Lost and Found: A Hostel in St Pete’s

Day 69 – August 1^st

Our original plan to get to Russia was to drive the campervan east through Finland and cross over the border near Virolahti. After a considerable amount of research we found that you needed four things if you wanted to drive your vehicle into Russia, which were a drivers license, third party insurance in Russia, vehicle registration papers and an International Drivers Permit (IDP). 

We had all of the above items except for the IDP and after much research on the bureaucracy and sometimes corrupt Russian police (bribing coppers is quite common in Russia), we decided it was not worth the risk of taking the van in and changed our plan to flying into St Petersburg, getting an overnight train to Moscow and then flying back to Helsinki to collect our van.

Helsinki and St Petersburg are less than 400km apart, so our flight in the morning was literally straight up and then straight back down. We arrived into St Petersburg airport around 11:30am and despite a number of reports about issues at customs, we flew through the process without any questions being asked. 

With our hostel in St Petersburg booked and luggage in hand, we made our way out of the airport to get a bus to the closest Metro station, which was about 15 minutes ride away. 

One of the first things that strikes you when arriving into Russia is their Cyrillic alphabet, which really doesn’t correlate to our Roman alphabet in any shape of form, so it feels like you’ve landed on a different planet. Luckily their numbering is the same so we were good to go in trying to locate the K13 bus and made our way to the bus stop.

Guess what this place is?

McDonalds was pretty cheap in Russia with a Big Mac costing about £1.65 or $2.50 AUD.

Something was obviously amiss though, as about half a dozen K13 buses came in to the terminal, dropped passengers off but didn’t pick any up. After running back and forth waving at the K13, an older Russian man said something to us which seemed to be along the lines of ‘stay here, there will be one in a couple of minutes you morons’, so we waited a bit longer. A few more K13’s later and one finally stopped and picked us up.

Rather than paying when you get on a bus in Russia, they just load everyone on and you can either pay while the driver is driving or pay on exit. Not wanting to distract the driver while he navigated the busy Russian motorways, we paid as we got off. 

After about 15 minutes we made it to the Metro station, paid the man (60 Ruble – about £1.10) and then headed off down to the subway. 

We were dropped off in a very busy area of town and a number of ladies were selling a random assortment of fruit & vegetables, what appeared to be pickled gherkins, jams etc. What was funny about this was as we passed one lady with her minimal three punnets of raspberries, she started diving her hands into the goods and started devouring a few in broad daylight! 

I guess she was either trying to show her potential customers that they were good enough for her to eat, or with only three punnets left couldn’t be bothered hanging around anymore so would eat them herself to avoid the shame of going home with unsold goods.

The next step in our journey to St Petersburg was to navigate the underground subway. Having been told that a train card was a good idea rather than individual tickets, we lined up at a machine to purchase one. This led us to another peculiar observation of Russian life, in that you do not queue in a straight line, you queue on a 45-degree angle. This only came evident to us after a couple of people tried to push in front of us, then we realised we were the ones not following the correct process. 

After doing a bit of finger pointing and counting on our fingers to the ticket seller, we finally got our Russian ‘Oyster’ Cards and then headed underground to try and figure out how to get to our hostel. 

To be honest the St Petersburg and Moscow subways are brilliant. Trains come roughly every two minutes and they are setup so efficiently and user friendly that you do not need to know the Cyrillic alphabet or speak Russian to use them. Along with being highly efficient, some stations are actually very beautiful and were setup during Soviet times to be ‘peoples palaces’ adorned with wonderful mosaics, large statues and highly detailed ceilings. 

One of the elaborately decorated train stations in St. Petersburg.

Now experts in the St Peterburg metro, we come up exactly where we intended on St Pete’s most famous street Nevsky Prospect. If only finding our hostel could have been as easy as using the Metro. Despite having our GPS to tell us our exact location and where our hostel should be, we did a number of laps of Nevsky Prospect.

The busy roundabout on Nevsky Prospect - Ploschad Vosstaniya.

