St Petersburg in all its grandeur

Trevor Murphy is a great travel companion. Being the actor that he is, everything is seen through the romance of rose coloured glasses and there was no better city to meet him in than St Petersburg. After all, it is the home (or playground) of the great literary giants of Russia including Dostoyevsky and the magnificent playwright Chekov! And so it was that once certain medical appointments were attended to we were free to roam this glorious city and retrace the steps of those luminous minds before us.

But there is one burning question that at least 50% of my audience is desperate to get an answer to and I shall keep you in the dark no longer. Everything you may have heard or seen about the beauty of Russian women is entirely and emphatically true! In fact, when we went to the clinic I’m not sure whether the doctor thought he was seeing me for physical injury or Trevor for shock. Out of respect for my female readers, I won’t harp on, but I was to find out that everywhere I went across this vast country, beauty was before me. Truly astounding.

But I digress. St Petersburg is impressive in many respects and we did a lot of walking to take it all in. Aside from the remarkable Hermitage Museum (former residence of the Tsars), we saw beautiful parks, the famed Saviour on the Spilled Blood Orthodox Church and thanks to Trevor, the famous Palkin Restaurant. This was the place where the poets and playwrights gathered back in the day and one of the waiters was kind enough to give us a tour. We soaked it up and toasted our reunion with a fine Beluga vodka. Our nights were even more adventurous and we managed to find the coolest spots to mingle with tourists and locals alike. These days most young people speak English and we found most Russians we met to be reasonably worldly, interested in conversing with us and very friendly. The nightlife was a lot of fun and being so far north, I tasted my first real “white nights” experience. For an Australian, it is most unusual to have light outside at 11pm and then again at 3am.

It became clear that with my injury and the business of trying to get insurance, I would need to stay in St Petersburg a couple more days. But this wasn’t going to bother me at all. Thanks to the Horizons Unlimited global motorbike forum we met up with Sheldon, a crazy Aussie who’s been riding around the world for seven years! Now married and living in Poland, he still takes on some major journeys and so it was we caught up and shared stories and beers in St Pete’s. He too had insurance issues and we decided to tackle it together. Lucky Uber’s are cheap in Russia because Sheldon and I (along with his son Jarrod who was traveling on the bike of his bike for a stretch) went to just about every insurance place in St Petersburg. And always the same answer. “Not possible.” Turns out the recent mandated legislation on third party insurance included bikes, but because of the low premiums and high amount of accidents, insurers had gamed their software to reject bikes. We figured we’d try our luck in Moscow and hoped to avoid police in the interim. I also had other stuff to sort out. Found a police station to lodge my accident report. Not easy to find and not easy to lodge, but they came round eventually. I also had to find a motorcycle store to replace some luggage which was easy enough, but a replacement for my spare tube destroyed in the bag from the crash wasn’t in stock. Yet again I would have to the run the gauntlet without a backup. (A flat tyre continues to be my biggest fear on this journey).

After four days, Trevor had to return to London (vowing to learn Russian for his next visit) and I was lucky to meet Natalia who was an art director for a theatre and a part time classical radio host. Natalia took me to a traditional Russian restaurant and the food was fantastic. As always, meeting locals is very enlightening and the consistent sentiment is that Russians are well educated (reading Dostoyevsky in high school for example), somewhat reserved at first, but are very sociable and friendly once they get to know you better and very much aware of world affairs.

By the 7th, I knew I had to get going. The back still caused a lot of pain, but I was lucky that riding did not contribute to this. My mate Atul was due to fly in to Moscow that night to meet me and my extended stay in St Petersburg had me oh so close to crossing paths with good friend and priest, Fr Nev Yun from Brisbane. He was on a Nordic cruise and due to arrive that evening, but sadly my prearranged plans meant I was already behind schedule and now having to undertake the ride to Moscow in one big day instead of two. I’ll admit I was nervous about getting back on the bike, but it’s no different to coming off a horse – you just have to get back on. Sure enough, once in the saddle things felt like normal and I settled in for the long journey to Moscow.