A Collage of St Petersburg

Illustration by Rebecca Nolten

In this collaborative piece, Matilda Butterworth, Sam Perren, Alex Jarvis (REECA columnist) and Sofia Johanson (REECA editor) take us on an eclectic tour of St Petersburg, passing through clubs, cat shelters, cafes and cathedrals.

Ugly Club

Winter in St Petersburg was bitterly cold. The coldest place in the city was Sevkabel Port, on the bank of the Gulf of Finland, and yet we braved it every Friday night, for through a labyrinth of abandoned warehouse buildings, behind an unmarked metal door, was the city’s most beloved underground club — and one of the strangest you’d ever encounter.

Beneath the blue lightning which occasionally crackled across the chicken wire constructions on the ceiling, with a soundtrack ranging from haunting to frantic, all manner of serendipitous encounters occurred. The faces of old friends, future friends, and people you’d once passed in the street or at the grocery store danced vaguely around you. Tall strangers in dusty fur coats and new acquaintances with endless Vogues in one pocket and a Manchester gin and tonic in the other swept past, along with DJs and models and celebrities you’d never heard of, but later would.

Visions of an upside-down Christmas tree, burnt-down candles, traffic lights, interspersed with the constant flash of someone’s 2000s digital camera. A bathroom with two toilets where you could sit on the floor and talk for an hour as a benign queue formed outside the door.

We brought in the New Year there, in the company of hundreds of nameless strangers, revelling in all of the possibility.

Tilda’s own photo.

Thankful for today

I’m Thankful for Today. Semi-bar, semi-restaurant, barely a café but offering enough coffee to warrant the cursory title. It was across the street from a restaurant apparently owned by the same company, with similar dishes and cocktails available in each. I preferred this place, though; the name alone was far more aspirational. I’d singled it out on Google maps Maps ever since we found out the location of our flat—a two-minute walk away—as the perfect location to head to if the seasonal depression ever got too much. Thanks to copious vitamin D supplements that particular brand of sadness never got to me, but ironically, I’m Thankful for Today was the location of a phone call from home that derailed the rest of the semester. That said, I didn’t hold it against the place. They did a mean avocado and hard-boiled egg on sourdough brunch, though their breaded fish and chips (read: lumps of fish in actual bread) was the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back after a remarkably tough week. On the other hand, their чизкейк для алкоголики cocktail—‘cheesecake for alcoholics’—was enough to efface my concerns. I consumed my fair share of them during the winter. 

Alex is currently writing a column for the Cambridge Language Collective on the various cafes they frequented during their time in St Petersburg, read the first instalment here.

Alex’s own photo.

Cat Shelter

While I was in St Petersburg, I spent my Sundays at a cat shelter near Kirovsky Zavod metro station. It’s quite far from the centre, and the neighbourhood is mostly made up of twenty-storey concrete blocks of flats. One flat has been converted into a cat shelter by a woman in her sixties called Natalya, who, each time I arrived, would usher me hastily into the building each time I arrived to get me out of the cold.

After making sure I’d bashed all the snow off my boots, she would open the door to her flat, where four rooms were connected by a dark corridor with creaky floorboards. All the rooms had some remnants of their original purpose, a fridge in one, a wardrobe in another, but mostly they housed three or four cats, who every week covered the floor in a layer of fur that I’d spend about half an hour sweeping up. Another half hour for refilling their food and water bowls, and then an hour or so of playing with the younger ones while the older ones sat on my lap and tapped my shoulder if I stopped stroking them. One even liked to sit on my shoulder like a parrot.

When I felt I couldn't put off studying any longer Natalya would walk me out, and if I hadn’t brought a hat, she wouldn’t let me leave until I agreed to borrow one of hers. Natalya was reserved but maternal, and even with my stilted Russian we slowly became friends through chatting about the cats. Because of those chats my most fluent moments in Russian soon became phrases like ‘that one just wants a cuddle’. 

When the invasion started and I left Russia, the first time I cried over the war was when I got a voice note from Natalya in a subdued tone, saying that everything was just so sad, and that she would miss me.

Sam’s own photo.

The Church of the Spilled Blood

The cupolas and intricate facades of the cathedral were all I was ever able to see, the interior eluding me on account of my lack of appropriate documentation. I walked around it on my nightly covid-isolation-breaking walks, past it on my one trip to the university I was supposedly attending, and right up to it on my last day in the city. I had decided to attempt entry because I had finally secured the flimsy piece of paper that decreed that I was no longer a threat to the public health of St Petersburg and could enter whichever public venue I pleased. I queued for the ticket-desk in the bitterly cold winds, armed with two passports (British and Swedish, in case the salesman had a preference), my spravka, my visa, my vaccine passport, and four weeks-worth of Russian speaking practice. Preparing myself for a difficult argument with the surly ticket-seller, I mentally banked up phrases and words which I could use to argue my case to enter this building which had clamoured for my attention since my arrival. The sun bounced off the golden cupola and the eyes of peaceful saints gazed upon me in anticipation from the dazzling exterior walls.

“Russian passports only,” barked the ticket-seller.

I tried to argue, producing the many envelopes and pieces of paper that lay in wait in my fleece-lined pockets. It was useless, neither of my national identities were acceptable to him. Perhaps it was due to lack of sleep, recovering from Covid and food poisoning (a dreamy combination), or desolation over leaving the city that I had felt sure was the Year Abroad location of dreams – but I burst into tears and rang my mum, who was far more concerned about my upcoming bus journey to Helsinki than my inability to get inside a pretty church.