One of the 'better' Ambulances we spotted in St. Petersburg.

After going up and back and then up again (and it’s not a short street), we decided to stop and have lunch, as it was now 2pm and we were starving. During our laps of Nevsky, we noticed a large restaurant that appeared to sell fairly cheap food and beer so dropped in there to look around. 

It turned out that the restaurant was actually like a cafeteria/buffet where you could select from a wide range of foods and then go up and pay at the checkout. This worked well and we both devoured some Arctic Char and dumplings (for about £3), along with a 99 Ruble pint (less than £2).

Our favourite Russian eatery in St. Petersburg - the chicken pie is amazing!
If anyone knows what it is called, let us know.

After lunch we made another attempt at locating the hostel and wandered around a number of alleyways where we thought the hostel should be. A number of Russian ladies came out to try and help us, but we couldn’t get a great deal out of them. 

Without any success, we called the hostel whereby they explained to go through a door (very descriptive) and into a stairwell and they would be on the 4^th floor. Not 100% sure on the door they were talking about, I entered the only door we could see and then asked them to come out into the stairwell so we could validate that we were in the right place. I guess the lady didn’t understand this part, as the phone went dead and nobody came out into the stairwell. 

After numerous attempts of trying to get a hold of the woman again, the phone was engaged so we were still stuck on the street with no idea where our accommodation was. 

Finally after a bit more pacing up and down the street, we saw the worlds tiniest sign for the hostel outside a door only 20 meters from where we had been. We then made our way up to the 4^th floor and finally found Tabouret Rooms Nevsky after about two and a half hours of searching!

Now, considering we were delayed in finding our accommodation you would have thought that the hostel would have sufficient time to get the room ready. Not in Russia. We checked in and the ‘receptionist lady’ then became the ‘room service’ lady as she showed us into our room and proceeded to make the unmade bed. As she was struggling with getting the fitted sheet on, Claire offered to help. In the end, Claire had helped put the sheet on, the duvet cover and pillowcases. 

After our highly eventful morning and afternoon, we were both knackered so decided to relax in our room for an hour or two to get back our energy and also wait while the rain outside slowed down. 

The rain had still not stopped after about two hours, however, we threw on our raincoats and headed out to see some sights of St Petersburg that were undercover. This included the Passage Arcade, which was famous for its domed glass roof. Many of the stores inside the arcade were a little old fashioned, but you could get a hold of a large selection of hunting knives and guns if you desired. 

The Passage Arcade. Quite ritzy looking but you can buy a gun here and a stuffed bear if required.

Also in the area was the Kupetz Eliseevs, which was basically and extravagant deli with a doorman and all the waiting staff dressed in tuxedos. You could also eat within the deli, however, you would probably need to take out a second mortgage after looking at the price of things. 

The most fancy deli we've seen yet - Kupetz Eliseevs.

As the rain subsided a little we continued to wander around the area of Nevsky Prospect and some of the side streets that led of to it, wandering past the Hermitage Museum and Church of Spilled Blood – each of which we planned to visit in more detail the following day. 

With all the walking we had worked up a fair hunger, so decided to try and find a couple of the places that our guidebook had recommended. Unfortunately, with the book we were referring to being published in 2008 it appeared that each place we tried had closed down or changed names. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise though, as we managed to stumble upon a very authentic Russian restaurant that served mostly Russians and the prices were also reasonable. 

The best beer in Russia by far - Baltika.

Our first dinner out for about 2 months.
We were so excited about eating out that we forgot to get dressed up.

With the extortionate prices of things in Scandinavian, we never ate at a restaurant so the last time we had been ‘out’ for dinner was when we left Linda, Michael and Caitlin in Krakow – so this was quite a treat. 

We went for authentic Russian food, which included a starters plate of dried Cutle fish, stringy smoked cheese, garlic croutons and herbed wedges. You also got some deep fried bread sticks and a delicious sauce (tasted like Aioli) every time you had a beer. Mains of Chicken Kiev and Beef Stroganoff followed the starters so we were pretty full after all of that.