tatterdema

Haha. Yes! That caught my attention also. Made me think of the baths in Budapest, but definitely were not any 18-22 y.o. cadets there.

djjaguar64

I was in Moscow in 1994. Boy things have sure changed for the worse.

RandomBaritone

Ugh, I can imagine. Then again, they're marginally better than they were when I was in Moscow in 1988, so the optimist in me prefers to take the long view.

Cris L

I'm off to Moscow for a few days in November.. And I'm very curious about what to expect!

RandomBaritone

We're back from our trip and can report that on the whole St. Petersburg was lovely. The weather was spectacular, and our tour guide knew all the secrets -- e.g., how to transit the Hermitage without being crushed by massive crowds.

There were a few awkward moments, for example when she gave us all gifts at the end of the second day, one per couple, and couldn't fathom why my husband and I only needed one between us. The glare I gave her as she tried to force it on him finally shut her up.

pb9997

Do you also plan to share your impressions on the Harbour Banya, and whether the cadets were in the hundreds, as promoted ?


Cheers

pdquick

I was there the week after you posted this, for a quick 3-day visit from Helsinki. I pulled a visa, so I was able to travel independently without a tour guide. I decided I was there for the culture, and didn't try to go to bars or meet up, but it was one of the flirtiest cities I've been to. Lots of lingering eye contact with handsome men--especially on Metro escalators going the opposite way, where there's nothing to do but stand and look for 2-3 minutes (they're long escalators) and zero possibility of catching up to anyone going the other direction even if you wanted to.

I made it to the Hermitage and the Catherine Palace. Regrettably, I didn't make it to Peterhof. I got lost trying to get to the Catherine Palace on day 2, but I had promised a friend a postcard from the Amber Room. So I decided to embrace being lost in St. Petersburg, scratch my plan to go to Peterhof on day 3, and wander around on day 2. I saw the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, wandered around the Moskovsky Victory Park, stumbled upon the giant statue of Lenin at the House of Soviets, and wandered around the Metro checking out the architecturally notable stations. One thing I discovered is that a large portion of the population is drunk by about 4 in the afternoon, including the street car conductor, your fellow Metro riders, and the woman who comes to your hotel room in the evening to provide turn-down service. This makes them somewhat chatty. My Russian is pretty much limited to "I don't speak much Russian," "Do you speak English," "I'm American," "Sorry, I don't understand," "Please," and "Thank you." One of my very friendly intoxicated Metro interlocutors managed to say in English, "Obama BAD!" but he was nice about it.

I digress. I was going to say, yes, you should hire a guide or join a group for the cultural sites. You will otherwise be swamped by tour groups coming at you from every direction while you try (often in vain) to figure out where things are and what's what. Part of the fun becomes just trying to figure out what languages are being spoken.

I missed the Amber Room on first pass and ended up downstairs at the Catherine Palace, where there's a large photographic display with extensive narration in English about how the art was saved from the advancing Nazis and sent to Siberia before the Nazis set fire to it, but the amber on the walls started to crumble when they tried to remove it. So it was extensively photographed before the Soviets retreated, and meticulously reconstructed after the war in a process that lasted well into the 1970s. Once I made it back upstairs to the Amber Room, I burst into tears. I might have been a little jetlagged.

I can honestly say I've felt more afraid in places like Washington, D.C. (suburban rednecks), Providence, R.I. (cops in the 1980s) and Copenhagen (in 2014 due to skinheads) than I ever did in Russia. You have to watch your back anywhere and you have to be discreet. This is not a 21st century western gay mecca, by any means. But it is one of the great seats of human civilization. Now that I have a 3 year multiple-entry visa, I'm already itching to get back to Russia.

RandomBaritone

In hindsight I wish we'd gotten a visa too, despite the expense and hassle. On our final night we ended up back at the ship early, even though the gorgeous weather meant it would've been a perfect night for a stroll. Being unable to go out on our own really rankled.