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Hello,
Today is my third full day in St Petersburg, and I feel as though I'm finally getting the hang of Russia and everything that goes with it. I've spent the last couple of days wandering around trying to get my bearings. I'll admit, the first day I felt very dazed and confused and very homesick. The Russians or at least 'Pieters' came across as really unfriendly; nobody speaks English and my attempts at reading Russian from my phrase book were not well received. They also have a habit of not altering their path when they walk down the street, and I spent most of the first day diving out of the path of determined looking Russian women.
But yesterday went a lot better. I've now learnt to read Cyrillic, which makes navigating around and finding shops etc a lot easier. I've starting walking like a Russian, which is actually really fun and I've even made a few people dive out of my path. I still look like a tourist - all the Russian women are incredibly thin and glamourous, striding around in skinny jeans, stilletoed boots and fur coats, then there's me shuffling around in my baggy waterproofs and ski jacket with rucksack in tow.
I've wandered around a lot and seen some of the sights. St Petersburg really is an incredible city, there is so much beautiful architecture and every building is adorned with gold, marble and amazingly intricate carvings. I have taken many pictures :)
Last night Laura and I had dinner at a small Georgian restaurant, and I finally had my first taste of real Russian food, which was very nice and surprisingly quite similar to Indian food. We found a bar afterwards called Liverpool which had a band playing Beatles songs. We found an English person in there too. And a crazy Russian who idolised John Lennon and kept thanking me for my country and for John Lennon!
Going to the Mariinsky Theatre tonight to see the opera - yes, very cultured aren't we - then Sunday night it's the train to Moscow.
I hope everyone is good, I'm still feeling quite homesick and missing everyone so some emails would be nice....
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