machina

As my Russian teacher told me, "We have no culture of driving in this country." Boy, am I finding out what THAT means! Before I started driving, I asked several ex-pats what their experiences were in the car. The piece of advice that sticks in my mind is to pay attention to the arrows.

Last Friday, I started driving. Another teacher (Kat) and I were longing to go SHOPPING. While there's no Target here, there is a nice, large grocery store called Окей (Okay). We set off with high hopes after the worst of the Friday night rush hour had passed--at about 7:30 p.m. At the end of my block was a street that I thought was a one-way street. Kat saw this arrow on a sign and said I could turn right.

Of course, it WAS a one-way street...and not the way we were going. After several helpful drivers calling, "Devochka, devochka, you're going the wrong way." we found a wider space and made a 157-point turn. When we'd turned around we were face to face with a militsia car--lights and sirens full blast.

We gulped and then had a sort of guilty relief when the militsia jumped out and grabbed a guy on the street corner. He took him around the corner, so we weren't able to see what was going on. (Thankfully.) Meanwhile, traffic backed up behind us.

A tour bus was directly behind us. The driver, after waiting a bit, got out and tried to move the militsia car!! He apparently couldn't drive a stick because it stalled immediately. So, the driver recruited some other drivers and pushed the car out of the street. We fled.

(**note: If you're seeing question marks instead of photos, my apologies. Click on the question mark to see the photo. Did I put too many photos on for blogger to handle? Anyone?)





It turns out, these are the arrows to which you're supposed to pay attention.








Now, in all fairness, the signs here are confusing. It's as if no one
scheme has been decided upon. This, clearly is a "no turn" sign.










And this, clearly, is a must-turn sign.









So, putting our experiences together (and noticing a large barrier to our left) we can deduce that this means me must go straight and may not turn left. Easy, right? We can logically deduce what these signs mean. No problem.




Problem. What, exactly, is this supposed to mean? The blue arrow says turn right...but it has the same sign that we saw earlier that meant no-right-turn. Having walked and driven on this street, I can tell you that you may, indeed turn right here.






All this deduction and second guessing makes familiar signs like these a relief.





Signs are only the beginning of the challenges of Russian driving. There is a very loose concept of lane-age here. Look at this picture. It's right by the Field of Mars. (Turn right to go to school across Troitsky Most, continue straight to the vet.) Looking at this sign, and at the lines in the street, how many lanes would you say were here? Two? HA! You obviously have NOT driven in Russia. This is a trick question. The correct answer is: as many as you can fit. I was driving here the other day when there were FIVE lanes of traffic just scraping by each other. The only good thing is, when it's that congested no one is moving very quickly.

In the city centre, there are very, VERY few streets that allow left turns. Since St. Petersburg is a. not built on a grid, and, b. intersected by canals, this makes driving QUITE a challenge. Okay, I find it more than challenging. I find it ridiculous. Although you cannot turn left, a U-turn is permitted nearly everywhere. To go shopping we cross a bridge and, instead of turning left, flip a U-turn in the middle of the next block and then turn right.

This is one of my favourite signs. It' on the way home from the vet. As you can see, the left lane must go straight. The right lane may either turn right OR turn right and then fill up three lanes of traffic after making U-turns.








But, I've safely managed to get to Okay three times. (Twice in the rain...and my car seems to have a leak that causes the wipers to short out and NOT work...but only when it's raining. Helpful.)





And, just for Kerry (so post a comment, KERRY, so I can take this down. It seems wrong to have this information posted publically... though I'm not sure why...) here are my RED diplomatic plates!

(edited to add: thanks for the comment. Photo is safely deleted.)