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St Petersburg some general comments

Beautiful city although this is – I have a few comments to make about my first impressions upon arriving here!!!

The journey here consisted of two flights – ABZ to CDG and CDG to LED – I think that ABZ and CDG are pretty easy to guess – but LED is less straight forward!!! Have you worked out how St Peterburg comes to be LED and ABZ is Aberdeen and CDG is Charles De Gaul 😉 read on!!!!

Well it happened to me – for the first time in the last six months travel!!!!! My bag did not arrive here with me!!! It remained in CDG!!!!!! This meant I had to fill in the customs form – twice for customs and then one more time for good measure for the lost property office. Now that can be just a little frustrating at the end of a long journey. But it has to be done in order to get you bag back – so you do it without question and bearing pleasant smile!!!!

So on to the hotel with only hand baggage in tow!

The car was very nice – a C Class Mercedes – very nice and comfortable for sure! As we drive back we pass lots of really nice buildings – first impression of very favourable for sure!

The we arrive at the hotel to check in ! The staff are VERY pleasant and do not seem to surprised in the least when I explain that I have no luggage, other then my back pack that is! Dental and shaving kits are provided as if this is just routine practice for recently arrived international travellers!!!

There is a TV in the room – flat screen of modest size – very good. All the channels seem to be in Russian – not so good!!!! I did eventually find the BBC World news channel which made me feel slight closer to home 😉

I was very interested to hear the hot news about South Africa’s recent expressions about about Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe’s rule over it! An interesting development – I expect that we have not head the last of that just yet!

Yes I did find Friends on one channel – light relief I thought – then realised that it was overdubbed in Russian too! Some how it did not seem natural for those words to come out of the friends mouths!!! I wonder it the Friends humour really work here in amidst the Russian culture!

Mosquitoes – in St Petersburg!!!! now that was a surprise to me !!!! The windows have secondary glazing in place with labels which warning that leaving the windows open in the evening might result in a invasion of the dreaded Mosquito!! or perhaps a few of them!!! The hotel has thoughtfully provided and electric mosquito exterminator which can be used if needed! So I guess it must be a real problem! I have not seen one so far!

Well enough of this ramble – its time for bed now 10.30pm and still daylight outside – that is unusual too at this time of night – then we are much further north than Scotland and home 😉

PS
LED – did you forget or just know? St Petersburg used to be called Leningrad see Wikipedia for more info ! I expect that is the reason for this apparent inconsistency!