Saint Petersburg

June 15–18, 2010

The sidewalks along Nevsky Prospect were already redone back in 2003 to look decent for the city’s 300-year anniversary. Now they’ve started doing the prospects perpendicular to Nevsky, they’re looking awfully nice.

The roads weren’t bad before the revolution either, they still haven’t budged under the asphalt.

A distinctive Saint Petersburg feature: cables come out of street electrical boxes in neat rows, like on a circuit board.

Another Saint Petersburg feature: route lights on trams. Each route is assigned its own two colors. You can see them from a mile away and immediately know whether or not to wait for the tram. People get used to color pairs indicating specific routes. Red and green—№ 25.

Light blue and red—№ 49. And so on.

Pedestrian crossing signs are enclosed in frames for some reason. Other signs simply hang on posts.

One of the new things that have appeared: a sign indicating the location of the nearest gas line access hatch.

Peterburggas. Tel. 764-07-83

And the most noticeable new addition: white location signs for the Saint Petersburg Vodokanal water supply system, which have been hung on all the buildings in the city.

The oceanarium is full of various exotic creatures. Photoshop-fish (the front half is that of a pike, the back—of a carp):

Putin-fish:

And fugly-fish.