a decent meal. Now around 10pm, we were disappointed to find that most restaurants were closed. One looked quite good and we foolishly passed on it to see if we could find something better nearby. After walking relatively far away from the first place, we finally just settled on a conveniently located karaoke bar/restaurant – hey, when you’re desperate you’re desperate! – and headed in to find a smoky, screech-filled room of raucous Russians. I don’t mind karaoke but when it is mostly in Russian and is literally being screamed instead of sung at a volume probably five times too loud for human ears it can be a bit too much! I decided to suck it up and just hope that what the place lacked in singing ability it made up for in food.

I decided to order something simple and Russian which I was hoping meant that they couldn’t screw it up and ordered the stroganoff. Through a blustering barrage of Russian interspersed with a few words of English and lots of hand gestures I understood from the waitress that this was all gone for the night. Ok, no problem. I then ordered vegetarian lasagna. Nope, that was all gone too. I then went back to my “order local” plan and asked for Chicken Kiev. Bingo! They could do that one.

My Chicken Kiev arrived about 15 minutes later and didn’t look great but it at least looked like food so I prepared myself to make the best of it, cut into the chicken, and found that it was almost completely raw inside. UGH. Nothing was really salvageable without risking salmonella so I called the waitress back to show her. I obviously can’t speak Russian and she didn’t really speak any English but raw chicken speaks for itself, right? Wrong. She looked at it, looked at me, and shrugged. Nothing was wrong in her eyes. I tried a couple more times to explain but we just couldn’t get past the fact that the raw chicken seemed fine to her. I caved and asked for the menu again so I could order something else. She said, “Sorry. Kitchen finish. No more.” Of course it is. “Kitchen finish.” Meant that they wouldn’t even scoop me any ice cream which I could have survived on (I’ve done it before!) so I was back at square one.

Normally, this would have been more of an annoyance than anything else but since I hadn’t really eaten anything of substance since lunch the previous day I was getting a little desperate. Actually, I was getting a lot desperate. We had seen a McDonald’s earlier that day and I figured that this might be my only chance to get any food at that time of night. We paid the bill at the karaoke bar, made our way out during a rendition of the “Land Down Under,” and headed to Mickey D’s. John was laughing at me before I even had a chance to order, in anticipation of what an entertaining mess this ordering process would be. McDonald’s came through though…the cashier took one look at me and grabbed a “picture menu” which she held for me as I looked at all the very familiar options and pointed at what I wanted. I ended up with a chicken sandwich which I’m still not convinced was actually chicken but was at least cooked (probably originally in the US before being flash frozen and then put on a plane to Siberia to be microwaved for me in St. Petersburg a few months later). Again, I was desperate and, for the first time in my life, very thankful for the golden arches!

I woke up the next day to find that 250 rubles had been slid underneath my door during the night. Irina had come through! (You can never have enough faith in people – by and large they come through!) John and I then spent most of the day walking around the city center, out to Vasilievsky Island, and then on to Peter and Paul Fortress which was built by Peter the Great to protect the city from Swedish attack. John shipped off back to London and I still had a few hours in St. Petersburg so spent time climbing up the massive St. Isaac’s Cathedral (the red granite columns alone weigh 80 tons each) which had amazing views of the city. I was really surprised at how much St. Petersburg looked like Helsinki and it really should not have been a surprise since Finland was under Russian rule for over 100 years from 1809 to 1917. This is not communist-style Russia mind you. The cities are both actually very pretty but seem much more formal, for lack of a better term, than do most other European cities. While St. Petersburg is much bigger than Helsinki, they are really similar in look and feel with rather large, stately, and different colored Russian style buildings lining the Baltic Sea. Appearance (and maybe a shared love of karaoke!) is where the similarities end, however. Finland is a country where I was able to survive for two months without local currency because even the taxi drivers all accept credit cards. It’s a place where 1MB broadband access is now a human right and where every person being equal is so ingrained in the culture that the Finnish government considered forcing Finnair, the local air carrier, to get rid of its frequent flyer program because it would ultimately result in people being treated differently. (In the same vein, there is no first class on Finnair and I still haven’t figured out what the difference is between business class and coach, if any.) Russia, on the other hand, is not a continuum of haves to have nots; it is two very distinct and drastically different islands of haves and have nots. It’s still a place where visitors and even locals cannot fully trust the police. And although you still need cash for many stores and certainly all cabs, I found a couple ATMs in St. Petersburg which dispensed US dollars and Euros but not Russian rubles. (The ruble has been getting stronger recently but this doesn’t say much for faith in the local currency!) Don’t get me wrong, St. Petersburg is a hustling, bustling, 21st century city but what is shocking is how different it is from Helsinki which is only a stone’s throw away. It’s really amazing to see cities which are so geographically near to one another end up so strikingly different given, in theory, a lot of commonality.

Russia is interesting in that it is so far behind in a lot of ways, at least in my opinion, but then the country has still been able to accomplish some pretty amazing feats. They were the first country to put a satellite in space and have stayed at the forefront of weaponry and defense development, building nuclear weapons in lockstep with the US (which, for the record, I don’t support on either side). It’s clear that the Russian government has money, whether from oil or the takeover of its citizens businesses, so they are able to invest it according to their priorities. The sad thing is that the governmental control and restrictions, almost to the point of isolating the country for several decades, have really limited the country overall and it is the poorest citizens who have suffered the most from this.

