Here in St. Petersburg it takes a long time to get anywhere. There are too few roads in the city to accomodate all the cars here and the city itself covers quite a large area.

I am currently staying on the north-eastern side of the city. When I leave the apartment it takes me about five minutes to walk to the tram stop. From there depending on how long I have to wait for a tram or trolleybus it can take from anywhere between 10-30 minutes to get to the metro stop. Once I'm on the metro I don't have to worry about traffic jams or delayed trains (The SPb metro is VERY efficient) but it still takes between 20-30 minutes to get to the city center.

Yesterday I went to a big shopping mall on the outskirts of St. Petersburg with my GREAT friends Sanya and Lena.(I was looking for swimming trunks...more on that later.) It took about an hour from I left my apartment to get to the metro stop where I was supposed to meet Lena. After that we had to ride on the metro to the very end of one line and then get on a shuttle bus which took us to the mall (which has one of two IKEAs in the city, by the way). That took about another half hour.

By the time the three of us left the mall it was rush hour and it took us almost a full hour on the shuttle bus to get from the mall to the metro. From there it took me another half hour to get to the center where I was supposed to pick up my registration documents. After finding out that the registration bureau didn't yet have my documents, thus essentially making my trip to the center a total waste, I got back on the metro and traveled another half-hour to the south-west corner of the city to go visit some other friends. After exiting the metro, I got on a mini-bus and rode on that for about fifteen minutes until I finally arrived at my destination.

At the end of the night I got back on the metro and rode on the same line (through fourteen stations) until I got back to the north-east side of the city. That ride alone took about 45 minutes. After that I got on another mini-bus (Mini-buses cost a few more rubles but there are a lot less trams and trolleys late at night so the mini-bus is much more convenient) and rode that for a few minutes and then I finally got home.

All in all, I spent somewhere between 3.5-4 hours yesterday using the St. Petersburg public transport system. And I didn't even leave the city.