St. Petersberg

I can’t think of a fun­ny ti­tle for this. I con­sid­ered “Piter, Piter, Pump­kin Eater” but that doesn’t make any sense. (They call it 'Piter' for short in Russia.)

I just spent two days in St. Pe­ters­berg; I’m writ­ing the draft of this on the ex­press train down to Moscow.

The last time I vis­it­ed St. Pe­ters­berg was in 2003; in the in­ter­im, un­sur­pris­ing­ly, the In­ter­na­tion­al Tourist City Bland Bomb has gone off. The dark streets lined with strip clubs and seedy bars with free ad­mis­sion for for­eign­ers have been re­placed with bright neon-​ad­ver­tis­ing-​slathered streets lined with $5-a-​cup cof­fee shops, chain sushi restau­rants, and gener­ic shop­ping cen­ters. I re­mem­ber a lot of hook­ers and skin­heads; now it’s most­ly tour bus­es full of old peo­ple and Japanese. An air of spu­ri­ous fes­tiv­ity and shit­loads of traf­fic clog Nevs­ki Prospekt. Prices are a bit low­er than Moscow, but still about on the lev­el of most Eu­ro­pean cities.

Al­so, the mys­te­ri­ous alche­my born of moder­ni­ty has oc­curred by which men be­come slim and ef­fem­inate and well-​dressed and wom­en be­come heavy and fumpy and wear no make­up and big glass­es. Wom­en in Piter didn’t seem any bet­ter look­ing than wom­en in any oth­er city.


I met with some girls who I had known years ago in Sama­ra; none of them are mar­ried but all of them soon will be.

It’s a beau­ti­ful city, though. Can’t de­ny that. Had a love­ly view from my ho­tel, which was rather run­down and full of a box­ing team from Bashko­rtis­tan, who looked a bit in­tim­idat­ing but as they were in town for a cham­pi­onship were well-​be­haved apart from eat­ing vo­ra­cious­ly at the break­fast buf­fet.


Al­so went to the Her­mitage — where they were has­sel­ing Rus­sian peo­ple to show their pass­ports to prove they on­ly had to pay 100 rubles, com­pared to the 400 rubles that the for­eign­ers have to pay.

So ba­si­cal­ly I’m com­ing to the con­clu­sion that the on­ly rea­son to live in Rus­sia now is if you smoke, as cigarettes are still cheap and you can smoke most places.

I don’t smoke.