Getting Connected in St. Petersburg

Our first big challenge was buying new SIM cards for our phones so that we could text and call locally as well as grab some internet. Fred had researched the options and decided on the MTC brand.

We’d noticed that making our way around wasn’t trivial.  Virtually all signage was in Cyrillic.  I know about three letters of that alphabet.  We also knew that knowledge of English was scarce, complicating our search.  Our secret weapon, the cell phone and its navigation apps weren’t working very well for some unknown reason, so we wanted a little assistance.

The staff at our hotel were both helpful and not.  We had two – actually three – misfires; first they directed us to a grocery across the street.  After finding an English speaker, we established that they don’t sell anything like SIM cards. Next, the bellman carefully described a shop just down our side of the street, located between a luggage store and something I couldn’t quite make out.  We trod down the sidewalk, turning back when we reached the Metro station.  The bellman was quite disbelieving when we failed our mission,  and he offered to walk us down to the store.  We’re feeling pretty dumb at this point.

With the bellman in the lead, we get about halfway down the block before he pulls up short in front of an empty storefront.  The shop had closed just in the last few days.

Try, try again!

We located an MTC store a few miles away and called a Yandex  car – the local Uber – and were dropped off in front of the street address.  Hmm. Well kinda.  Addresses are denoted as address blocks, not pinned down to a particular doorway.  It took us some time to sort out where the MTC entrance was.  Once there, despite the lack of a common language (other than technical terms like ‘SIM’) we were able to purchase two SIM cards and pay for them with Apple Pay..  The clerk helped us install them and do a pair of test calls between the two, and voila!  We are connected!