A night out in St Petersburg – guide for beginners

When we arrived back in town from the trip to Novgorod on Saturday evening at 9 pm, St Petersburg's unpredictable weather had changed once more – for good this time, so that the evening was just too summer-like to be wasted! After a very quick dinner at the Russian fast-food chain Emilia, I headed home to change into something that wouldn't ruin my début night in St Petersburg (we all know the stories about Russian women wearing high heels at every suitable and non-suitable occasion, don't we?) and then back to Gostiny Dvor to meet up with the group of reckless who had decided to conquer vodka and … Turned out we weren't so successful at the latter ;-). We first tried a street next to the church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, where the reliable Lonely Planet located some of the best clubs - the doors of which remained closed, though, not because of the lack of centimeters on our heels, but because they had been closed for quite a while. In our desperation we simply followed some partyish-looking folks into a backyard. Instead of being an underground location as we suspected, the place must have been very posh – so posh that the door men were wearing masks and too posh for a bunch of foreign girls without passports. Back to Gostiny Dvor we went, where we entered the next club we saw, just so keen on finally getting to know the Russian night life. Weeellll … it was a fun night, but really not at all different from one anywhere else in Europe. Some of the girls were dressed up pretty much, but nothing overly exotic, most of the music was international and the songs that were indeed Russian could have been hadn't it been for the foreign lyrics. International drinks and no fights – sorry to disappoint you, but the bad Russian guys must have been busy elsewhere.

The most exiting part was probably getting back home. If you don't live on the main island, you can forget any party night that ends before 5 am, since that is the time the bridges across the Neva open again. In any case, you'll have to test your Russian to negotiate with legal and illegal taxi drivers the price for your trip back home … mine didn't cope well with this stress test, but in any case I wasn't going to pay 1000 rbl (30 €) for a trip that shouldn't cost more than 300 rbl. Luckily, one of the illegal taxi drivers waiting in the second row was quite keen on getting a passenger and agreed readily to my price – showing that the trip was probably only worth 200 rbl. I was a bit afraid to tell my host mum the next morning how I had gotten home, since we were told at the language school that we should only trust official taxis. My host mum, however, was surprised to learn that I had tried an official one at all – according to her, only foreigners take the overprized taxis, while every Russian is going на машине (simply meaning „by car“ and obviously the word for inofficial taxi).

Since I have thus overtaken myself when it comes to night activities (I originally planned to go out only next weekend), I will have to (and in fact have already) come up with something new for next friday ... stay tuned, this one is really going to be a St Petersburg only experience!

Real life postcards

I don't think you need any text with these photos ... we went to Peter & Paul Fortress yesterday and although it was a bit windy, we were lucky enough to catch one of the 30 sunshine days in St Petersburg (per year!!), so forget postcards and have a look at these stunning panoramas of the historic heart from Petrograd side. The fortress with the SS Peter & Paul cathedral and the island itself are really pretty, too, and not too expensive (160 rbl. for students for a combined ticket, ~ 4 €). We visited the prison (rather boring), but did not spend any money on the wall since the view from the beach (I know now where the Parisians got the idea for Paris plage) is just as good. I'm definitely getting a hang for the city :-).

Classes ...

Wow, I'm feeling slightly dizzy ... I've had seven hours of classes today, with only about half an hour for lunch (something like a Fleischpflanzerl in the school's cafeteria)! After that I only felt up to a quick trip to the post office and from there went straight back home. So I guess I'll tell you some more details about classes today.

Every day, we have four lessons from 10 am to 2 pm, each lasting about 50 minutes. Unlike in China (at the language school as well as in the university course), we do not different have different classes, but stay with the same teacher and the same group all the time. As far as I have seen, there are only young female teachers and all of them are really nice, so nothing to complain there. Most of the groups are for absolute or nearly absolute beginners, i.e. A1, and there's nothing above B2. Some people got books, but in our class we're handed out photocopies every other day. Each group has between 5 and 10 students, but there seem to be problems with the placement. I've met people who had to start from scratch although they had already learned for half a year back in Germany and they were told that the groups were too big to change. Admittedly, there was a whole bunch of newcomers this week, so maybe things will have settled next week. The classes themselves are pretty much standard, working in pairs, presenting the results to the group, doing exercises ... we work on different subjects for about six lessons, so on the first day it was describing people, then we moved to the instrumental (case) and from tomorrow on, we will talk about dates. We do get homework and everyone seems to do it, but at least till now, it wasn't too much.

The cool thing about the Studienstiftung's programme is that it includes an intensive course, which means that you get an additional 2.5 hours every wednesday and friday. It depends on your level, but there are never more than four people in a class and it focusses on speaking rather than teaching systematically. It's only me and another guy in our class and we watched a short cartoon about health today. Keeping up with writing all the new vocabulary down while answering the teacher's questions turned out to be challenging, but I'm pretty sure that this will boost my sparse knowledge a lot :-).