The Sound of Silence

Here are a couple of photos from the graveyards of Alexander Nevsky Monestary in St. Petersburg. I am standing next to the grave of Fyodor Dostoevsky, arguably one of the greatest Russian novelists of all time. It was something of a challenge to get there since it required us to take the underground. Having used underground rail transport countless times in various cities, I figured I'd give it a go. Rather than trying to figure out how to use the automatic ticket machines we opted for the much less difficult option of the teller window. Tickets purchased and validated we descended the escalator to the trains. And descend we did. I'm not sure of the actual distance we traveled but we were on the escalator for a good fifteen (15!) minutes. That's the easy part from there you need to be able to decipher Cyrillic in order to determine what train to take. So after navigating an underground maze whose clues are in a foreign script you get on your train. Then if you don't know Russian you'd better be counting stops because there are next to no signs indicating which station the train is alighting at and the announcement made on the intercom is nearly impossible to hear or make sense of. Luckily, I was having a good day and got us to the right stop without making any errors. It was quite the adventure. The snow-covered cemetaries were beautiful on the bright winter day and many Russian notables were burried there. If you like a challenge and aren't afraid of getting lost or not being able to communicate with the locals, then the St. Petersburg metro just may be the place for you.