Guest Writers

A Digital Nomad Guide to Saint Petersburg,Russia

Written By: Fyodor Ivanischev | Published in Snixy Swiftz Travel Blog on 19 Aug 2017

Saint-Petersburg, the beautiful European Northern Capital of Russia! The city of bridges, canals and white nights! In this article I will provide some useful info for the visitors of the city. This is a subjective article, remember that. Even though I was born and lived there for 20+ years, I still don’t know everything about it and it’s constantly changing =]

Firstly, I would definitely recommend you to check the links I list below. They have very comprehensive info and I don’t want to repeat it here.

https://nomadlist.com/saint-petersburg-russia - a nomadlist page of the city. There you can see ratings for different cities, like price, fun level, safety, etc.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Saint-Petersburg - a Numbeo page of the city. There you can see what does it cost to live there.
http://wikitravel.org/en/Saint_Petersburg - a Wikitravel page of the city, where you can read its history, see the places to visit, etc.
https://hoodmaps.org/saint-petersburg - a Hoodmaps page of the city, where you can see what kind of people live in different areas of the city

https://goo.gl/5aXzLJ - my own map with regions where I would recommend to live.
https://goo.gl/H9Gs7N - a quick link to Foursquare showing the best places to visit in Saint-Petersburg.
https://foursquare.com/cbrwizard/list/places-for-remote-work - my own list of places to work from, might be useful for diginal nomads.
https://goo.gl/52XJT6 - my document about places to work from.

When to Come

Weather-wise
If you want to have the most fun (subjective), as well as feel comfortable - get in the warm period May-September. Ideally, June-July. In my opinion, you should come in the Summer to experience the White Nights, when it’s not dark during the nights, which is very beautiful and great for partying!

If you want real winter - you might try January-February, which is usually the coldest in the recent years. If you want real, hardcore winter - consider visiting Yakutia instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakha_Republic ;]

Event-wise
The 3 largest events in SpB are:
День Победы (Den Pobedi, Victory Day) on 9th May with parades, fireworks, history, etc; https://goo.gl/8Z4yQa

Алые Паруса (Alie Parusa, Scarlet Sails) on ~20th June: a students festival with huge fireworks, a beautiful show with a gorgeous huge ship sailing through the Neva river. https://goo.gl/3YMiFg

Новый год (Noviy God, New year) - 31st December. The whole city celebrates that with fireworks, drinking, dancing, fun. There is an Uncle Frost parade, snow fights, etc, everybody is relaxed and very, very drunk. https://goo.gl/0dhN2r

Other than that, Saint-Petersburg is quite an active city with a lot of events happening every week. Unfortunately, most of them go in Russian, but you can always find a cinema showing movies in English, for instance.

Where to live
Make sure to check the maps I provided above. In general, I highly recommend to live close to the city centre, where you can see the city’s beauty. The centre is safe, there are many cafes, restaurants, museums, cinemas, shops, art galleries, etc. If you’re on low budget, living outside the city center is okay as soon as you live close to the metro station.
I’ve drawn an approximate map here https://goo.gl/JRs6rv
In general, the city is safe. Obviously you might get into trouble if you wander around during the night somewhere in the industrial areas, but in the centre you will be all right.

How to rent Unfortunately I don’t know much, but Airbnb and Booking work there. Also there is an active and welcoming Couchsurfing community and a number of hostels with hotels (both cheap and expensive).

Get Around
The city has got a more-or-less good transportation system. There is a metro/subway (which has many beautiful stations by the way), buses, trolley-buses, etc. Uber works there, as well as its local rival Яндекс.Такси - Yandex.Taxi (same quality, sometimes cheaper). Local taxis are slowly dying and they might not be trust-worthy, so I wouldn’t recommend using them.

Note that the city has got drawing bridges during the night, which means that you can get blocked on an island for the night if you don’t manage to escape it [: The best website to check it is this http://razvodka-mostov.ru/ (Russian, but very frequently updated).

What to Do
http://wikitravel.org/en/Saint_Petersburg#See
In short:
-Museums, cathedrals, palaces, fountains
-Architecture
-The bridges
-Opera, ballet, theatres
-Roof top tour (great views!)
-Canal tours (you will see many of them on Nevskiy Prospekt)
-Bars, clubs
-Cinemas (there are some with English audio)
-Hipster festivals and art spaces
-Shopping (Russian currency is low now)
-Visit Peterhof http://wikitravel.org/en/Peterhof
-Swim in river Neva or in the Gulf of Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Finland (be careful though :S)
-Other events http://kudago.com/spb/

What to Eat

http://wikitravel.org/en/Saint_Petersburg#Eat
https://goo.gl/yGNMBR

If you want local cheap food, try out Теремок (Teremok), the блины (blini, pancakes) chain. Also I recommend to visit https://goo.gl/2F5vrv to try пельмени (pelmeni, dumplings).

For super cheap and atmospheric soviet-style donuts try this Pyshechnaya out https://goo.gl/HUKE7t

For atmosphere check this out https://goo.gl/kucxat

For an expensive high quality go (for example) here https://goo.gl/GzqMzf

For other cuisines check out Georgian (Caucasian) places https://goo.gl/yB6AHd

There is also a ton of places of any type of cuisine: Japanese, American, French, Indian, Chinese, Thai, etc.

Where to Work

https://goo.gl/urfvEb
https://foursquare.com/cbrwizard/list/places-for-remote-work
Overall, the internet is quite fast and cheap. In the city centre there are a lot of cafes with good wifi. There are also the so called time-cafes (or anti-cafes), where instead of paying for drinks you pay for the time spent there; there you usually can work as well.
If you want, you can buy a local sim card (like Билайн, Beeline) with high speed 4G with good coverage.

Unfortunately, I don’t know a good coworking space in SpB. The one where you can reliably work from is called Welcome and is located right on Nevskiy avenue, but I lacked the community there. https://goo.gl/tMwq8F
Please post your coworking findings here ^_^

Here are more coworking spaces https://goo.gl/52XJT6

Thank you for reading! If you have any questions/suggestions, feel free to leave comments, write me on Facebook or on email cbrwizard@gmail.com, have fun!

P.S. You can read my blog on instagram https://www.instagram.com/cbrwizard and also check out the game I’m working on called PicsWars.io at http://picswars.io/?ref=ctsulianah

A Digital Nomad Guide to St.Petersburg, Russia
Written By : Fyodor Ivanischev

Fyodor Ivanischev

Game Developer. Writer. Digital Nomad. Human Being

Fyodor Ivanischev is a friendly guy from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. He travels around the world in a digital-nomad way, while working on his own video games and writing a blog. He used to be a web programmer, but decided to quit his job in order to pursue his childhood dream of making video games.

You can read his blog at https://www.instagram.com/cbrwizard
Check his first game PicsWars.io at http://picswars.io/?ref=ctsulianah and receive latest updates at https://twitter.com/cbrwizard!