St. Petersburg and Moscow First Impressions

We arrived St. Petersburg in the evening, checked-in to the Corinthia hotel. The above view is from our room at 3am that morning.

The standard of living here is quite high. Lots of positive emotions in the crowds of St. Petersburg and even more so in Moscow. People’s day to day lives look busy and prosperous. Couples hand in hand. Folks walking babies and dogs with no outward signs of political cares. Generally the awareness of history ancient and recent is much higher than back home. I guess that’s to be expected. People on the streets dress with attention to detail and style, particularly the women. Most appear to be heading off to jobs and the others are on vacation.

Both cities are major tourist destinations, I expected that but was surprised to see that the large majority of tourists are Russian. It’s funny because when we are spotted as tourists the first assumption is we’re Russian. I noticed a cultural attribute of Russians that I liked – ‘nyet’ means ‘nyet’. You know how in, say Mexico, a street vendor will approach you and follow you down the street trying to sell something long after you say you’re not interested. Russians seem uncomfortable with the whole idea of approaching a stranger to sell them something and when you say ‘nyet’ they just move on.

I conclude life is getting better for most day by day. They project a kind of driven optimism, expecting things to get better but only with action and work. The cultural familiarness is almost shocking. It feels like ‘65 mixed with modern technology. Of course everyone has a cell phone and many are riding electric scooters and skateboards to work. Scooter home to metro, metro across town, then scooter to work. I was walking to breakfast in Moscow and heard whistling behind me and a guy on an electric unicycle scoots by whistling a song to alert pedestrians of his approach. Very San Francisco that.

I had heard Russians like Putin but the few we’ve spoken with say they don’t like him but don’t see a better option. We haven’t detected any cultural or political animosity to Americans but we are sure a rare breed around here. We rarely hear English spoken on the street and even the staff in our fancy hotels only speak rudimentary English.

Clean streets. Pedestrians and motorists both carefully respect crosswalks. Traffic flows efficiently through the streets with the bulk of cars driving quickly and skillfully yet intermixed are crazy speeding cars and motorcycles. The speeders drive through the slower traffic like fast skiers down a beginner slope. The cool thing is nobody seems to resent the speeders and vis-versa. The situation is similar for pedestrians. Most people walk at a normal pace with frequent high speed bicycles, skateboards and scooters weaving through the crowds. James once told me of a race car driver friend who rather than being frustrated or angry at slow traffic in L.A. he enjoyed the challenge they presented. The prevailing attitude on several levels seems to be “just deal and get on with it”.

St. Petersburg is laid back in comparison to Moscow. It’s beautiful with a vibrant street life and huge beautiful old buildings. However the buildings had a lifeless feeling to me. In most cases I couldn’t even tell if anyone lived in them. No flower pots in the windows, no kids toys lying around, not even curtains were visible in most. We were told the buildings were built for the aristocracy and then turned into tenement housing for poor people (meaning everyone but high up bolsheviks). While beautiful from the outside the buildings have no elevators and little plumbing with several families sharing kitchens and bathrooms. We were also told that some of the building have been converted to more modern residences but overall the situation didn’t make much sense to me. Here’s a shot of some unfathonable buildings.

The Hermitage and surrounding buildings are a really huge arts and cultural center. We heard the “Scarlet Sails” festival was occurring during our visit; then we learned it starts right after we leave. We were disappointed as it sounds pretty fantastic but after talking to some locals we are glad to get out of town before it starts. It’s a national party in celebration of graduating students on the one hand; on the other it’s a million kids partying 24 hours a day for a week. Here’s some shots around the Hermitage and the beginnings of setup for the party.

In Moscow the living arrangements seemed more familiar. Moscow has been destroyed multiple times over the last few centuries and rebuilt over and over giving it a more modern feeling with living quarters ranging from super luxury, luxury, really nice and down to tenements. Super luxury apartments are selling at $50K/sqft and up.

We didn’t get to try the St. Petersburg metro but we did spend time in the one in Moscow. It was the best metro I’ve seen. It has some 250 stations with easy transfers between lines and trains running with a separation of seconds to a minute or two. Many of the stations are essentially art galleries (workers palaces :)). We visited a dozen stations around the city. Folks on the subway were nice to us getting up to give us their seats in 5 instances – more than a little embarrassing but what can you do. Huge variation in the riders, we even rode with a Russian guy wearing a “Make America Great Again” ball cap. Here’s a couple shots of art in the metro.

Moscow was crazy pretty. I was completely unprepared. Being a very pretty day contributed to that impression but I found the mix of old and new architectures amazing. It’s a far more beautiful and dynamic place than I expected with new construction underway all around town. Moscow looked like what San Francisco should be; or rather how I envisioned a future San Francisco when I first visited it in the sixties. Its a beautiful, lively, high tech city minus garbage in the streets, drugs, homelessness and political correctness. Here’re a couple pictures of Moscow – Red Square with construction, a couple shots of Stalin era (two of the seven sisters), and the modern skyline.

I’d guess the cost of living in either of these cities is about half of Cardiff. I was expecting food to be foreign and strange but that hasn’t been even close to the case so far.

I’m writing theses notes from the train and as I see more of the country pass by I can tell these two cities are huge outliers. Our guide told Moscow has the highest density of billionaires for any city in the world and is the most expensive city in Russia. That may well be but comparing these two cities to what we’re currently seeing falls apart as many of the things you can get in Moscow and St. Petersburg simply aren’t available in these places at any price.

Yes there’s a lot of projection and speculation in the above but those were our first impressions. Moscow and to a lesser extent St. Petersburg and probably this whole trip are going to take us awhile to digest / internalize.