In Which I Draw Broad and Sweeping Comparisons

I have come to the decision that if I were to write solely about “what we did this week” there would simply be no point in updating. That isn’t to say that we haven’t been doing interesting things, as there have been interesting things aplenty, it’s just that it would be very samey. So for this post I’m just playing the role of the comparative observer.

As many of you probably know, most big cities are rife with similar qualities, and despite its inherent “Russian-ness”, St. Petersburg is no exception to this rule. That is to say there are a lot of aspects that remind me of New York. However, there are some noticeable differences and right now, if I had to choose between Petersburg and New York based solely on features of the city (and not the people therein) Petersburg would win in a landslide, even in spite of my inability to communicate with anyone without them either immediately knowing I’m American and rolling their eyes and responding to my pitiful attempts at the simplest of conversation in English, or wondering if I have suffered severe head trauma. Allow me to elaborate:

1.) The Metro: Now it’s certainly not a perfect system. There are only 5 separate lines and a few dead zones that require a fair amount of walking or bus transfers, but hey, anyone here familiar with the West Village or any part of Manhattan west of 8^th Ave. for that matter? So it’s not much of a con. The worst part is that it closes at midnight. This wouldn’t be too awful if it weren’t for the fact that all bridges from the mainland are raised at 12:30 AM and stay that way until 4 AM. If you live on any of the outlying islands (like me) this is kind of a problem, because if you’re not in that station by midnight, you’d better hope you’ve got some friends with you because you're in for one hell of a wait, and even stuff in Petersburg closes SOME time. But, that having been said, the trains come basically every 5 minutes, no matter the hour. God help you if you want to take the subway after 9 PM in NY. It also only costs about $0.75 per ride. Can you say bonus? Plus you get to ride these awesome escalators for what feels like about a bajillion miles (roughly) underground. This is because rather than being wusses and going over bodies of water on bridges, the Russians just built their system to go underneath the largest river in the city. Bad. Ass. I’d take pictures, but I can’t because the metro system is (and I am not making this up) a guarded state secret, as it is their mass fallout shelter in case of nuclear war. And in spite of all this, my cell phone gets perfect reception everywhere in the stations except when the train is in motion. My calls in New York get dropped when I'm thinking about the subway.

2.) Homeless People: As we know, the homeless exist solely to stink, pester us for money, stink, pee in public, stink, touch themselves in public, stink, shout crazy shit in public, stink, and pretend they are not going to spend the change you might throw at them on crack, booze, or crack and booze. Also they smell funny. And in NY, you can’t spit without hitting roughly 8 per block (Although it’s probably the closest thing to a shower they’d ever get). My point is that in all the time I’ve spent walking around the major metropolitan areas in Petersburg, I could count the number of homeless people I’ve seen on one hand. Literally. I have seen 3. I don’t know if housing is just more affordable, or the Militsiya are doing an incredibly efficient "cleanup" job in the 2 hours of actual night time we get per day, but either way I’ve never lived more human-nuissance free. And before you start telling me how hard they have it and how some of them are honest and can’t get back on their feet because of the cruelty of the man, or mental problems, believe me when I say, from the bottom of my heart, I could not care less. All I care about is that my change is staying in my pocket, where it belongs and can be spent on things I want (because change is actually useful here) rather than being used as a bribe to get a smelly hobo out of my face.

3.) All this talk of dirt and cleanliness leads me to my final point, which is… well, dirt and cleanliness. 5 million people live in St. Petersburg, about 4,999,999 of them are smokers (and that one holdout is most likely in a permanent coma), and yet if you walk down Nevsky Prospekt, you’ll see a discarded cigarette butt maybe once or twice per block. In New York, it would probably be easier to use them as material from which one could pave roads. The same goes for assorted litter and general crap. In spite of those “clean up NY” trash cans you see on every corner, let’s face it, it would be an improvement if even half the population ever noticed that they existed, let alone used them. I’m not saying that Russia is perfect, as no place is. My point is that if a country with a government and bureaucratic structure as backwards-assed as Russia can accomplish simple tasks of “not letting their biggest cities slowly devolve into ratholes” then what’s our excuse?

I could go on and on, but I feel like these are the most important points. Another long post, but hey, has brevity ever been my forte? More updates when more stuff happens/occurs to me.