St.Petersburg. Second impression.
I continue to savor the city. It is so great to be able to speak the language, not only it open me the way to numerous Russian-only concerts and theaters, but without it I'll really miss the humor of the advertisements, the cleverness or often silliness of street signs, grafitties and borrowed names of various products. For people who don't speak Russian all this charm will fall, so to speak, on deaf ears.
It's a bit like a treasure hunt for me, the last time I was there 15 years ago and now I am equally happy finding things that I remember since than, and also finding those that I don't remember or just weren't there 15 years ago. The star among the latter is certainly the Ressurection Church (Spas na krovi). It's probably the most interesting church I ever saw, both inside and out, yet the Communists wanted to blow it up, as something that doesn't have aestetic value. The destruction was scheduled for 1941, so ironically it were the Nazis who saved it, albeit at a horrible price, which in addition to 50 millions lives, also included the deliberate mining and blowing up of the palaces in Peterhof.
As for Spas na Krovi, after the war the church was used as a warehouse for vegetables, until in 1970 communists in a sudden change of heart sanctioned the restoration works. They continue to this day, and the church was closed until 1997 - the reason why i didn't see it during my previous.
Of the negative things, Zara noticed that people on the streets usually don't smile. I guess before I was mostly looking over the heads at the architecture, so I can't say how facial
expressions of peterburgers compare to faces of people in other cities, yet Zara certainly has a point. The unusually high proportion of people here has very grumpy, worried looks. It's especially true of the older people those from 50 and up, but not limited only to this age group.
The people who are particularly likely to be grumpy are of course
salesmen. I think Russia is endemic in this respect, I've never seen yet anther country where salesmen continue to be unhappy even when you make a purchase. Sometimes however the service is exceptionally good. Yet there seem to be no middle ground, if service is anything else than EXCEPTIONAL, it must be the old Soviet style. Again, the older salespeople are more likely to be rude and grumpy - I guess their years of experience count. But it is strange, that they haven't been yet phased out by the new generation. The representatives of both sales schools are often employed by the same shop.
There are also many other things here which are done up the backside, if you know what I mean. I think my experience of purchasing pants deserves to be described in detail. Actually the first part, the purchasing was rather smooth. Except for the delay caused by the grumpy cashier who accepted credit cards only with passport and pin-code.
Rather redundant precaution if you ask me, but it's an usual credit card policy here. The sales woman however was very friendly and helpful, she even personally walked me through the maze of staircases to the alteration room where I was supposed to get free trimming. As soon as she left though, the things instantly became soviet style, as the somewhat irritated tailor told me that she can't do the trim until the next week. Any attempt to reason with her were unsuccessful, so I turned around and left to return the pants.
Now comes the most interesting part. If somebody just gave you pants and took your money, how difficult should it be for the same person to perform the reverse transaction 5 minutes later? Here is the process:
1. The grumpy cashier needs to call the manager
2. The manager requires that you write an application
(zayavlenie) for return. The application has to be written by hand and in a very specific way, so the manager helpfully tells you exactly what to write. At the same point you also write the receipt, that you got back the money.
3. Than the manager takes your application in her back office and prints two forms - one is the confirmation that you returned the merchandise, another it the confirmation that she accepted the goods. For some reason you need to sign both forms.
4. Then you take one of the signed forms, together with the handwritten receipt to the Administrator, located in the opposite part of the building.
5. Once the Administrator is off the phone, she checks your receipt for grammar and other mistakes and signs it after you rewrite the parts that she deems unsatisfactory. I.e. in our case Zara had to replace "den'gi vozvrasceny" with "den'gi polucheny" ("returned" with "received")
6. Once you have the signature, Administrator tells you where you need to go to actually get the money. In our case we had to go to the first floor to the jewelry section.
Sounds too complicated? And this is a private capitalist venture, I am afraid even to think of the burreaucracy within the government
establishments