St Petersburg. This Is Normal. – A Book by Olga Sverchkova
Notes from Someone Who Knows This City Far Too Well
Live in St Petersburg long enough, and almost nothing surprises you anymore. Almost.
The rain doesn’t fall so much as fly. A single word can reveal whether you belong here. A magnificent nineteenth-century entrance may contain stained glass, a bicycle with no front wheel and a food delivery rider searching for what was once a count’s study.
In June, the city forgets to get dark. At night, bridges rise across the Neva just when someone in the car has confidently announced, “We’ll make it.”
None of this seems particularly unusual once you’ve lived here long enough.
This is St Petersburg. And this is normal.
St Petersburg. This Is Normal. is an ironic collection of stories about the weather, language, buildings, habits and everyday absurdities of a city that has always had its own ideas about how ordinary life should work.
What Is St Petersburg. This Is Normal. About?
A city you can spend years trying to understand – until one day you realise you’ve simply got used to it.
St Petersburg. This Is Normal. is a humorous nonfiction collection of stories about the weather, language, buildings, habits and everyday absurdities of life in St Petersburg.
St Petersburg has its own weather, its own vocabulary, its own geography and, occasionally, its own interpretation of common sense.
People here know that fifteen degrees can feel warm in a sheltered courtyard and like February on an open embankment. They can arrange to meet “by Gostinka” without specifying exactly where. They live in buildings where a count may once have had his study and where a delivery rider is now trying to find apartment forty-seven. They know that White Nights are wonderfully romantic unless you have to get up at nine in the morning, and that the words “We’ll make it” become considerably less convincing when a bridge across the Neva begins to rise in front of you.
This isn’t a guide to St Petersburg.
It’s a book about what the city looks like after you’ve lived there long enough to stop finding any of this strange.
This Is Normal.
There are things you notice when you first arrive in St Petersburg.
Then there are things you stop noticing because you’ve lived there too long.
The weather that changes halfway through a conversation.
Words that sound completely ordinary until you say them somewhere else.
An imperial staircase with a bag of rubbish beneath a notice asking residents not to leave rubbish on the stairs.
A June night when your brain refuses to believe that three in the morning is actually three in the morning.
A bridge rising slowly into the night sky while you sit on the wrong side of the Neva.
Eventually, the unusual becomes familiar.
And that’s when you really begin to know the city.
Read St Petersburg. This Is Normal. for Free
The first three chapters are available now. No registration required.
Chapter 1. On Weather You Can’t Trust
In St Petersburg, a perfectly respectable blue sky is no reason to leave your umbrella at home.
Chapter 2. On the Language St Petersburg Speaks
Porebrik, paradnaya, shaverma. Sometimes one word is enough for St Petersburg to know whether you belong here.
Chapter 3. On Entrances, Counts and Food Delivery
A count may once have lived here. His study may now be a parcel collection point. Nobody finds this particularly surprising.
What You’ll Find Inside
St Petersburg as it looks when nobody is trying to sell you a city break.
Rain that ignores the weather forecast.
Wind with an uncanny ability to find the only two square centimetres of exposed skin.
Porebrik, paradnaya and shaverma.
A meeting arranged “by Gostinka”.
Old staircases, stained glass and stories about counts who may or may not have lived upstairs.
White Nights that are considerably more romantic when you don’t have a meeting at nine.
Drawbridges, traffic jams and the dangerous confidence of someone saying, “There’s loads of time.”
And a city whose peculiarities eventually stop looking peculiar at all.
And This Is Only the Beginning
New chapters will be published here as the book is completed.
White Nights when you still have to get up in the morning. Drawbridges that begin to rise just as someone confidently says, “We’ll make it.” And a city with its own rules for almost everything.
Novel Details
About the Author
A Writer Who Knows St Petersburg Far Too Well
My name is Olga Sverchkova. I am a writer and lawyer, and St Petersburg was my home for most of my life. I spent more than twenty years practising law there, but knowing a city has very little to do with how many years you’ve lived in it. It is the smaller things that stay with you: the words nobody else uses, the shortcuts that require a fifteen-minute explanation, the buildings whose histories have been passed from neighbour to neighbour, the weather you stopped believing years ago and the habits you don’t even realise are local until you leave. St Petersburg. This Is Normal. grew out of those details. It isn’t a guide to monuments or a catalogue of places you are supposed to see. It is a book about the city people actually live in: irritating, beautiful, absurd, familiar and completely convinced that there is nothing unusual about any of it. I am also the author of Nobody Told Me About Tbilisi and The Alibi of St. Petersburg, and a recipient of the Golden Pen of Russia award for my legal writing.
Frequently Asked Questions
About the book, the three free chapters and the St Petersburg behind the stories.
St Petersburg. This Is Normal. by Olga Sverchkova is a humorous nonfiction book about the weather, language, buildings, habits and everyday absurdities of life in St Petersburg.
No. It isn’t a traditional travel guide or a list of attractions. It is a collection of humorous observations and stories about what St Petersburg looks like from the inside, after you’ve lived there long enough for its peculiarities to become ordinary.
Yes. Olga Sverchkova lived in St Petersburg for most of her life and spent more than twenty years practising law in the city. The book draws on her observations and experience of everyday life there.
Yes. The first three chapters are available to read for free on this website, with no registration required.
Not yet. The book is still being written. The first three chapters are available on this website, and new chapters will be published as the book is completed.
Contact the Author
Questions about the book, reviews, interviews, or collaborations? You can reach me directly.