All subway systems are different and St Petersburg's is certainly different from others I've ridden. In keeping with posting pictures of where I live and study, I'd like to show what my metro journey is like for any curious parties back home.
First in my journey every day to school, I have a 20 minute walk to the metro station from my apartment. (You can find pictures of my walk to/from my apartment on Facebook in the Odds & Ends photo album).
If you can see on the map above, my metro station (Primorskaya) is at the very end of the Green Line on the left on Vasilevsky Island.
Escalators Down. St Petersburg's metro is one of the deepest in the world, so it takes about 3 minutes to get to the bottom or top of these escalators.
Waiting for a train at Primorskaya (Green Line)
Option 1 (Weekends): Getting off at Gostiny Dvor. Gostiny Dvor is the city center stop at Nevsky Prospekt. It's the stop you get off at for most major sights downtown.
This is what the outside of the metro stop looks like. Gostiny Dvor loosely means "Merchant's Yard." It's basically a giant shopping mall.
Option 2 (School days): Getting off at Mayakovskaya to switch lines. It is named after the poet, Mayakovsky (who we are studying right now in my literature class! Even translated into English, he's quite...difficult). I see him every day in this awesome mural.
I love the red tile of this station.
After getting off at Mayakoskaya, I walk down some stairs then down a walkway to find Ploshchad Vosstaniya, the station I need to transfer to the Red Line.
I get off at my last stop at Chernyshevskaya Metro Station, which is nothing remarkable to look at. After exiting the metro up at ground level, I walk a short ways to a bus stop where I take the CIEE van the final short journey to Smolny (a branch of St Petersburg State University where I study).
This is what the metro cars look like. Russia puts a few warnings to not cross the yellow line into the Danger Zone, but they aren't as OCD as the British about minding the gap.
This is what the inside of a metro car looks like. The seats are open benches unlike the bus-style seating of, say, the DC metro. I like it though. There's more standing room, and you never have that awkward moment where you have to scoot out of an inside seat or get up for someone sitting in the window seat.
Below is a short video someone shot walking from the Primorskaya Metro exit to a bus stop. The bus stop isn't the direction I go after the station, but it does show some Marshrutkas at the end, which are shady looking vans that are one of the modes of public transportation here. (They are also what our CIEE van looks like that I take every morning).
If you want the full experience of riding the escalator up from a metro station, here's your chance! (Granted, this video was shot on a VERY slow day. Rush hour is an altogether different experience)
