Useful, strange, exiting and important facts about Saint-Petersburg
Saint-Petersburg is a really strange and interesting city!
It was artificially founded by our tsar Peter the 1st in the year 1703, against the nature and notwithstanding the regular floods on the swamp as everybody knows. At the same time we know that there already were some villages and fortress where especially strong and crazy people lived.
The wall of Peter and Paul fortress to protect the city was made inside the city, like the heart, not outside. That was the idea – in case of war the main forces would hide inside the fortress in the heart of the city and would be protecting the place from there. The fortress has really good location and military position it is on the island from which you can see our main river Neva in all the directions. But during numerous floods it got completely under the water. That was the reason why nobody before Peter the 1st made founded the fortress in such a good place from the military point of view.
Saint-Petersburg stands on the sea but turned its back to the sea. You won’t see the sea from the center of the city. There are ports, apartment houses and factories, mostly shipyards next to the sea.
Area around Saint-Petersburg is still called Leningrad region like it was during the Soviet time in the 20th century when our city had a name Leningrad after Lenin who organized the revolution in October of 1917.
The city has one of the most beautiful underground (metro) with the deepest average level in the world – from 50 to 70 meters (from 164 to 229 ft) with the deepest station 100 meters (328 ft). And one of my tours is around the metro, it is really peaceful and nice in the evening, so I would recommend to go to the metro after 8 pm if is it a weekday when it is almost empty, on weekends it is almost never empty and not so busy like in the rush-hours also. On weekends people like to go to the center, a lot of people want to drink something so leave the car and use metro. Metro starts to close at midnight, so it is better to come back before this time, it is like in a fairy-tale about Cinderella. Midnight.
We used to have at least one flood every year and one catastrophic flood each one hundred years on the year finished -24 usually, like on the 1824 and 1924. Now the we have a special construction like a set of dumbs in the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic sea to protect us.
The floods are not because of the rain or snow melting they are due to the strong wind from the sea which makes the river go backwards very quickly.
The city level is mostly the same as the level as the sea – it is from 0 to 3 meters (9,84 ft) over the level of the sea.
The majority of shops here are open till 9 or 10 pm. and open on weekends that is why when russians go to Europe they are taken aback without food and shopping sometimes, they don't have an idea that the shops might be closed on Sunday like in Spain for example. or after 6 p.m. like in Austria.
A lot of food shops and pharmacies are open 24 hours.
Banks are open till 8 pm and a lot of them are open on weekends.
Metro is open from 6 a.m. till midnight. Some stations are open starting from 5.30 a.m. till 00.40 a.m.
As for the public transport on the ground it stars at about 6 in the morning and finishes around midnight or 1 a.m. It is different for any bus or a tram. You can see the information about the time on the stops. Though if you don’t have a good eyesight it might be difficult to read, the information is written on boards which are usually hanging high enough, at least higher than the heads of people. And the things are not in English.