What it can be like...
...to travel underground in St. Petersburg
by Sonja Perklén
The Palace square in St. Petersburg
In October 1985 my sister and I went to St. Petersburg (Leningrad in those days). We were very excited about it as we had understood the architecture in the city would be something like beautiful Helsinki, the capital of Finland, but so much larger and more splendid. And indeed, splendid it was, the city of St. Petersburg.
Money is something of shortage, and all the houses being owned by the Soviet Union and not by the people, had not been looked after for a very long time. There were, however, exceptions. Building work was carried out and new, large buildings were growing up at the outskirts of the old city heart. Many of the great Palaces had also, recently been renovated.
When we went to visit, we traveled in a group and
moving around on ones own was rather limited. The program
was also tight. Our native guide spoke perfect Swedish
while the bus took us to the different sights. After
having been to the Winter Palace and seen just a few of
its 
many
magnificent artworks, I wished we could have stayed
longer to get a closer look at it all.
Photo shows the convent that never became a convent but a school for Leninists.
On the second day of our stay our bus tour around the city would end after lunch by bringing us to one last sight and then back to the harbor and the cruise ship. There was, however, one thing my sister and I definitely did not want to miss out on while in St.Petersburg and that was something not scheduled for the visit. We wanted to travel the Underground! We had heard so much about the clean and beautiful undergrounds of Russia and wanted to see what it would be like, for ourselves. We decided to leave the group after lunch, miss out on the last sight and make our way back to the harbor on our own - by underground...
We were somewhat
short in time as we needed to be back in time for the
cruise ship's departure. So off we hurried on our own,
map in hand and found our way to the nearest underground
station. We would only need to travel two stations, but
the distance between them was rather long so there would
not be time enough for us to get back by walking.
The Isaac Cathedral
We paid our way in, a ridiculously low cost, and took the escalators far down underground. When standing by the foot of the escalators we were met by lots of different tunnels leading to alternative routes and it suddenly dawned upon us we didn’t know in which direction we were to travel. Looking around we also realized all the signs were written in Russian! As long as we had been on the ground our map had been very useful because all the street names were written in "normal" letters, but now we found ourselves staring at some scribbling without the slightest of meaning to us.
I suspect we must have looked very confused staring at
those signs with our map in our hand because suddenly
three young schoolgirls appeared before us and said
something not understandable to us in Russian. We tried
English - they shook their heads and shoulder. We tried
Finnish - they shook their head and shoulders - we tried
French, German even Swedish for communication. They kept
shaking their head and looking really happy, laughing.
Well, we were in a hurry and needed to get back to that
cruiser ship, so my sister picked up the map and started
pointing. First down on the floor and then on the map at
the point where we knew we were. The girls seemed to
understand but had a somewhat different opinion on where
we were. They started arguing with one another over the
map with all the street names written in - for them - not
understandable letters. After quite some time they
eventually nodded their heads and agreed that the point
my sister had shown on the map was in fact he place were
we were. They were really having great fun and I was
starting to get nervous about time. Would we also be able
to have them understand where we wanted to go? My sister
had a go at it. She put her finger on the spot where we
were and dragged it up to the place were we wanted to go.
The girls got excited again and started arguing, laughing
and pointing in all different kinds of directions in the
tunnels and on the map. Our understanding was that they
had different opinions on which tunnel they would lead us
to. Endless time seemed to pass while they were talking,
but in the end they made up their minds and signed for us
to follow them. Somewhat puzzled we did and I asked my
sister if she really thought they had got the message.
She said we had no choice but to follow if we wanted to
get back to that cruise ship in time, so we followed.
The largest department store in St.Petersburg
We would never had found our way by ourselves. The girls in front of us, turning around once in while to see if we were still following, lead our way through tunnels, up stair, down stairs, through grand halls and in the end stopped in the middle of a wonderful, large, marbled hall. Very confused we also stopped, not understanding why. All of a sudden large gaps opened up in the marbled walls and people started moving in and out through the openings. The girls started frenetically to push and point us towards one of the openings and we quickly realized this was actually the underground train and the marbled hall was the platform! We got the message and hurried through the opening to find ourselves on the train. Doors closed and we waived the girls good-bye before the marbled walls also closed.
Two stations and we left the train. Back over ground we found ourselves exactly where we had planned, near the harbor. What an exciting journey that had been. It was well worth the trouble and uncertainty. We got to see the underground, which was just as marvelous as we had heard, but - did we feel ashamed thinking back, we never got a real chance to thank the girls for being so helpful!
This page was last
updated 1998-02-01
© Sonja
Perklén
http://hem1.passagen.se/nightwin/nondoggy/stpeter/stpeter.htm