i have been to a lot of hotels in my time but i have never stayed in a worse hotel,the hot water does take a full 10 minutes to flow through and being from a town in Australia with level 5 water restrictions i feel utterly repulsed.good location is the only good aspect.russian people could sure use some lessons in manners as well,i felt intimidated constantly.

It didn’t help that I was half-way through reading “Koba the Dread” by Martin Amis when I and my travelling companion arrived at the Hotel Neva in St. Petersburg. I had been over-dosing on Stalinist horror and gulag gloom for at least two days prior to our ostentatious arrival by super-sized ferry. The over-bearing bureaucracy of just getting into Russia had already intimidated us – the fraught visa applications, the hotel registration forms, the migration cards. Our agent in London had warned us that even the smallest typo on the Cyrillic-printed visa would provoke a firm “Nyet” at the Russian passport control. So when the frowning receptionist at the Hotel Neva, on inspecting our ‘papers’, exclaimed “Oh … you do not have the blue stamp!”, we felt the chill of Kolyma descend upon us. I mean, she could have said something like “Welcome to St. Petersburg”, or at least pretended that she was pleased to see some guests. In this forlorn part of the city, a stone’s throw from the forbidding ex-KGB headquarters, tourists ought to be hugged, not scorned.

She took our passports unsmilingly and after a nervous wait in absolute silence a chitty was produced for our delectation. “Can we have the keys please?” I asked. She pointed languidly at another woman squeezed behind a small desk in a forgotten corner of the lobby. The ‘Key Lady’, presumably. We shuffled over to the Key Lady’s desk, marvelling at the 70’s style over-manning. On handing her the chitty that we’d just received only ten seconds earlier; some keys were produced, resentfully. In the absence of a lift, we ascended the stairs, noting the separate reception desks on each floor. Plenty of scope here for some really serious over-manning I mused. I had visions of the hotel in its heyday (the 1950s? the 1930s?), its corridors choked with grey-suited gaggles of chain-smoking Comintern delegates, excited by the apocalyptic intrigues of the Cold War. Perhaps, too, a smattering of plain-clothes NKVD officers, just to keep the fear levels up. The wood panelling, inch-thick with varnish, and the peeling, nicotine-stained wallpaper evoked the show trials of the late 30’s. However nothing that we’d seen so far could have prepared us for the sight of our “rooms”. I am not very easily astonished; I’m a fairly broad-minded man; but even I struggled to contain a startled gasp when I saw my room for the first time.

A thin, oily anti-light trickled through some rag-like curtains. My eyes adjusted to my new, sepia world and I noted the tragically tired floor tiles; the undersized twin beds; the monolithic, scuffed wardrobe; the ominous intercom with its protruding bell-wires. My hand fumbled for the light switch, the sweat from my fingers adding its own damp accretion to the dark, foot-wide grease stain surrounding the antique plastic fascia. In the jaundiced light of the room’s lone 40 Watt bulb it became apparent that the beds were actually numbered with neat formica labels. I suppose in 1936 it would have been the height of Party chic. I could imagine the intercom buzzing into life at 6am and a distorted Slavic voice barking at the occupant of Bed Number Two: “Please report to Committee Room Three!”

Choosing bed number one I slumped onto its creaking frame. I tried to stretch out on the musty blankets, but I was forced to bend my knees so that the cot-like proportions of the palette could accommodate my full 5’8” stature. “Well”, I thought, “this will teach me to pick a hotel based upon a single, thumbnail exterior photograph”. I also resolved to spend some more money on my accommodation the next time I was in Russia. In spite of all this, my despair turned slowly to mirth. Excitedly, I began to photograph the room to capture its full dilapidated majesty. One day, the Hotel Neva will be transformed (or demolished) and this echo of the former Soviet Union will be lost forever. Savagely, it brought home to me the cruel politics of the latter half of the 20th Century: the West is the Best. No, it really is.

My mirth eventually reversed into despair when nature called me to the bathroom. The bathroom! It had the appearance of a poorly-managed abattoir; the chipped, yellowing tiles; the grey bath that had once gleamed white; the pipes encrusted in ... in what? I couldn’t tell. Something from the Baltic. Something deep. Something dark. I wanted to flee.

Wandering over to my travelling companion’s room I found him to be in the same delicate mental state as myself. His room was, in essence, identical to mine. We resolved to visit the State Hermitage Museum immediately. There would be no hanging about in our rooms to relax.

Like a good Communist, I invented a punchy, polemical slogan to promote this quintessentially Soviet hotel: “NEVER VISIT THE NEVA”.

Unless, of course, you want to study this hotel for some academic work …

The Hotel Neva was a revelation. You are never filled with confidence when a sign at the front desk greets you that you will have to run the hot water tap for ten minutes prior to your shower. The check in procedure (as with most admin in the East) is a complex combination of papers, stamps, computer entries and filing. This was the first time a check in procedure has been so complicated that we were asked to take a seat while it was completed.

The water in the shower was so smelly that I have the distinct impression that I emerged dirtier than my arrival. The fridge motor fired up randomly with a jolt that suggested a light earth tremmor. The curtains were so thin that the midnight sun was welcomed in like a long lost friend. The springs in the bed randomly attacked tender parts of my anatomy and the lift worked as though it had been programmed by a Year 9 student with a habit of illicit drug use...

All this came @ a price that was MORE than we had paid ANYWHERE.

Spent a week in the Neva, in what must be the most unfriendliest hotel I have ever stayed in. The single room I had was very run down, a very small single bed, the furniture which must have been over thirty years old was falling apart, the curtains, almost impossible to reach would not close, and the bathroom was very dingy. The breakfast was good, the location of the hotel was superb, within walking distance of all the sites of St.Petersburg, but none of staff seemed able to smile?. But I guess you get what you pay for. St.Petersburg was a fantastic place to visit, and I would go again, but maybe try a different hotel.