Sunday 27 May 2007
After breakfast we went downstairs and met our friendly doorman, Ivan, on his day off. Ivan wanted to practice his English and he offered to take us down to see the Metro and the Antarctic and Arctic Museum. Just after we entered the railway station Pip took a photo of the art work and the turnstiles.
The next thing, a stern looking security man came over and fined her 100 rubles ($5.00AUD) – what a joke. The official showed us a notice hidden round the corner with a picture of a camera and a line through it. Down on the station beside the railway line you are allowed to take photos of the chandeliers and ornate carvings. The Metro is incredibly deep, probably two or three times deeper than Sydney’s underground. This is not only to get under the Neva River but also to act as an air raid shelter in the time of war.
We then walked about ten minutes through the side streets to the Antarctic and Arctic Museum but unfortunately it was closed as the building was being renovated.
We then found a small Christian Chapel where people were worshipping with two nuns and a priest. After seventy years of Communism, religion not only continued but is now finding more followers.
Ivan took us into an old style fruit and vegetable market which had very good quality produce for sale.
Only a block away we found an extremely modern shopping centre with an amazingly modern, supermarket. We bought some fresh milk and a few other supplies and we used our visa card via EFTPOS to pay at the checkout.
We sat down in a coffee shop as modern as anything you would see in New York or Sydney. Ivan told us that he earned $100USD per week as the Hotel’s doorman and was paid once a month. He had a mobile phone as most Russians appeared to have and he said it cost him about $20 USD per month plus calls.
We walked back to our Hotel, checked out and put our bags into the Earthroamer which was still parked in the back street. We met a young American couple who were back packing and travelling by train to parts of Russia. They couldn’t believe that an American vehicle with Alaskan number plates could be parked in a street in St Petersburg!
Before we departed, Ivan’s 19 year old son, Sasha, came to meet us. We had arranged with Andrey (Dmitry’s friend) for his friend Victor to come in his vehicle to lead us to an airport, run by a group of flying enthusiasts to the north of St Petersburg. This meant backtracking our route slightly but it was well worth going out on a beautiful sunny day to see the suburbs.
We followed Victor in his car and drove for about an hour to the airstrip situated in the suburb of Cachmobo. It was an ex-military air strip as they virtually all are in Russia. They had a thriving flying club called The Northwest Regional Centre of General Aviation. We met Andrey, Dmitry’s friend who owned an L29, a Yak 52 and a Cessna 172, Vladimir Lebedeve, the director of Flying and Training and Igor Dushenko the Flight Director.
The aero club was in a small modern building in beautiful condition with tea and coffee facilities which were offered to us. We wandered around the airfield and had a look at the line of planes.
Some were pretty run down, just as there are at most country airports anywhere in the world. There were also two modern Cessna 172s plus Andrey’s L29. Andrey was able to own these aircraft because he had his own air conditioning business. We also saw a beautiful red Yak aircraft which is owned by Dmitry.
Across the bitumen field was a group of parachuters getting ready to jump from a huge Yak aircraft.
Andrey had been out flying in his Cessna and returned about 3.30pm and invited us to stay for a barbecue lunch. We thanked him and his friends but wanted to get going as we wanted to drive out of St Petersburg before nightfall.
We used our Russian maps and found our way back onto the freeway. Before long we were in an incredible traffic jam for about forty minutes, just moving bumper to bumper. We were soon to recognise that the Russian roads were designed for Russia of the 1960s and now with all the money and many people owning cars, they simply couldn’t cope. Eventually we found our way to the ring road and by luck we were able to drive onto the correct lane and started driving at a good speed around the eastern outskirts of St Petersburg.
We kept seeing a sign to Mockobckoe and this seemed similar to the Russian word, Mockba for Moscow so we hoped we were on the right road.
We were pleased to see an actual sign to Mockba about 40 minutes later when we turned onto the M20. Fortunately we were travelling out of St Petersburg with the traffic moving quickly because the traffic coming the other way was bumper to bumper and had almost completely stopped for miles.
The M10 was an amazing road, sometimes we could do 100kph and other times we had to slow down as the road dropped into a town with houses within a few feet of the road itself.
The legal speed limit in towns is 60kph but we did 50kph with other cars passing us at 80 or 90kph.
Every twenty or thirty kilometres we would pass a GAI check post. Fortunately we were only pulled over once and after a quick glance of our documents they waved us on with a friendly smile because they realised that we didn’t speak Russian.
On the Novgorod bypass the road went onto a pothole nightmare with the rain falling so we could only travel at 15 to 30kph.
There were many huge trucks travelling in both directions on the very rough road.
We stopped at a service station and Dick paid for 200 litres of diesel up front at 17.3 rubles per litre ($0.80AUD) costing 3,460 rubles ($160AUD), the cheapest fuel so far. Even though the service stations were modern in this part of Russia, they had a strange payment system where you had to go into the station’s office where there was a secure hatch. The attendant was usually a grumpy woman who would mutter to you in Russian. You place your money in the hatch, it would slam down and the pump would be turned on. After we received our 200 litres we returned to the woman for our receipt.
Even though the road had improved and the rain had eased off, it was getting late so we decided to find a place to park for the night. We found a sign in English “Motel Café” so we drove up the driveway. We came to the Roctnhnua Motel – what we would call a bed and breakfast. Dick went inside and found a lovely young lady named Ula who spoke English and said she would be delighted if we parked next to her house. Dick offered to pay but she insisted that there would be no charge. There were some friendly Russians sitting on the verandah having a drink. They were smiling and laughing when they realised that we could not speak Russian and we were from a foreign country.
In our Earthroamer we felt very secure and cosy inside. We cooked dinner and Dick managed to get the TV working. The shows were all in Russian but soap operas and game shows are the same everywhere even if you don’t speak the language!! We also phoned Dmitry and arranged to meet him on the outskirts of Moscow tomorrow. The rain started to fall again and we could hear frogs outside.
Dick dashed outside and brought one in so we could take a photo. We shared a small bottle of wine and celebrated the fact that we were navigating on Russian maps that had no English at all and seemed to be doing OK.
324kms Today 17,854kms Total since Anchorage Alaska
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