The major projects I set out on today where to get a refund for my now superfluous train ticket from Moscow to St. Petersburg. This involved a 30 min metro trip followed by some random wandering around the huge Moscow Train Station looking for the proper window to make the return. My friend and I accomplished this successfully and for our efforts got a nice refund of 2695 rubles (about 90 USD or enough money to last me about 2 weeks of food). This accomplished we moved on to the real important activity of the day, shopping.
But first a little background information. In Russia I have been drinking much more tea then I do normally. This is both a product of the excellent tea available here and the need to boil water from the tap before it is drinkable which are both favorable to tea consumption. To that end i have been in the market for a tea kettle, and we thought that the "Mega Mall" and its IKEA store would be a good place to look. So off we went, another 30 min metro ride and then a 20 shuttle bus ride later we where there. The Mega Mall is St. Petersburg's answer to American malls, and it is in fact almost an exact replica of an average US mall, with the exception being it lacks Macy's style department stores and instead has large home stores at the ends.
Long story short we were unable to find any tea kettles in the entirety of IKEA (which had the exact same products and layout as US IKEAs). We however did have an excellent meal at their restaurant, Swedish Meatballs near Sweden! And we were able to acquire nice tea kettles next door at the "Ashan gupermarket" which is basically like an enormous Wal-Mart. On the whole the Mega Mall experience is about as close as one can find to a normal American location in the city. The food court is in fact almost all American chains including Baskin Robbins, Subway, Sabarro, MacDonald’s and the local version of KFC. All of the chains are called the same names, except their titles are often hilariously transliterated into Cyrillic characters.
Overall not a very full day on paper, but with over 3 hours spent in transit to just 2 destinations in addition to quite a bit of walking it was a full and tiring day!
Tomorrow we plan to go to the Kuntskamer! More explanation of this to follow, stay tuned..
(and my 20th "Russia" Birthday is now just a month away!)
But first a little background information. In Russia I have been drinking much more tea then I do normally. This is both a product of the excellent tea available here and the need to boil water from the tap before it is drinkable which are both favorable to tea consumption. To that end i have been in the market for a tea kettle, and we thought that the "Mega Mall" and its IKEA store would be a good place to look. So off we went, another 30 min metro ride and then a 20 shuttle bus ride later we where there. The Mega Mall is St. Petersburg's answer to American malls, and it is in fact almost an exact replica of an average US mall, with the exception being it lacks Macy's style department stores and instead has large home stores at the ends.
Long story short we were unable to find any tea kettles in the entirety of IKEA (which had the exact same products and layout as US IKEAs). We however did have an excellent meal at their restaurant, Swedish Meatballs near Sweden! And we were able to acquire nice tea kettles next door at the "Ashan gupermarket" which is basically like an enormous Wal-Mart. On the whole the Mega Mall experience is about as close as one can find to a normal American location in the city. The food court is in fact almost all American chains including Baskin Robbins, Subway, Sabarro, MacDonald’s and the local version of KFC. All of the chains are called the same names, except their titles are often hilariously transliterated into Cyrillic characters.
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| IKEA "For your home" |
Tomorrow we plan to go to the Kuntskamer! More explanation of this to follow, stay tuned..
(and my 20th "Russia" Birthday is now just a month away!)
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