Another interesting challenge for the Russian government is the country’s size and geography. Russia bridges Europe and Asia so is a bit of an “in between” itself. (It is officially considered to be part of Asia but that seems rather strange.) The sheer size of the country makes it difficult to impossible to really govern. Russia has an estimated 140 million citizens but nobody actually knows the true number as there are people living in the middle of Siberia (literally) and in the far north of the country with the polar bears (also literally) many of whom are unlikely to have ever been in touch with anyone outside of their community let alone from the census bureau. People joke about the “fly over” states in the central US but Russia is largely a fly over country. British Airways, for instance, flies direct from London to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo among many other cities in Asia and doesn’t even have a flight to Moscow. It’s almost like the rest of the world has just circumvented Russia given its political history, governmental restrictions, and constant corruption. While there are many countries which don’t play nice with certain other countries I can’t think of another one which has been so categorically isolated (or has shut out all the others, it’s not entirely clear to me which has been the primary driver).

Things are certainly changing and Russia is how seen as a huge growth market, the doors opening for trade and business and investors now racing in to develop this “new” market, but it’s still quite a different business culture and I’ve often heard it described as the “wild west” (“wild east” seems more appropriate but is not as catchy I guess!). I briefly considered going to Moscow for this year but before I was willing to officially say that I was ready to move there I wanted to talk to someone local. I found an American woman in the office there and called her up. Her first words to me were, “Well, Moscow is great if you want to do some really interesting work – it’s basically a third world country with a lot of money so you’ll see things here you won’t see anywhere else…but it’s a total crap place to live. The weather is terrible, the pollution is suffocating, the language is indecipherable, the people are rude…” That took Moscow off the list pretty quick! I think she gave me a very extreme view (although the language really is indecipherable!) but while I was interested in exotic, I wasn’t at all interested in a “crap place to live.” On the business side, I’ve heard that most of your time spent in Russia, at least as a consulting firm, involves trying to get your Russian clients to pay up after the case has been completed. I heard a story where a partner went to meet with his client to collect payment and he was led into a very lavishly decorated (think dark wood furniture and deep maroon velvet-covered walls), smoke-filled room where he was offered wine or vodka while he waited for his client. His client showed up a few minutes later, shook hands with his guest, and then flipped back both sides of his suit jacket to showcase the two handguns he had strapped inside as he sat down. Gulp. I don’t know a lot of people who have the guts to put up with that every day, no matter what the potential of the market!

I spent most of my last afternoon in St. Petersburg shopping for a Matryoshka doll (the small, painted wooden dolls which are stacked one inside the next in decreasing size). My globetrotting godparents gave me one when I was small and I was always really intrigued by it so this time I bought myself a fancy one. This was also a bit overwhelming as I walked into a shop which literally had thousands of Matryoshka dolls lining every wall multiple dolls deep in multiple rooms, some of which were thousands of dollars. This was another interesting experience as I negotiated the price with a teenage girl who threw in a book of Russian fairytales in an attempt to close the deal. I ultimately got her down 25% (I’m sure I still probably paid too much) but she was a stickler and I had to give the book back. It was pretty funny.

I was feeling very proud of myself for being smart enough to hold on to the taxi driver’s company card from my trip in because his company’s rate was about $16 to the airport while getting a taxi from the hotel directly was around $40. That’s one heck of a mark-up! I tried calling to book the taxi myself but couldn’t get through so had to ask my hotel to do it for me. Of course they pushed back because they wanted their $40 but I was insistent and they finally caved. I had even thought to book it a few hours in advance of when I needed to leave having learned something from my experience in Moscow. The taxi arrived exactly on time and I jumped in and gave myself a pat on the back for not being last minute (for once!) and for getting a good deal on the cab. I settled in, we drove about half a mile to the central square in front of the cathedral and a police officer standing in the middle of about eight lanes of traffic flagged down my driver. He stopped in the middle of the eight lanes, the cop leaned in the window and asked him for his documentation (all in Russian of course but the driver handed over several forms of identification), took a few flips through, said something to the driver, and then waived us over to the side of the road. We pulled over, me not having a clue as to what was going on, and then my taxi driver jumped out, said something to me in Russian which I assume was, “Please wait. I will be right back.” and left me sitting in an idled car in one of the side lanes of traffic in the middle of the city center while he ran across several lanes to get to the cop car parked on the other side. I watched as the cop put my driver in the back of his police car and shut the door – bad sign! I immediately started having visions of a Russian version of the TV show “Cops.” What was I going to do now? Was he coming back? What if he didn’t? How would I get my bag out of the trunk? Would I be able to find another driver? What if I missed my flight and then had to leave after my visa expired?! I decided that I would wait ten minutes before getting out and frantically searching for another driver. I was getting more and more nervous as the minutes ticked by and had already crawled over the front seat to try to figure out where the trunk latch was when the cop suddenly (finally!) opened his car door and let my driver out. My driver ran back across the lanes of oncoming traffic, jumped in, I guess said something like, “Sorry for the delay.” and we were on our way. What a classic exit from Russia! I breathed a sigh of relief and was just happy things had worked out.

I spent my last rubles in a Friday’s restaurant (funny!) in the airport before hopping on the plane for my 45 minute ride back to civilization. St. Petersburg was great to see and visiting Russia is really fascinating but I finally understood my Finnish friend Laura who after only two days in Moscow said, “It always feels good to come home after Russia.” Amen.

There was even a silver lining to be found in my bad food weekend…it was the first time all year I was actually excited to get back to Finnish cuisine!