chapter 8 - northern venice

I’ve always been able to sleep deeply on trains, and at 6am I was jolted awake with a loud broadcast of music. “Ballroom Blitz” blared out and I felt completely disoriented. Am I back at high school? Horrors.

St. Petersburg was not yet alive when we pulled in, the sky a dusky, grey, early morning sort of light. I walked through quiet streets past black windows and silent aspects. Buildings are on a much more human scale here than in Moscow, 3 or 4 storeys tall, graceful if rickety and decayed. Canals and bridges. Easy to see why Goethe nicknamed it ‘Venice of the North’. The hostel confirmed the similarity. A dark hallway opened into a sort of lobby filled with dusty echoes, stone flagged floor and bare walls, old paint and mould. It’s low season so I had my pick of rooms, all containing six narrow cots, six night tables and one lone light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling. The room reminds me a bit of Building Number 6 in Hangzhou. I sighed at the memory.

Eager to explore I set out along the Nevsky Prospect, ducking into every place that looked interesting. Despite shops being tiny and virtually empty, there were always at least three people working, each with their own distinct role. One stood behind the counter and showed me what I asked to see. When I made my choices I am sent over to the second person, a bored woman knitting. Upon paying for my items, I was given a slip of paper and directed to a different counter. The third person exchanged my payment slip for the merchandise, now wrapped. Of course this all took ages, despite my being the only person in there. It was the same thing everywhere, in kiosks and tiny green grocers, three people (at least one of them always a bored woman knitting), handling the purchase of a single apple.

I tried to get an early lunch at 11am, but 11am is coffee and cake time, and that’s it. It reminded me of my first trip to England when after supper I asked for tea instead of coffee and received the curt rebuff “The coffee lady won’t allow it”. Northern Europe is proud of keeping its rules, just as Southern Europe is of breaking theirs. Ok, so I’ll have coffee and cake.

I took in the Admiralty and the outside of the Winter Palace, two bridges crossing to the Petrograd Side, the market and a roundabout where I’d heard the best spit roasted chicken was sold. I ate some in a bare little park with no trees and no grass, two girls of about eight years old raking the soil. A lanky boy walked by whistling. He looked a bit like Hamish. Back over another long bridge through the Summer Garden and Resurrection Cathedral, stepping around canals and electric trolleys to return back completely exhausted.