Public Transportation in St. Petersburg

[Editor's note: this week is a bit crazy school-wise so nothing too exciting going on. My professor who was in the hospital emailed us for the first time in 2.5 weeks to tell us we have a week to write a paper and do a bunch of reading. Of course this is totally doable and if I was in the Penn mindset, complaining about this would be laughable. But this is Russia, where students don't actually expect to have work or even really go to class until exam time.]

The Saint Petersburg public transport system consists of buses, trolleys, trolleybuses, and the metro. Everyone who doesn't have a car (including me!) relies heavily on public transport to get around the city. 

If only it was this empty all the time...

1. Be prepared to squish. If you are taking the bus anytime between 8am and 8pm it will probably be crowded. During час пик (chas peek = rush hour) it will be beyond crowded. Every single seat and all available aisle space will be occupied. Sometimes the doors won't close, and someone will have to be persuaded to voluntarily get off and wait for the next one. If you are taking the metro during rush hour, it will even be a struggle to get into the station. Huge crowds jostle just to get in the doors, through the turnstiles, down the loooooong escalators*, and finally into the subway cars. Either way, you will get used to being awkwardly shmushed up against people you don't know and who probably smell funny.
2. Try to have exact change. As I've said before, Russians love exact change. The кондукторы (conductors) are usually middle-aged women who spend their entire day riding on the bus or trolley collecting fares and checking cards. Most forms of transport cost only 19 rubles ($0.63) although the metro is more expensive, at 22 rubles ($0.73). But if you try to pay for one passenger with a 100 ruble note, they'll usually give you a glare. Also trying to rummage through your purse can be really awkward when there's not enough room to reach your bag. The metro obviously doesn't have conductors, instead there are people who are paid to sit for hours on end in a box at the bottom of the escalators. They're probably there to look out for terrorists or something. But if you run down the escalator too fast or do anything to displease them, sometimes they'll yell at you.
3. Don't expect to keep your seat, if you're lucky enough to get one. It is assumed that young people will give up their seats to elderly babushkas, children, and pregnant women. All of this is fine as long as it's not super crowded. But when a babushka carrying pungent raw fish she just purchased at the local market forces her way through the crowd only to stand expectantly next to the seats at the front of the bus and glare until someone stands up and is forced to find a place to stand and something to hold on to, your act of altruism may make you feel a little resentful.
4. There are no schedules -- be prepared to wait, or run. Some type of regular schedule for buses and trolleys is fabled to exist, but it's never followed. Sometimes the bus you want takes forever to come. Sometimes it comes just as you're about to cross the street and you run to get it, because who knows when the next one will come? Don't worry if you look stupid, even the girls in 5 inch heels run for the bus. Sometimes the bus schedule is posted on a pole stuck into the sidewalk, with a list of all of the places it stops at. Unfortunately this is usually too high to read, rendering it completely useless.
5. Get ready to walk anyway. Both bus stops and metro stops tend to be very far apart, usually a 10-15 minute walk at least (usually a lot more for the metro, since the metro system is so small). Even if there's a bus that in theory will take you where you need to be in under 15 minutes, sometimes traffic is so bad that it just makes more sense to walk anyway.
   
   
   *I'm serious, the escalators in the subway here are ridiculously long. The city was built on a swamp and they have to dig really far down to find earth that's solid enough to support a subway. Therefore the subway escalators are a great exercise in shamelessly staring at people going the opposite direction. Thanks a lot, Peter.