My new flat in Pieter

Some impressions from the apartment Nicolas and me share...

Our kitchen, living room, party place... I feel like Jamie Oliver cooking here ;-)


Our toilet... The wallpapers are just lovely!

The larger bedroom... reminds me of my father's hunting room!

Highlight follows highlight

It was a very sunny weekend in Pieter so I kept exploring the city, see my impressions. On Saturday I received an invitation for the first Swiss-Russian Business Summit in St. Petersburg. At this point I realized - fuck - I did not bring a suit with me... and the summit should be at the Kempinski Hotel, one of the finest addresses in Saint-Petersburg. Well, Saturday night was dedicated to a hardcore shopping session ;-) a very exhausting experience: the shopping malls are just huge! The prices high and the quality shit (or not affordable). After 4 hours of running around I found some ok suit... I expected Pieter to be a shopping paradise but I was very wrong! Saturday night a call from Andrej and Sasha (at this time still only our potential landloards): "Thomas & Nicolas, you can move in on Sunday, we will pick you up at the dorms!" Finally we had our flat we were looking for for like 3 weeks... at the most central location possible (1 min. to the Admirality, 3 min. to the Hermitage...), a very cozy apartment! Soon I will do a photo story about it... so Sunday night was dedicated to a first inauguration party for a closed circle. It was fantastic! We had simple spaghetti and wodka shots on our roof top where you can see the St. Isaacs Cathedral... ok, Monday was therefore a wasted day.
Tuesday 26.09.2006: Swiss-Russian Business Summit. Networking, chatting & participation in workshops. Of course a fancy buffet at the end. This day I really realised how much current and future potential Russian's economy has...

3 weeks in Pieter

The last weekend was my 3rd weekend in Pieter. Similar activities as on the past weekends... Friday we checked out another club: Metro Club. One of these huge, millions of floors party palaces. It was ok, well the burning Sambuca shots would have made any place cozy. Saturday I tried to get up as early as possible and checked out the park islands of Saint-Petersburg: Kirovskie ostrova and ostrava Elagin. It was a very nice day so many locals were "promener" in the parks. The most impressing experience was as we stopped at Krestovskij ostrov for a beer: There was a military band playing some classics and elderly people were going crazy. So cute... I mean elderly people have a tough time in Russia. The official pension is very low (I heard of about 30 to 100 EUR) and especially in Saint-Petersburg life is not that cheap. It was very good to see how they enjoyed themselves. After visiting the Buddhist temple of Saint-Petersburg (Дацан Гунзэчойнэй), Nicolas and me had another food adventure: grilled chicken on the street... yummy!
Saturday night finally the first flat inauguration party: Radek, Martin and Sean got a cool 3 bedroom place. The perfect party location... so of course I stayed till early morning. A less pleasant incident that happen that night was that a group of exchange students got into trouble with Russian fasiscts. Fortunately everyone is fine but we've got once again the warning not to walk around the city alone by night. Well, this is an advise one should follow in many places anyway... Sunday: The most sunny day since I have arrived in Pieter! Perfect day to see the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and the Smolny convent. The late afternoon was dedicated to chill-out on Nevsky Prospekt on the terrace of the Grand Hotel Europe (Гранд Отель Европа)...

русский язык (Russian language)

The day I arrived here it was clear that without at least some basic russian I would be lost... anyway, the main aim of my exchange was to learn Russian. Yes I know I kept telling "... you know, I speak Polish so it can't be that much of an effort to learn Russian, it is a slavic language too...blabla" Now I do laugh about myself, hehe haha!
I have like 25 hours Russian a week at the moment but still can't see too much of a progress... but I keep fighting... my teacher Xenia is such a patient person!
I can only recommend to everyone visiting Russia, learn at least the Cyrillic alphabet! Without it you are lost... though it is fun to be lost sometimes it gets very annoying after some time, trust me! Especially as from to the police to the cab drivers everyone tries hard to rip you off...

The exchange students crowd

Well, I am not the only foreign student here in St. Petersburg. Besides all the Chinese, Korean, Japanese language students there is a group of around 50 exchange students in my Master program. And as usual, there is a whole bunch of them that likes to party... a lot! As St. Petersburg's nightlife starts rather late (not as bad as Ibiza but still like 1.30am) we do have warm up parties in the dorm... cozy get-to-gether including Italian Pasta, Russian beer & wodka, French humour and Swiss chocolate!

The Russian soul

Умом Россию не понять,
Аршином общим не измерить:
У ней особенная стать –
В Россию можно только верить.

Ф. И. Тютчев (1866)

Russia is baffling to the mind
Not subject to the common measure
Her ways - of a peculiar kind
One only can have faith in Russia

Fjodor Iwanowitsch Tjutschew (1866)

Welcome to Санкт-Петербyрг

It has been now over 2 weeks that I started my adventure in the far east. This is how the city welcomed me...

But in the meanwhile the city and its people has shown me all its beauty!

I started my stay in St. Petersburg with a so called "introduction week". Yes I can imagine you smiling ;-) Well, the programme was very diverse...

• we started with a boat trip on the Neva where I took the pic above. I had no orientation and it was raining like hell so I did not enjoy that trip to much... at least our buddies took care of us in a very kind way!
• for the next 2 days introduction to some Russian culture: we visited two beer breweries... one of them (Baltika) actually the largest one in Europe, even bigger than Heineken & Carlsberg. And yes... we ended our visits with extensive degustations ;-) . As I said above it was an introduction to Russian culture not only because of the drinking but also because of changing drinking habits: beer's popularity increases dramatically in Russia. But don't worry - you still can get wodka everywhere - in millions of variations!
• Friday was dedicated to either an Hermitage visit or a trip to the Peter & Paul fortress. I dediced to go to the fortress and keep my Hermitage visits for the cold long winter days.
• Friday night first time clubbing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We went out in a huge group (like 50 people) so it was pretty annoying to get anywhere. Very sceptical we were queing in front of a shitty looking place... but then inside AMAZING Electro... Actually I haven't had any expectations about nightlife here, when then I was expecting tztztz Sovjet techno. But no, great sound, cool club and I discovered my new favourite shot: ice cold wodka on grenadine syrup and then a proper shot of tabasco! First it cools your stomach and then it burns down your throath ;-)
• Well experiences I described in the previous paragraph caused that I missed next day the trip to Petershof... what a fucking pitty, especially as it was such a beautiful day!

My first impressions...

Back to Istanbul

Before my exchange term in St. Petersburg I went back to the city I love so much: Istanbul. Spent there a couple of romantic days... eating, drinking, dancing, seightseeing and meeting friends. Many things changed but I was still touched by the strong soul of this amazing city! Istanbul I will be back soon...

Istanbul in pictures...