A Russian Abroad: February 2016

No matter how many times I fly, I still get butterflies and that flutter of excitement as I walk through the gate to board the plane. Even just looking at the departures board puts a smile on my face - I could go anywhere.

People who know me well won't be surprised to hear that within my first seven hours in Düsseldorf, I managed to find a great little Italian restaurant (the head chef was, of course, Italian) where I could finally satisfy my craving for a big plate of spaghetti ai frutti di mare. It was delicious. To be fair, in a country known for its meat and chips, as a pescatarian, I was left with little choice... It was so good that I went back twice more during my three day trip. (Although the second time I was devastated to find out they take Saturdays off and resorted to calling my mum for consolation.) I did generally find Dusseldorf to be quite a business-orientated, commercial and industrial city, and this was reflected in the architecture, food, bars, and restaurants on offer - not hugely interesting, quite touristy and generally over-priced. A fellow pianist I met there convinced me to be brave the streets of Aldstadt - known as Germany's 'longest' bar - and join him for a beer on Saturday evening. Despite the stag parties and out-of-towners who had popped into town to gorge themselves on cheap beer and cheesy music, standing on the streets surrounded by Europeans (without a hat or scarf!) with 1,50€ beer in my hand reminded me of being on the streets of Porto last summer and brought a huge smile to my face as I remembered how much I love being in Europe.

This didn't last long.

The next day - a Sunday - and it was drizzling as I spent three hours walking around with a bag full of music trying to find an open cafe with wifi, having forgotten that in Europe everything is CLOSED on a Sunday!

[I have been spoilt with the 24-hour Spar on my doorstep and array of 24-hour bars and cafés in St. P.]

Three days of quaintly-coloured houses and excessively clean residential streets and I was ready to move on.... to Vienna. A city where a ticket to the opera (3€) cost me less than my matcha chai latte (3,20€); it really is the capital city of music and I, unexpectedly, fell completely in love. The city is beautiful, not too clean and not too dirty, not too big and not too small. I was aware of the history and culture in the city but I was expected the place to be much more dated and stuck in the past - more similar to historical rich cities I have visited in Italy. The history is without a doubt there yet the place feels very current, dynamic and vibrant. A very fine balance between history, present and future, which is normally hard to get right but felt effortless in Vienna with the mix of charming little cafes, shops, and bars. Not in the mood to make friends at the hostel, I revelled in taking a few hours each day to just wander around even if, surprise surprise, I did get lost a few times, having to rely on GCSE German to try and find my way back. The fact that most street names don't fit onto one line on the road sign is surely a sign that they are just too long?!

Somewhat on the expensive side for my limited unemployed-self's budget, I ate most of my meals buying food from supermarkets and I was baffled that lots of food shops seemed to open at 7:40am - very specific. I guess they decided that 7:30am was just that little bit too early... and thus I was deprived of my croissant breakfast as I made my way to the airport on the third day for the next stop on my whistle-stop music conservatory tour. Feeling destitute without my croissant, I was faced with the sad truth that public transport wasn't my best friend in this city either - another one to add to my list. The strength needed to open train doors on the metro often resulted in squeezing through the tiny gap on one side I had managed to create or someone taking pity on me and opening them for me and making it look ridiculously easy. The transport issues didn't end there. Round 2 of Alex getting on the metro going in the wrong direction when I was already cutting it fine for my early morning flight to Hamburg resulted in arriving to the airport two minutes before check-in closed... Though without running or even breaking into sweat. All in good time. Actually - I'll give you a tip - it's the most efficient way to travel. You get the best choice of seats if the plane isn't full - a guaranteed full row of seats on every flight. And I went straight through security and straight through the gate. No messing around. Even had time to douse myself in Chanel on the way - a surefire way to make friends on the plane.

