Russian fast food, blue plastic bags and alcoholic translation sorrows

Firstly, apologies- such excitement over the previous few days has led to neglected blogging. I shall recount the weekend in this post, and catch up over a couple of posts.

Saturday saw a staggeringly early start by my standards as my dad and I attempted to flag down a mythical tour bus which navigated the city. Despite the lack of a discernible stop or station, we hit the right place at the right time. Suddenly, and surprisingly, I should mention that Russia appears to have become rather cold - hence, we completely ignored all of the stops and stayed on the bus because of the excellent heating (but mainly the audio guide, obviously). During said ramble, another excellently surreal Russia moment passed us by as a bloke wearing a full tracksuit rode past on a horse. This is in the centre of a major city, on a bridge. Normal rules just don't really apply here.

Anyway, having been on the bus for a fair while, we hopped off at the Aurora. GCSE history nerds will get a touch excited at this point. If you're not one of them, have a little web browse- it's probably the most famous Russian ship of all time and still somehow is yet to be officially decommissioned, meaning the 110 year old ship is still a legitimate member of Russia's navy. Of course. Again, much of the information inside was in Russian but was interesting all the same!

This was followed by a trip to the Russian museum of political history. I like museums, you see. Here, we had to wear blue plastic bags on our feet and the museum café served lemonade which was a radioactive colour and had a label which looked suspiciously like it said 'ammonia'. Whilst drinking this, I was treated to disco music, deeply relevant to the surroundings.

One more highlight of the day- a café which mooed as we walked past proved simply too tempting. A beef stroganoff ensued, which was immensely satisfying. However, this was to be rivalled by an incredible hamburger from an establishment known only as 'killfish', the following afternoon. I don't know either. Russia's answer to burger king was very tasty, to be fair.

Sunday was a bit lazy, in truth. As well as eating, there was some more eating and drinking at kriek, the Belgium sourced beer house, and more than some drinking at a dubious piratical outlet with the excellently-translated name 'aboard attack'. With no Russian menu to hand, I pointed naively at a picture of some beer on a cardboard advertisement. Little was I to know that this advertisement was along the lines of 'buy three large beers, get a bottle free'. I only realised the error of my choice as the waitress brought out a plethora of alcoholic beverages, and so I resolved that there was but one sensible option.

As a truly polite English gentleman, I refused to complain, and drank it all. 7.5% stuff goes to your head quickly, it seems...

Grandeur

Spent most of the day at 'the hermitage' and still barely saw a quarter of what it had to offer by my reckoning. If there's anywhere in the world you could call a shrine to excess, it's this building. Consider the room in which there's a clock made of a golden peacock, cockerel and owl which plays musical harmonies, and isn't even nearly the centrepiece of the building and you might begin to get the idea. You need to experience it, if there's one thing I could recommend from the entire city (Although on a minor point, the owl component of the clock is a bit rubbish, seemed like the designer just got a bit bored). There's also a bit of monet, van gogh, cezanne, and some other arty stuff.

Like I said, the scale is mind boggling.

I'll stop harping on about it now because I have to mention the belgian place we stopped at for dinner. Over 100 varieties of beer, good food and service and HALF-DECENT MUSIC. The significance of this cannot be understated. I had some wonderful beer brewed by monks and some less impressive beer purely because it had pink elephants on the advertisement. Rookie error.

A couple of parting notes: it's starting to get rather cold. Should have seen that one coming. Also, I love the fact no one or vey few people here speak English. It's strangely liberating not to have people instantly flick to your wavelength, even if it does make certain scenarios a little bit more difficult (purchasing toilet paper proves a struggle).

Until next time, dasvidaniya! (I can't do Cyrillic alphabet, a multitude of apologies)