Okay: Two Canadians, an American and a Russian Walk into StPetersburg (pt.2)

( Part 1 is here)

We looked through our StPetersburg tourist guide and stumble across a restaurant called “The Idiot.” We consider it a sign; Cybelle is reading Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. Also, I am reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Russian. Not to mention the fact that Cybelle is a vegetarian, and this restaurant boasts a wide vegetarian menu (hard to come by in Russia) So to complete our perfect triad, we insist upon The Idiot for dinner. Slava tries to convince us that we should go to a restaurant he can find easily (he’s been to StP several times before) but he is out-voted three to one and we shuttle off aboard the St Petersburg metro to the city centre.

***

We exit the train to sleet and high winds. The restaurant is situated at the halfway point between two metro stops. I don’t know how far we have to walk, but it’s only an inch or two on the map, so I think it seems fine (look how much I didn‘t learn in Girl Guides!). Unfortunately, though the curving canals and bays make for a stunning cityscape, they don’t make navigation very easy. We set out on foot and walk for twenty excruciating minutes. And I mean excruciating. I know I’m from Canada--Winnipeg at that--but it feels like fire ants are nesting in my bone marrow.

Despite my aching fingers, windburnt cheeks and running nose, I am still gasping over the canals we walk along, and the graceful scrollwork wrought iron railing that is literally everywhere.

“Oh wow,” I exclaim, thinking of her promise to take photographs; “Kira! You need to take a picture of this!”
“Larissa. I am not taking my hands out of my pockets.”
Fair enough.

In the distance, I see a blue neon M growing closer.
“How is that possible? How could we have walked all the way to the next metro stop?!” I ask, employing my irritating Supleve habit of speaking to no one in particular. “Do we have to turn back?” I continue with dismay.
Looking around, we all make a solid inspection of the metro station. We have so been here before. About twenty-five minutes ago.
We’ve been walking in a circle.

As we reorient ourselves under a futile umbrella, Slava tries to convince us again to go somewhere else. But fuelled by our belief in fate (and the fact that we refuse to have walked 25 minutes just to eat at someplace random) we refuse. Did Peter the Great give up when people told him St Petersburg--a Venice for th North-- couldn’t be built? No. Like, when his people told him that building on an icy, desolate, dark, wind-and-storm-ravaged swamp was the stupid, toe-numbing, soul-draining fool’s dream of an obvious lunatic, did he listen sensibly? Of course not. So neither do we. We forge onward.

***

(fifteen minutes later)

KIRA: Larissa, I can’t feel my feet.
Me: I know! This is awesome! I totally can’t feel that cat bite anymore!

***

(ten minutes after later)

KIRA: A Heinekken sign. We need to go to that Heinekken sign.
LARISSA: You know it’s weird, but I have a feeling you’re right. It`s probably right there.
KIRA: Even if that‘s not the place, that’s where we’re stopping. They’ve got beer and heat inside.

Turns out we had found it. And I know this is a long shot but if any of you ever find yourself in St Petersburg, I highly recommend The Idiot; menus with English, great foot, very cozy and ecclectic and artsy. The only thing that really threw us was the party in the private room, when a drunken WWII-style soldier stumbled out with a saloon girl. And no, despite the fact that this was the weekend following Halloween, that had nothing to do with anything. It was apparently the “soldier’s” birthday. Don’t know what was going on there, but I guess I’ve seen weirder in Russia.
Over dinner, we discuss the cat, and it turns out that I am the only one who hates it.
“He’s just nervous!” Kira defends the evil black monstrosity. “And territorial.”
“Yeah, well, Hitler was nervous and territorial when he invaded Poland, too,” I counter. “Doesn’t mean we should all get over Hitler.”
After a great meal, amazing mulled wine, and gorgeous bottle of white courtesy of Cybelle, we decide to head back to our rented flat for the night.

***

On the St P’s metro Slava takes a minute to point out the gates to the track--they are like elevator doors and you cannot even get near the train until it is in a stopped position. Even then, you can`t walk alongside it-- all you can do is board. Slava tells us that this is to prevent suicides.
“In this city,” he says, “there are a lot of people who commit suicides.” Not surprising. Despite it’s obvious beauty, St P has an average frost-free period of just 135 days per year, and is overcast 165 days of the year. They daylight can las as little as 6 hours per day. Never mind the bone-soaking cold that I already know all-too-well.

We have to change trains to get back to the flat and the cat who we have all by now begun to refer to as “Hitler” (I’m am slowly winning my anti-cat PR campaign). As we descend the escalator, I notice a drunk-looking man staring at us. I am transfixed out of simple shock that people in Russia do not stare--they are generally unfazed and more than happy to ignore each other. He says something to his friends that I’m not sure seems good, and does not back down in his stare. I lower my gaze and follow my friends to the metro platform. As we stand discussing tomorrow’s breakfast, the man approaches.

