St. Petersburg, Russia

St. Petersburg. There i am. In Russia. I can't believe it myself. First Impression : totally different and somehow strange. I really left Europe, its Russia. Everthing is a bit divided, there are a lot of rich people around, but the ordinary houses and people looking rather poor for normal standards. All Cafes and Restaurants are posh but to expensive for the normal folk and find a ceap eat is somehow difficult. Acommindation is extreme expensive but travelling half the world on russian railways is dirtcheap.

Whatever, i arrived on early sunday morning with the nigthbus from riga and hopped direct on an the metro to CC St. Petersburg north. Eventually i found that place and the church untill somebody told me : "Calvary? oh they meet sometimes here as well" ...hmmm. Nice. The other nice thing was that it keept raining during my whole stay. In a huge city which spread over serveral islands its NOT nice to walk all day in rain. But the City is beautiful ! There are a mass of wonderful buildings all over the City, with the magnificent Hermitage, the St Peter and Paul Castle, all this huge churches - the city is shining from Gold on churchtowers, doors, decorations and even the covers of streetlights ! Just come up with the "goldenes Dacherl" in Innsbruck ;-)
But the highlight for sure was then the Hermitage, one of the greatest Art collections in the palace of the Tsars ! With an huge collection of Picasso, Rubens, Gaudin (this work shy guy who lived in polynesia - sympatic to me :-)and serveras other that i just forget, as well as Egyptian, asian, european antics, Paintings from the middle ages, Items, weapons, coins, mobilar, even more paintings, together with an amazing building and old rooms from the tsars, everywhere covered with gold ect ect. I walked around the building for 4 hours, saw then the window from the other side and realizied that is was just the inner court - in fact it was just the half of the building.
So, you see it was great. But the greatest thing was : it was free for students. Well, you think im not a student? .... tztztz