Free Walking Tour with Denis

On Sunday morning at 10:30, I stood punctually at a meeting point where free city tours were supposed to start. I was curious to see if this was really the case... Somehow, I feel like you can't take what is written at face value as much as in Switzerland when you are abroad. But I was proven wrong;). Denis, a atypical (as far as I can tell so far) Russian a bit older than me, was already waiting and welcomed me kindly. We started the tour with four people, including two warm-hearted Dutch people who were pushing their bicycles (they traveled to St. Petersburg with them!).

It was wonderful to learn so much interesting information about the city in such a mixed and interconnected community. For example, I learned that during the Soviet era, all the churches were destroyed or repurposed - one famous church was used as a potato store and another as a museum. Or, during the Second World War, St. Petersburg also experienced terrible famines because the city could only be supplied with food through an ice road in winter (so they ate everything - from cats and rats to boiled leather shoes and even cannibalism)... Or, that during communist times, a factory worker earned half as much again (150 rubles) as an engineer (100 rubles) - because "manual labor" was worth more.