white nights

Last night Jonathan and I decided to undo all our hard work getting over jet lag by staying up super late to experience the White Nights. After last week, the days are starting to get shorter (they’re already less than 20 hours, sheesh), so we figured we’d better jump at the chance.

The big event during the White Nights is the nightly raising of the bridges. As you may or may not know, St. Petersburg is set up on a series of rivers, hence its nickname of “The Venice of the North.” The biggest of these, which runs through the center of town, is the Neva. In the summer, at night, the bridges over the Neva are raised to allow large ships to come in. This happens around 2:00 AM and they close again around 5:00 AM. Since in June it’s bright enough at 2:00 AM to watch this happen, people come out and toast the bridges as they raise and generally frolic and have a good time. It’s THE place to be.

So last night, we decided to take part in the festivities. We left our home around midnight and set out to get downtown. We walked to the nearest Metro station- Metro being the subway system. Because of all the rivers and such, St. Petersburg has a high water table, so for subways to work successfully, they have to be very deep underground. Consequently, St. Petersburg has the deepest subways of any city in the world. The Metro escalators are crazy, you can’t even see the bottom of them from the top. They have lights inside that look like old-fashioned street lamps, and ads all over the place. I would’ve taken a picture, but there are signs up saying you’re not supposed to, and what with the festivities, there’s a lot of police around, so I figured I wouldn’t risk it. (Yet. I’ll attempt to get a picture in the future. )

The Metro is extraordinarily cheap- something like 50 cents to ride. We got our tokens and took the escalators to the bottom. The waiting area for the trains is very interesting- it’s just a big hallway with what look like elevator doors every few feet. No windows or anything- you can’t see the train coming. But eventually you hear it, and all the doors open, and they’re lined up with metro doors, and you hop on. It’s best to know the number of stops until you get off, rather than hoping to see signs- there won’t be any- and forget trying to understand what the conductor is saying.

We took the metro one stop, which was a fairly long ride, and got off on Nevsky Prospekt- Nevsky Street, that is. Nevsky is the main thoroughfare in town, with lots of shopping and 24-hour stores and monuments and all kinds of things. The Times Square of St. Petersburg, really. We got a little turned around getting off the subway, but figured out which way we were going and started toward the bridges.

Scattered among the local shops is the occasional bit of Americana, such as Subway, which is extremely hard to write in Cyrillic and ends up being like 8 letters- something like “CObBAEI,” which is a hoot. Also entertaining is KFC, which they call “Tsiplyonuk Kentakki,” literally, “Chicken Kentucky.” Mm-mm!



Anyway, we reached the end of Nevsky Prospekt, where museums and monuments and palaces begin.

Here’s an archway we walked under- note the clock, it’s almost 1:00 AM.



Here’s Jonathan with the General Staff building…



And me with the Hermitage.



Here’s a wide view of Dvortsovaya Ploshchad.



Eventually we reached the river’s edge, which was already starting to get crowded with sight-seers. We decided to try to go to the other side of the bridge- it was about 1:00 AM and it wasn’t supposed to go up until 2:00. Keep in mind- if you’re on the wrong side of the bridge when it raises at 2:00, you aren’t getting back until it goes down again at 5:00. You’re just stuck. But, we thought we’d take our chances. We got most of the way across and took some pictures- with film, so y’all will have to wait until I get them developed (and learn how to say “scan to CD” in Russian). As it neared 2:00, we figured we’d better high-tail it outta there. As we got back to our side, the police stepped out into the middle of traffic to put up barricades. The streets were packed with cars- I’m sure there’s a crazy traffic jam every night of people trying to get back. Well, we saw some people who missed out by mere seconds. Guess they were stuck for a while!

We ran our way down the side of the river until we found a spot where we could see. The bridge started to rise and there were many “ooohs” and “aaahs.” Also, this whole time, there were fireworks going off. Different bridges raise at different times, so every few minutes there were fireworks in some part of town.

The bridge halfway up… can you feel the excitement?



Fireworks and fountains...



The fully raised bridge, with boats starting to come through.



Apparently another way to see the bridges raise is from a boat... you can rent out private boats (with a driver) to putter around on the river and watch from there. Which is why, ironically, when the bridges finally go up, most of the “ships” that initially go through are small enough to go under the closed bridge anyway.

So, once we’d admired the view sufficiently, we decided we needed a snack if we were going to make it home without falling asleep. We found a great place called “Kofe Haus,” or “Coffee House,” as it were. There are a lot of places around the city open 24 hours, even on our street, which is immensely handy. So at about 2:30 AM we went in and had some pastries and coffee. Earlier in the day I’d been explaining to Jonathan that I’m willing to make a fool of myself, linguistically, if I’m around total strangers, ‘cause who cares? But trying to speak Russian in front of him makes me nervous, because he’ll remember. He talked me into order and sure enough I made a complete fool of myself. I misunderstood what he was directing me to say, and rather than saying “I’d like a cherry danish,” I told the waitress that I AM a cherry danish. Which was awesome. At least she didn’t laugh at me. Also awesome was the Kofe Haus’s mascot of sorts, “Micter Dabl Kapuchin,” or, Mr. Double Cappuchino.



After a snack and some caffeine to perk us up, we headed back to the Metro, only to find it was closed. Oops. Apparently even during the White Nights, the Metro doesn’t run 24 hours. I can’t understand how all the thousands of people who were out by the river got home or to their hotels or whatever. But, we decided to hail a cab. Two things: First of all, if you just stand there with your arm up, anyone will stop to offer a (paid, of course) ride. Private cars will sell themselves as taxis for extra money, which isn’t always particularly safe. So, you have to make sure you actually see an official taxi coming before you wave. Then, once one stops, there is no set rate. What you do is, tell the driver where you’re going, and then bargain on a price before you even get in. Jonathan successfully negotiated a steal of a ride home, and in we crawled. I was very impressed that the taxi driver was able to keep his car running; every time we came to a stop, it sputtered and choked, but managed to go again. Leaving a trail of black smoke behind him, he got us home in one piece, even testing out his English now and then for fun.

We got inside and crawled into bed around 4:00 AM. Which is pretty ridiculous, but I did manage to sleep for 8 hour straight for the first time since we’ve been here. Yay!