Russia, the Beginnings of Sankt Petersburg
Who: Me and my friends Jasmina and Maja, backpacking.
Where: Starting in Sankt Petersburg, then traveling by train through Moscow, then taking the Trans-Siberian railway to Mongolia and later Beijing, China.
When: Started on 15th July 2010, planned flight back from Beijing on the 25th of August, same year – hopefully a different mindset.
Well, now that you know the jist of our plans I can start unraveling the story of our adventures in a bit more literary manner. We have subtitled the trip as “Pustolovščine Pikija in muc” as a friend of ours jokingly reffered to it, non-Slovenian readers and metaphore seekers fear not, you’re not missing much but an opportunity for some oversugared nicknimes. But I digress…
The first leg of our journey started by flying from Ljubljana to Prague, in a propeller plane of all things, and then switching to a flight to Sankt Petersburg the same morning. Apart from some partly early beer inspired tomfoolery and forming of internal jokes it was largely uneventful. For those considering a similar trip, the flight from Ljubljana to Sankt Petersburg via Prague cost 218 € including a quite generous student discount from Czech Airlines.
The Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg still has quite a socialist feel to it, mostly due to architecture, but also due to proverbially unenthusiastic customs officers and the usability nightmare of the immigration form. First they don’t tell you that the form exists and that it’s required before you reach the end of the line, then you have to fill it out and start all over again. Naturally the spaces for writing are so small a clock maker would suffer a nervous breakdown before filling them out. To add insult to injury, you have to put down the same data twice. Luckily, it seems, I am quite a stoic clock maker. Rant over.
On the bright side, the minibus AKA Miško, going our way was just around the corner and we were on route to our hostel before you could say: “Is the weather causing all the hotness or are the ladies here quite dazzling?”
At the Crazy Duck hostel (which is nowhere near where the Lonely Planet says it is) we were welcomed by an incredibly spacious dorm room right in the centre of the city. After a much needed shower, what followed of course was a stroll around Piter, as the locals affectionately call their city. It has a really nice vibe to it with well planned, spacious streets, water canals, illustrious churches and islands. The city was started in 1703 by Peter the Great as a part of his effort to modernise and Europenise the country which really shows. In the beginning it was largely built by Swedish prisoners of war which might explain the prevalence of Ikea furniture.
We marvelled at the architectural wonders, sat down for a beer next to the Winter palace (The Hermitage) and later for a refreshing bowl of cold Borsch. Tired from a full day of travel we half-dragged ourselves back to our hostel, somewhat time confused since there was still daylight at 23.30.
The game was afoot, the plains of Russia laid bare before us.
I’ll try to update the post with more photosh when I get the opportunity to upload them from my camera. Since I’m a few days behind reality with my blogging I’ll catch up later on the train.
Maja and Jasmina in front of our small propeller plane.
Sometimes even an airline passanger must adopt the heat preservation techniques of homeless people.
This is how light it is in Piter at midnight.
Slovenian mobile operators
I used to believe I had lots of choice in the Slovenian mobile phone operator market. How could I not, at first sight it seems there’s plenty of choice. Mobitel, Simobil, Tuš mobil, T-2, Debitel, MMobil, Izimobil, these are all operators offering their services on the Slovenian market. Well, the last three are MVNOs, operators without their own networks, so they lease them, which also means that they can hardly offer much more competitive prices than network owners and are usually further down the line when it comes to implementing new network features. Tuš mobil didn’t have enough 3G coverage, I would love to check now but the coverage map on their website isn’t working.
I started off at Mobitel where I was a subscriber since the I started using a cell phone (apart from a short stint at Vega), but I had to change subscriptions due to a change in packages. I’m an iPhone user so good data rates and bandwidth are important to me.