“Excuse me,” he begins “where are you from?”

Without thinking, and like a moron, I answer “Moscow.” Obviously, he is unsatisfied with this answer, and persists. “Where are you from? What language are you speaking?” I find this an odd question since--hello--you are speaking to us in English. Slava breaks in and tells them we are Canadian (sorry, Cybelle). Immediately, the man`s face changes from tense to very relaxed, his hands gesticulating as he talks with Slava. Then, unceremoniously, he bids us goodnight and goes back to his friends.

“What the Hell was that?” we ask Slava.

“Oh, he thinks we were German, and he say he hates Germans, and so he wanted to fight. But he was glad to hear you were not Germans.”

Um, okay, so let me get this straight--we almost got out asses kicked on a train platform for being German?
Slava says that he’s sure no one would beat up a woman, but that the guy was angry about some outcome of a football (soccer) game, and wanted to tell us how much he hated Germany.
Good to know. I have never in my life felt so defensive of the nation that started two World Wars, but there you go. And this still does not answer my most vexing question--If he thought we were German, why did he speak English to us?

Now back to the flat, and to little Hitler, for whom I feel refreshed resentment over this anti-German mix-up. But of course this cannot be it for our first night in St Petersburg, because we board the train and--lucky us--German-hater and his drunken friends get in the same car as we do. This is so not over….

To Be Continued…

I Don't Know How to Feel About This

I'm not sure whether I'm more bothered by the situation itself or by my own (non-)reaction to it...

I get on the metro last night and head to the corner of a car to get a seat. As I sit down, I notice a shoebox sitting on the ground, apparently left behind by some long-gone passenger. No sooner do I see it before I calmly think to myself, "that could be a bomb." I initially chided myself for thinking this so instantly. I do tend to have a very vivid imagination. But the more I consider it, the more odd the old box looks. And it's not necessarily the craziest suspicion to have, considering this, among (too many) other things.
So I mentally weigh whether I am overthinking this shoebox or not. But I am calm. I mean CALM. I honestly put more angst into trying to decide between the McDonalds on Tverskaya or the other McDonalds on Tverskaya. I notice a couple more people eyeing it, but for whatever reason, they decide not to react in any major way beyond a sideways glance. Of course nobody touches it either...
As I am thinking about it an intellectual-looking gentleman in his sixties, across the aisle shifts his gaze from his newspaper to the box on the floor ever so slightly. He, too, appears to be pondering it, his eyes moving several times from his newspaper, to the box, and then back again. Finally he stands, and calmly asks everyone nearby whether this box belongs to them. We all answer negatively and, back straight, newspaper tucked under his arm, he strides calmly to the radio on the otherside of the car to report his find, presumably so the militsiya at the next station can take a look.
I decide to exit the train at this station, as does another couple sitting near us, while the older man waits on the train. As I stand in Mayakovskaya, waiting the two minute interval for the next set of cars, I realise that I still feel nothing but a little bit of hunger and sore feet.
I wonder, did I really believe that there could be a problem after all? I mean, I must have, because I got off the train, didn't I? At the same time, I never once debated mentioning it to someone. Okay, I didn't know about the radios, but even if I had... It seemed to much like panic. Like paranoia. Like the kind of fear you can't really afford to feel at every opportunity. Or to spring onto others unnecessarily.

I have no idea how to feel about this. But I still don't feel nervous.

Of course that in itself is what is unnerving.

Five Minutes in Moscow

5:30 pm--
I’m running through the station courtyard to catch the train to downtown. The middle-aged women from early this morning, along with their heaps of blouses and sweaters, are gone now. In their place stand magazine and newspaper racks boasting throwaway-publications on every imaginable topic.

As I pass through the entrance to the metro, I notice a woman who by my estimates must be a hundred years old. She is squeaky clean, bundled in quilted layers for the winter, despite the fact that it is an unseasonable fifteen degrees outside.

Reaching into a pocket filled with kopeks, I blindly drop some into her plastic cup. With the outdated currency system, this handful of coins is nearly worthless in all value except sentimental. What she could ever buy with them? They can provide little more than sympathy. Our worthless circles of metal do nothing but say “I understand. Poor you. Life is hard. I sympathise.” But in a country where life does seem harder, and compassion just a little rarer, these condolences are valuable. This is Russia: doleful and lamenting and tired of hardship. As necessary to getting though the rough days as food or water, these sentiments are something of a currency...

She straightens her scarf and rocks slightly. I’m through the turnstile before we even have a chance to look at one another.

The Metro, Kievskaya about 6pm Last Night

Not the worst I've ever seen it, but the worst I've been able to catch it with a camera so far.

The dots in the back are heads of people waiting to get on the escalator.