The World of Stuff .com

The second world

On the night of December 20, I had landed in St. Petersburg, Russia, after flying from Orlando via Frankfurt, Germany. Pulkovo International Airport was to be my first impression of Russia.

After stepping off the plane, I noticed a strong contrast right away: Orlando’s airport is huge and sprawling. Frankfurt’s is sleek and modern. Pulkovo smells like a bowling alley.

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but the international terminal clearly hadn’t changed much since Soviet times. Everything was squarish and poorly lit. There were old terrazzo floors and wood trim around the windows. If it didn’t smell exactly like a bowling alley, it looked like it should.

I went through one of the passport control lanes, where an unsmiling woman accepted my paperwork and let me go on. After waiting at the sad little baggage claim—my flight seemed to be the only one that had arrived recently—I headed toward the exit, where Kate’s friend Volodya was waiting for me. We went outside to the parking lot—it was cold—and then into his car. Volodya gave me a Russian cell phone so I could stay in touch with Kate, and I gave him a map and the address of the place where I would be CouchSurfing for the next few days.

He started his car—a small Japanese sedan—and we set off. I probably didn’t blink as I sought to see as much as I could in this strange new country. Literally the first thing I saw was what appeared to be a Coca-Cola bottling plant. The second thing was a BP gas station entirely like the ones in the United States, right down to the Wild Bean Cafe convenience store. I wondered if my plane from Germany had flown in the wrong direction.

We drove down broad avenues. They had snow and ice on them, so I couldn’t tell if the lanes were marked, and I don’t think the other drivers on the road could tell either. As we approached the heart of St. Petersburg, we drove through the biggest roundabout I’ve ever seen. It had a colossal war memorial in the middle of it, with huge statues of soldiers and/or working people and the dates 1941-1945.

A lot of the buildings looked like they were about a hundred years old. They looked kind of like they were in that classic turn-of-the-century Paris style, if you know what I’m talking about. We passed by the apartment building where, according to Volodya, Kate had lived until recently. It looked like all of the others, but it seemed special to me. If she hadn’t broken her leg, I might have stayed with her there.

At last, we made it to a quiet street called Soviet Street, which had become one-way due to all the snow-covered cars parked on either side of it.

I’m given to understand that things in Russia are relatively expensive and that the postal service is unreliable. For those reasons, Kate had given me the money to buy her and her friends and family certain clothes and electronics. I gave Volodya a Kindle and a BlackBerry from my suitcase, and then we figured out where the entrance to my host’s apartment was. I thanked him for taking the time to chauffeur me around, and then I went ahead inside, hoping for a nice, warm bed to sleep in.

My arrival had taken my host by surprise. He was a young guy, a little younger than I. His English was very good, and he had traveled the US extensively. He said he had been asleep. Everyone had been asleep, he said. I didn’t know how many people he lived with, but I soon found out that he had accidentally overbooked his place. There were four other CouchSurfers there at the moment, and they were also asleep. Also living in the apartment were his brother, his mom, and his cat and dog.

I had been wanting to sleep, but we ended up chatting for a while about things like the differences between Russia and the US. He was also studying computer science and had a bunch of exams in the coming days. One of the other CouchSurfers, a German who was also about my age, came and joined in on the conversation. He had spent a year as an exchange student in Kansas and had traveled the US even more extensively than my host. These guys put me to shame, but at least I’ve been to Monaco.

Finally, we decided it was time to go to bed. I would be sleeping in the same room as my new German friend and the young Polish woman with which he was traveling. I had found out that they were students in Germany and they were just making a quick trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg. They were on the futon, and I got to sleep on a chair that folded out into a bed. I had never seen anything like it, which surprised my host. We Americans tend not to settle for less than a futon, I think. But I managed.

I woke up fairly early, according to my watch that I had bought for and only previously worn on my trip to Europe because I didn’t use my own cell phone there either except for one time when I needed to and I tried to use it and it didn’t work even though AT&T said it was supposed to. I lay there for a while, still not believing that I was in Russia. Fortunately, I was about to believe it.

Everyone else got off to a slow start that day too, so we decided to go out to lunch: my host, his brother, and we, the five CouchSurfers. I met the other two as we were getting ready to leave. They were a tanned Welshwoman who had that acerbic wit that is innate to all Britons and a tall Californian dude with long hair. They were at the end of a long journey. They had met each other while they were teaching English in South Korea, and they were slowly making their way westward from there, having gone through Siberia. They were hoping to make it to the young woman’s home in Wales by Christmas, which was only a few days away.

The seven of us walked a few blocks away to a cafe. We drank honey-sweetened beer, and I tried borscht at my host’s suggestion. I guess it’s made with beets, although I’d never had beets, so I didn’t know what they tasted like. It didn’t taste funky or anything. It was served with a dollop of sour cream that you’re supposed to mix into the soup. I thought that was kind of weird since I associate sour cream with Mexican food, but it worked well.

After lunch, we split up. Our host had to study, and the Welsh/Californian couple had to a bus station to get bus tickets. That left me with the German/Polish couple. We made our way to the nearest subway station, which was pretty close by. Unlike probably all of the subway systems I’ve been on, the St. Petersburg subway still accepts tokens. I got a few from my new German friend, and I promised to pay him back, but all I had were some large bills I had just taken out of an ATM.

The St. Petersburg subway is one of the deepest in the world. Some of the stations require a swift but several-minute-long escalator ride to get down to the platforms. I don’t think I had ever been in such an old escalator before. The steps weren’t the interlocking metal kind you see on every Otis and Montgomery in the USA. Instead, they were just steps, and I think they had wood on them also. They seemed a bit rickety, but nothing happened.

My host had mentioned that Russia was very much stuck in its old, inefficient Soviet ways. He gave the subway stations as an example. Instead of having a security camera at the foot of the elevator, they have an attendant who watches everyone. Sure enough, at the foot of that really long escalator was a woman in a small booth, just sitting there and watching. I guess there are advantages to having an actual person there, but it seems like an anachronism from a time when it was believed that everyone should be given a job, even if it was a really boring or useless one.

At this point in the story I haven’t even really seen or done anything yet, but I’ve tried to relate what my impressions were. Since I’m getting tired, I’m going to close out this post with another observation.

Since there was a process of “denazification” in Germany after World War II, it’s tempting for a young American like myself to assume that after the fall of our other great enemy of the twentieth century, some sort of “desovietification” must have happened. I didn’t have to be in Russia for very long, and you didn’t have to read very much about my visit, to become sure that this wasn’t the case. (and duh jordan the circumstaces were completely different germany was decimated and conquered by the allys after the biggest war man kind had ever seen but the soviet onion colapsed during peacetime mainly due to social and ecomonic forces from within!!!11)

Sure, St. Petersburg had changed its name back from Leningrad, but that was about it as far as I could tell. I noticed that the surrounding region was still called Leningrad, that there were still statues of Lenin around, and that there were plenty of streets and other public places called Soviet this or Revolution that. While Americans may look back on the Soviet Union with resentment or disgust, to Russians it seems like it was just a cool idea that sadly didn’t work out in the end. After all, it did make them the (second) most powerful nation on earth.

And now, today’s link: Awful Library Books. (Via The Presurfer)