Observations

I continue to be surprised but just how seldom I hear foreign voices in St Petersburg. Fair enough the Russians don't exactly welcome tourists with open arms; it's still more a case of "you come if you want, but don't expect us to do anything for you". This probably explains why so many visitors here choose coach tours, and a reason that aside from clusters around the main attractions it's rare to hear foreign tongues being spoken. Even still in the likes of the Hermitage there's not really so many foreign tourists. Russians still seem to constitute the vast majority of the visitors. It's quite a contrast from the likes of London where you less likely to hear English spoken than a multitude of other languages around you. It's rather changed my attitude towards fellow foreigners too. While in Western Europe coming across a fellow Brit would be an event of so little interest you'd not even bother acknowledging them, here if you hear anything that's not Russia it's suddenly quite special, and it's certainly spurred me on to speaking to fellow backpackers in the hostel. Speaking of which, even the hostel isn't exactly overflowing. In the dorm I've been in for the past few nights there's typically been only four out of the ten bunks occupied. Given that the summer weather is here I'm surprises there's not more.

It's often said that the trends of the UK are a few years behind those in the UK. I think the same can be extended to Russia too, only with an added magnitude. I've noticed quite a lot of inliner skaters here, which while being popular in - when? - sometime in the 90s I guess at home, they largely been disappeared from our streets now. Mobile phones while pretty popular when I was here last year and now the accessory to be seen with, and shops selling mobiles are absolutely all over the place and I'm guessing they have yet to reach the saturation point we've come to in the UK, where everyone who wants a mobile and has got one so it's more a matter of upgrading than attracting new customers. Don't think for a moment that Russia is behind the times with it's mobiles either; on Nevskiy Prospect, the main shopping street and the place where all the beautiful people like to be seen, there's no shortage of the lastest mico-thin Motorolas or MP3 playing Sony-Ericssons.

However while technology is moving on apace the same cannot be said of Russian haircuts. I actually made the deliberate of decision of going to the barbers just before I set off, so I should manage without a trim until I reach Japan. Now you may not regard Japan as having many haircuts we'd aspire to, but believe me it's a different world to what's on offer here, especially with men's hair. While it's true that some Russian women still carry a proxide blonde mass hair in volumes last seen in the UK during the Thatcher years, men's haircuts here are just completely without any inspiration, and that's by my standards which are pretty low! I don't know whether there's a shortage of decent barbers or whether tastes just having progressed from the Soviet days of functional but dull. No, for me I'd much rather ending up with a Beatles cut in Japan than what seems to be the standard gents hair cut here!

St Petersburg despite it's glorious Imperial facade is smelly. This is due largely to the traffic of which there seems to be a constant barrage of on some roads, and should you try to cross at a crossing without traffic lights and you come to realise just how busy some of the roads can be. The thing is, while I've walked down some clogged up London streets there wasn't the same smell and feeling of pollution in the air. Here a number of people in the hostel have commented on being bunged up, and I wonder if it's got something to do with the number of Soviet era Ladas that continue to ply the streets. Heck, for all I know maybe that cleaner fuel the likes of BP goes on about in its adverts really does make a difference. However I also suspect that Russia doesn't follow the same rigourous requirements for MOTs and emissions testings that we're used to. If they did then perhaps much of the country's traffic would find itself grounded, and especially the less well off Russians who continue to run their ancient Lada Rivas. If memory serves there was something in Germany about the banning of the Trabbis on the grounds of its horrendous emissions, although I think it might have also been the case that some special dispensation was made in what was East Germany due to the number of people still running them. Consider this a national exemption then! That said, it makes me wonder what I've yet to encounter in the likes of China, where they've got all those factories in addition to the spiralling levels of car ownership. Maybe the key is to try the "wash me" test. That is, to try to write wash me in the muck that's accumulated on a vehicle. I reckon you could manage it with some success here, but I hate to image what's yet to come!