Nevsky: no connection (St. Petersburg)

Member Name: Shuyanin59

Product:	St. Petersburg
Date:	10/03/02 (44 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: worthwhile sightseeing, cultured public, museums, theatres, etc.

Disadvantages: the city is past its prime, capricious weather, crime

In December 2001 I went on a business trip to Saint Petersburg. The talks were tough, exhausting and, in my (interpreter’s) opinion, as nauseating as persistency of prostitutes who tried to impose themselves in vain on my sweet solitude. So I didn’t have much time to spare, and the few hours I managed to snatch from the busy schedule were spent on two or three walks down the Nevsky Prospekt and some shopping.

It wasn’t my first visit to the city. I served in the army there. I frequented it later on. Spent a part of my honeymoon (even though that marriage collapsed soon, some memories of our honeymoon in Saint Petersburg are now bright rather than painful. It was summer and the city seemed to be at its prime then), used to have some friends there. But it was my first visit since the collapse of the USSR. Throughout my weeklong stay in Saint Petersburg I didn’t hear a single foul word on the street, and I am ready to praise the locals to the skies for such a souvenir (we, Moscovites, do not speak Russian – we speak a low language).

I’ve always thought that Saint Petersburg looks more like a capital city than Moscow. Now, after I’ve almost used up my lucky share of foreign travels, I think that a Westerner would feel there more at home than in Moscow. If you try and imagine what would become of present-day Vienna after a decade or two of a serious financial and moral crisis, you would get a picture of what to expect in Saint Petersburg. Take crime rate into account, by all means.

And if you are going to make a call home and see several international phone booths on the Nevsky Prospekt (not far from the Moskovsky railway station, at the Prospekt's opposite end to the Winter Palace), you’d better ignore them. They are run by a company called "Санкт-П& #1077;терk 3;ургские ; так
;софоны" ("Saint Petersburg Payphones", www.spt.ru)I tried to make a call to Moscow from the place and had to change three to four booths. I counted on a five-minute comfortable, amorous talk with my wife, but, since the line was either dead, or bad, or crossed, I had to squeeze what I had to say into a telegraph-style sentence (I regret - it was not “I just called to say I love you…”).

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