My first time in Russia! I was so excited! To get to know the city I opted for a boat cruise and one of the many fortress/church options, visiting Peter & Paul Fortress. Our beautiful guide Xenia, who spoke very good German, told us that St. Petersburg has 300 days of rain per year. We had 2 sunny warm days in this city. So many large apartment and official buildings, so many palaces, so many churches. Prunk überall. The boat cruise on the Neva river was wonderful and I could get a good overview of parts off the city, that consists of 42 islands. We also sailed by the Katharinenpalast with the huge Eremitage (Hermitage), impressively large.
Immigration by the way went quick and smooth. The officer asked for my job, as I had a Cyrillic stamp in my passport from the Antarctic base Vernadsky. He wished me “Guten Morgen” and I replied with “Dobre utra”. I just wish I could finally use my sentence это первый раз – it´s the first time. Now I cannot use it anymore ever, as I have been to Russia.
I wanted to travel to St. Petersburg for years, but only when I speak Russian. Which I cannot yet… working on it! I need to be able to speak to people, communicate, ask questions, get answers. And read, of course, which I can. It helps for a lot of easy and internationally similar words. But not for any longer texts yet.