In Hamburg, I was depressingly reminded of the English winter I had tried to escape. Wind and Rain. Although this city felt the most down-to-earth and studenty of the places I had been to so far - not only due to the fact that it seemed perfectly acceptable to light up a joint with friends in a bar. Having made it to my 11am meeting, I realised that I had perhaps taken my habit of 'who needs to prepare - I can just follow my gut instinct' one step too far as I had absolutely no idea where my hostel was, no wifi and no map. Three hours of walking around and few pointless metro rides, while desperately hoping my gut traveller's instinct would steer me in the right direction and I managed to find a hotel who found and printed directions to my hostel (4km away - I wasn't even close).

Dancing and chatting with friends into the early hours meant I was still up to see the most beautiful sunrise and so I decided to wander down to the harbour for the fish market to try a local Fischbrötchen and to get a proper view. I sat on the harbour wall eating my fish sandwich while thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of over-enthusiastic fruit sellers trying to bestow their fruit baskets onto unwilling tourists, while other stall holders rushed around trying to save their produce from some unannounced high levels of seawater, consequential flooding and seagulls trying to scrounge anything that just out of their reach.

The spectacular sunrise aside, I admittedly didn't fall in love with the place as I had done in Vienna and the sound of Berlin Calling was too strong to ignore...so I packed my bags and paid the full 8€ for the 3-hour bus ride to Berlin - with a huge grin on my face the entire way. Despite the excitement of visiting new places, it can also be tiring and difficult and there is nothing like returning to a place that you know and already love.

There is a growing worry that Berlin won't be the same place is it now in a few years times. The unbelievable freedom for self expression and the mix of cultures - facilitated by the relatively cheap cost of living and the sheer amount of space - that you find there is hard to encounter elsewhere. Yet, this has the potential to create a vicious cycle, which means that such a wonderful, enlivening place can also be its own worst enemy. As a place becomes for 'trendy' and popular, more people arrive, prices go up, and, ironically, the base of artistic (and often poorer) people who create the quirky culture and social 'buzz' can no longer afford to live there.

Thinking about this as I walked through the streets of Berlin on my way to meet friends, who had also moved to Berlin a couple years ago for that very reason, I began wondering about where the "energy" or "feeling" of a place comes from. To what extent do preconceptions play a part? Is it the difference between knowing about a place before you arrive and arriving completely blind on a whim? Or is it based on certain characteristics you already look for in any place you visit, regardless of any prior knowledge or understanding? How is it you can feel the energy of the place within a few days of being there? I will always try to give any new place a few days of exploration and open-mindedness and I like arriving without knowing too much in order to form my own impression, although a little bit of history and a quick glance at a map definitely helps to get my bearings. However, I am often quick to judge and I can normally tell pretty soon if it's the right place for me. All of which brings me to the conclusion that it's hugely based on the people. The people who create the way of life, who create the shops, bars, parks, museums, buildings, industry, music and art.

Not one to make life easy for myself, I was constantly on edge keeping an eye out for ticket inspectors on the metro in the hope of saving a few euros so that I could buy more cheese to take back to Russia. Without a local sim card and no way of contacting people I needed to meet, it was slightly frustrating to find that lots of places seemed to have gone against the trend of the last few years by no longer having wifi for customers to use and some places even banning laptops. Shock horror they want people to actually talk to each other...! But with my own set of keys to my friend's apartment, I felt completely at home...even knowing which exit to use getting out of the metro - a undeniable sign of a local.

And before I knew it, with my bag full of cheese and pesto, having got completely carried away in Lidl, I was back to Moscow where I strangely felt warmer than I did in Germany. (They tend to go overboard with indoor heating in Russia). A place where three people are needed to check tickets on a nearly empty train: two to block each end of the carriage while the third checks the tickets - for a train that you can only board by going through ticket barriers anyway. A place where the entrance to the metro is nowhere near the exit so that trying to get back into a station you came out of can be somewhat challenging. A place where people are running everywhere, trying to get as much done as possible, but where you realise you actually spend half your time in (and on) the metro. And finally back to St. Petersburg to find temperatures back to around 0°c, the ice on the canals and rivers starting to melt and our cat lying on my bed awaiting my return.

A xxx