The Simobil fiasco
So I tried Simobil, as they had slightly lower prices and the majority of my friends were there. Network coverage was a bit worse, as were the mobile internet speeds, but nothing that I couldn’t tolerate with the lower prices. But shortly after I left Mobitel, they introduced new plans for students which equated the ones at Simobil and even bested them in terms of included data (1GB per month is plenty). The price incentive was gone, but why change for something that similar. Then I went abroad for two weeks. I took care to check out the data rates for the Netherlands and Belgium, seeing how they were waaaay to high, I opted for a package with which I bought 10MB in advance as I knew I’m going to use at least that much. I took care to always check out the used bandwidth statistics on my phone when using the data. In the whole time I went a bit over the quota, but still bearable by my calculations. Home a few weeks later, I get a bill for 180€ which of course included a lot more data than what I had used according to my statistics. Of course I complained to Simobil, first by e-mail, then when that proved fruitless, by snail mail, with no avail. At every part of the process the support staff were completely unhelpful, they didn’t bother to present any more proof beside the bill with the listing that I got at first. No logs, no bills from abroad, their own statistics, nothing. At every step of the way the basically just kept repeating that my request for more information cannot be granted and to pay the bill. The signatories on the support responses kept changing but none of them would produce any new information. In the end I had no choice but to give in as any legal course would take a lot more of my time and nerves and they are not worth it. But to this day, I get all riled up if someone asks me about my opinion regarding Simobil. I cannot stress enough that I don’t recommend Simobil to anyone, if for nothing else, because of the sheer incompetence and arrogance they displayed in my dealings with them.
T-2 fail
T-2 are new as a mobile operator, but they are already my ISP for my home fiber internet connection. While they are mostly great in that regard, their mobile operator side is a completely different story. The subscription per month is only 4€, so incredibly cheap that I had to try what’s it all about. I knew that their network is only 3G, they have only a few central areas covered, but in the rest of the country, the network is provided by contract by Mobitel. The catch is that you can’t get any data apart from calls and SMSes when hosting on Mobitel’s network. I could almost live with that if the signal wouldn’t keep dropping in buildings even in areas that are supposed to be well covered. Apart from that constant switching which had a extremely detrimental effect on my phone’s battery and my nerves, MMS sending to multiple recipients wouldn’t work and I constantly wouldn’t get SMSes sent to me. Sometimes they appeared later on during one of the switches to Mobitel’s network. Anyway, it was a complete technical fail and I gladly escaped after only a month and a half.
Mobitel
So now I’m back at Mobitel, which turned out to be the only decent mobile operator suited to my needs in Slovenia. It’s only been a bit more than a month since I’m back but so far the experience has been good. Recently we went hiking to Stol, a mountain just a bit over 2000m in altitude. With surprise I noticed a good 3G signal and decided to do a speed test. Here’s what I got:
Mobile bandwidth Speedtest on iPhone at the altitude of 2236m.
The view from Stol, the very same place where the test was conducted. Line of sight is pretty good.
Disclaimer: this post isn’t sponsored by anyone, nor do I own any stock in the mentioned companies. My main motivation is solely the utter contempt I feel toward Simobil and T-2′s mobile operations.
Bucarest photos
Seeing how I am writing this almost a month later, it’s clear that the day by day coverage of our trip was untenable to begin with. I sort of knew that all along, but tried to keep it up as long as I could. It would even be a shame if I were to keep up with it all the time. Just think of all the time I would spend typing on my phone instead of actually experiencing the trip. It’s sort of like the stereotypical Japanese tourists walking around with their cameras, seeing the world through a tiny LCD (OLED if they’re advanced) screen instead of enjoying it in all it’s greatness through their own eyes. Immerse yourself in the moment first, record just enough to keep the sands of time from eroding the memories, that’s my travel philosophy.
I won’t get into any more detailed descriptions and rather give you some photos which you’ve been clamoring for.
Passage in the centre of Bucarest, home of numerous middle eastern coffe & nargile places, thus a nice chillout place.
How a city as large and as important doesn't manage to get it's electricity cables underground is beyond me. It's like this all over the place.
Police union on strike in front of the Romanian Ministry of interior (ex-communist central commitee building). Who's watching the police when they go on strike. Well the gendarmerie of course.
Currency exchange at the Bucarest train station ripping off IBM's logo. You'd trust IBM with your money why not us? Or is it more like: "We only rip off the big guys!"?
What Ceaucescu lacked in taste and compassion he certainly made up in scale.
Conversations beyond what this blog is able to handle.
Impersonating the Japanese at the location of Ceaucescu's last pre-shotinthehead speech.
EU seems to be promoting marijuana together with Pepsi in Romania. Strange bedfellows.