World Cup 2018 diary: Wonderful steak, a magnificent metro system and vodka… so far, so good in Russia
It's been an entertaining time in St Petersburg already for our Drivetime presenter after he touched down in Russia with the talkSPORT team
The talkSPORT team have arrived in Russia to bring you unrivalled coverage of the 2018 World Cup and our presenter Adrian Durham will be revealing all from behind the scenes throughout the tournament. It's been an entertaining time for Adrian and the gang already. Here's his first diary entry...
So far, so brilliant in Russia with talkSPORT. Flew in to St Petersburg on Saturday, had an evening looking around the town and having a meal, and then Sunday was a whirlwind of a tour of the city.
On this trip for the first few days with me are my producer Emma, Goughie of course, and talkSPORT’s football editor Dave. We all get on very well so what could go wrong?
On Saturday night we headed into the centre of St Petersburg for a meal and to discuss plans, only to find it was very busy and most restaurants were fully booked. Brilliant.
Eventually we found somewhere with magnificent steak, but they didn’t seem to have a clue what vodka and tonic was. So I just had to do a straight shot of vodka – when in Rome and all that. You may have seen the video on Twitter...
What you don’t know is that I haven’t had vodka since I was around 16, and for a guy who hasn’t got a huge appetite (or tolerance level) for spirits that aren’t gin, it was an experience. I’m OK, and I do always recommend drinking responsibly.
We ended up checking out several bars on Rubinstein Street, one of the best areas of St Petersburg, until the early hours, meeting several locals, two of whom told us there is no racism in Russia, there would be no problems at the World Cup, and that ice hockey was just about as popular as football in Russia. All good information - we’ll see how right they are.
It was a great night and St Petersburg has a wonderful vibe about it. Eye-catching architecture and some beautiful views. Dave quickly became obsessed with the Black Books Bar, based on the TV show. Needless to say, he’s massively into Star Wars as well. Watford fan.
The taxi home was eventful. The guy spoke no English, told us it was 22km back to the hotel (it was 3km in the real world) and played his awful music full blast at 2am as he raced like an F1 driver through the streets. We steered him in the right direction, but fans coming to Russia should watch out. Apart from him, every taxi driver has been fine, so just be cautious, that’s all.
Sunday we met up and took the metro to the wonderful new space age St Petersburg Stadium. Little known fact here: I am a student of metro systems around the world. I love checking them out, their origins, the mapping, the history of the maps, experiencing them and reading about them. Who knew?
I'm pleased to report St Petersburg’s metro system is clean, simple, efficient and air-conditioned. Not quite as brilliant as Washington DC’s metro, but up there with the best. And I thought the escalators at Dupont Circle were big, well they’re dwarfed by the ones at Vasileostrovskaya station. I’m told Moscow’s underground is spectacular – I head to the capital next week. Guess what I’ll be doing at the first opportunity. Stand by for a metro update #MetroBore.
The stadium was nearly ten years late, and massively over-budget, but it is awesome. It’s right by the river, and with the sun out and a cool breeze, it was beautiful.
First game here is Friday when Morocco take on Iran. Also playing here in the group stages are Russia, Brazil and Argentina, and Germany are set to come here in the round of 16 if they top their group, while there’s a semi-final and the third place game here as well. Nice place, it’s even got a helipad.
We quickly picked up our FIFA accreditation for games, stadia and the fan parks and headed into town to check out the market. Russian dolls are still very, very popular. And that’s an understatement. I bought a Putin one, with dolls of Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Stalin and Lenin inside. As one joker on Twitter said to me, the problem with Russian dolls is that they’re full of themselves.
After interviewing a Scotsman and a Brazilian, we headed to the vodka museum. All of those things can be heard on Drive Monday from 4pm live from St Petersburg with Goughie and myself.
That was followed by checking out Brazil making easy work of Austria in a friendly, with Neymar scoring a stunner, and all of a sudden the size of England’s challenge was put into perspective.
I like Gareth Southgate a lot, and I like the look of this England side. But Brazil were on another level today…
Check back to marvelbet369.com next week for another installment of Adrian Durham's 2018 World Cup diary.
talkSPORT will be with listeners all day and all night at this year’s 2018 FIFA World Cup™ with over 800 hours of World Cup content and all 64 games live across the talkSPORT network.