St. Petersburg, Russia

Where to start, where to start... How about the Cyrillic alphabet. It's been an adventure trying to figure things out here in Russia. The alphabet is very different but at the same time the sounds are very similar. It's sort of like substitution cryptography. If you learn what each character sounds like, many words will be familiar once you sound it out. For example, looking for an internet cafe, we had to find the word ИНТЕРНЕТ. And check out these crazy characters: Б, Г, З, Ф, Ж, Э, П, Я, & Ю.

I'll have to write later about Moscow since we're now in St. Petersburg, or St. Petes as it is seems to be called locally. This place reminds me of what the White City might have looked like at the Chicago World's Fair, except more in pastels. Peter the Great definitely had a love for all things Roman and Greek. The buildings here could have come straight out of Rome or Athens and I've seen it aptly called the Venice of the north. There are canals everywhere, minus the gondolas, but it still has that touch of Russia. It's quite a show of opulence but it's a great city to just walk around and see what it has to offer. If only it were a little warmer. We thought we'd still catch the end of summer before the cold really set in but it has been quite cold since we arrived. At least it hasn't rained as much as the weather forecast showed.

We took the overnight train to St. Petersburg from Moscow but today we're taking the express back in the afternoon, which is 5 1/2 hours instead of 8. We'll spend the weekend with our friend, Emily, with whom we're staying in Moscow and then we'll fly out on Tuesday. I'll try to write more about Moscow when we're back there.