Saint Petersburg and Selenograd

One week ago I went to Saint Petersburg for the weekend with two other volunteers from Moscow to visit the volunteers in SaintPetersburg. I was really excited, because I had heard so many good things about Piter (Russians usually refer to Saint Petersburg as Piter). We went to Piter by night train, as this is the cheapest and most useful way to travel in Russia, because you usually save a lot of time. When we arrived in Petersburg we were picked up by our friend, who lives in the city centre of Petersburg right at the Nevskij Prospekt, Piters high street and also Putin’s favourite street as I was told. We then started a tour through Petersburg and this city is really really beautiful. A lot of old buldings in the historic center, various bridges, and the city is beautifully situated at the water which reminds me of Amsterdam and there are so many sights to visit. Among others we have seen the Mariinsky Palace and the Church of the Saviour on Blood. On Saturday night we also went to a party, but unfortunately we slept to long on the next day so we could’t go to the famous Hermitage museum, which is the biggest art museum in the world. Hopefully next time. On the way back to Moscow I only slept one hour, because it was unbearably hot inside the train. We arrived at 4 o’clock and had to wait until 6 o’clock at the station to take the first metro train.

Maybe as a contrary example to Saint Petersburg I’ve been to Selenograd, a suburban municipality of Moscow. After a 40 minute train ride one employee at the Holocaust Center, the other Holocaust Center volunteer and I arrived in Selenograd. The name does actually mean „Green City“, but I have to say that I’ve never seen an uglier and greyer city than this. Of course I haven’t seen everything of the city, but what I’ve seen was just pure uglyness. There were only huge skyscraper apartment building and big streets. Everything was grey and dismal. Our job in Selenograd was to visit a school and to present our organisation and teach pupils about the Holocaust. Surprisingly, it was a really great school, which organsises several events (much more than my school in Germany) and is very very active. Also the school children seemed to be very interested in the topic. Some school girls told us that they hate studying German, but they liked that volunteers from Germany and Austria came to their school.