I recently got a text message from a Moscow-residing American friend on his first trip to St Petersburg: "The streets are clean, there are no passed out vagrants anywhere and the woman at the Produkty smiled at me! What kind of strange alternate reality have I stumbled into?" Bizarro Moscow: it seems to be a common impression. Every time I go to St Petersburg I start making plans to relocate there from Moscow. The relative serenity, beauty and ease of life is such a refreshing change from the unwelcoming, over-populated and ugly Moscow. But on my most recent visit to St Petersburg "ya byl v shoke". It has become even more foreigner friendly than I remembered...

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