St. Petersburg

I apologize for not posting sooner. Our hotel in St. Petersburg charged 100 rubles (3 dollars) an hour for internet access and being the cheap college student that I am, I decided it would be better to wait a couple of days before posting another journal entry. Without further adieu, here are my entries for St. Petersburg:

6/1

Today was a big day for us. Our schedule was jam packed with things to do, leaving us having to run from one place to the next. The day started with a fantastic lecture in Russian history covering Tsar Nicholas II to Brezhnev. The professor did an excellent job in giving a thorough and detailed account of such a large part of history in an hour and a half. She specialized in Russian and English History, and you could tell by her British-Russian accent in which country she learned to speak English. She managed to sneak little anecdotes into her lecture, such as how Khrushchev celebrating the victory of American pianist Van Clayburn in a Soviet music contest was an essential step in improving US-Soviet relations and how Brezhnev was so slow to respond that his team had to have him memorize answers to possible questions from Americans in the UN, rather than allow for him to think on his feat. My dirty mind makes me want to write about how at one point she said that Lenin's wife was an ardent communist and that as soon as she married Lenin, "they made revolution together." The whole class giggled, confusing the instructor, who didn't catch the double meaning. 

While the instructor was very good, she went over time-wise, forcing us to once again scarf down our lunch and dash to the busses. Our shortness on time was not aided by a bus driver arguing with a passenger who hopped on the bus without paying a fare. The two were going back and forth for about five minutes before we decided to hop on another bus. I guess the driver was forced to give up and drive off with the stingy passenger still riding the bus. If she continued to argue and held up the bus any longer, she could get fired. In Moscow, it seems as if people try to nickel and dime each other any way they can. It must be a product of their culture. I'm theorizing that during Soviet times, people had to learn to game the system in order to get the basic necessities of life. With capitalism in place, there isn't the same trust that we have in America between the customer and the producer. You have to check your bill every time to make sure that the cashier gave you the correct amount of change and the entrance to every building has some sort of metal detector. 

It was interesting to be at the Gorbachev Foundation, because most Russians have a strong distaste for "The Mineral Secretary." While in America, we view his liberal reforms as necessary and humanitarian in nature, Russians view him as the man responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union. They see him as week and ineffective, recalling the massive inflation and political chaos that perestroika and glasnost brought. A recent poll found that Gorbachev was the least popular leader in the past century, receiving positive acclimates from 14% of Russians (Stalin was at 28% and Putin was at 61% by comparison). The Foundation was founded by Gorbachev and financed mainly by the money he made in speaking fees for lectures he has given at colleges and universities. Those who run the foundation are sympathetic to Gorbachev and were probably delighted to foreigners who shared in their sympathy. 

Mikhail Gorbachev - Soviet Leader 1985-1991

One of the ladies at the Foundation gave us a tour of the objects on display in the gallery. She described the success of perestroika and effectiveness of Gorbachev as the first and only president of the Soviet Union. We were able to see his Nobel Prize, the Time Magazine issue that awarded him Man of the Year, and pictures of him negotiating an end to the Cold War with Presidents Reagan and Bush. I asked about his relationship with Yeltsin and she said that Gorbachev promoted the accession of Yeltsin in the Communist Party and greeted him as a reformer. They were very good friends. Yeltsin eventually turned his back on Gorbachev with the coup, but Gorbachev stepped down and praised him nonetheless. Of course, this is a biased story, but it still helped me to see how much a humanitarian Gorby really was. 

At the American Embassy, we were given the opportunity to ask question to those who worked in the embassy. Their specialties ranged from human rights, to foreign affairs, to economics, to relations with the press. While the information we received was interesting (one guy was stalked for a period of time when he released a negative human rights report about Russia to Washington), what was more beneficial was seeing potential jobs that we could have in the next couple of years. Those at the embassy are reassigned every one or two years to different countries, giving them the opportunity to experience several different governments and cultures. It was definitely a great experience and the security at the embassy was surprisingly much tighter than anywhere in Russia. There was a rule that guests had to be escorted in groups of six, forcing us to split up when we had to go from room to room.

Right now, I am packing for St. Petersburg. We have an overnight train to catch at one in the morning. As I try to stuff as many clothes into my backpack as physically possible, I'm listening to Russia's entry into Eurovision. Eurovision is an American Idol-type contest in which each European country sends a delegation to represent their culture in this fifty year-old singing contest. While most countries send young and famous pop singers (usually from countries other than their own) to achieve national fame and glory, Russia took a turn this year and sent a group of 70 year-old babushki  from a rural village near the Volga River who yodeled their hearts out. They made it all the way to second place in the contest by winning the hearts of European voters. A video of their performance can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLiYkUXss7U. 

6/2

At one in the morning, we boarded the train to St. Petersburg. Each car had six rooms, two bathrooms, and a room for an attendant, who periodically walked around and asked if we wanted coffee, tea, or chocolate. Upon hearing from the Russian students at the American Center that the train from Moscow to St. Pete’s was not the best, I was afraid for what I was about to find. However the rooms were not bad at all. They were cramped for sure. I would say that they were about the size of my room at MSU, but they held four people instead of just one. However, they were oddly spacious. There were two bunked beds on either side of the room, but the bottom bunks had enough head room to be used as couches. Storage space was plentiful, as there were large compartments under each of the bottom bunks and above the top beds. And the sheets and comforters we were given were quite nice. The pillows were much larger and softer than the MSU pillows and there was a reading lamp available for each of us above the head of our beds.

The one inconvenience were the bathrooms. They locked the bathrooms when we were in the major cities, probably because the toilet connects directly to the bottom of the train and they don’t want the train tracks in the city smelling like human feces all day. Alona was saying that she was on a Russian train once in which you could see the gravel on the ground when looking through the toilet hole. The other problem I found with the bathrooms was that they were in-navigable. I couldn’t figure out how to flush the toilet (apparently, there was a pump on the ground I was supposed to press) and the knobs used to turn the faucet didn’t work. There were signs in Russian telling you how to use the different contraptions in the bathroom, but that really didn’t help me very much. Despite my quarrels with the bathroom, the sleep on the train was one of the best that I’ve had in Russia (I’m not sure that’s saying too much). The window shades worked well, so it was dark enough for me to sleep and the movement of the train rocked me back and forth like a baby in a cradle.

I awoke at 8:30 and right off the bat, we headed for our hotel, dropped off our stuff, and went on a four-hour tour of the city. Our tour guide’s name was Sergei. He was very well informed about the Romanov dynasty and could go on for eons about the history of St. Petersburg. While we saw practically everything on our tour (it was basically a sparknotes version of St. Petersburg) there were some things that stuck out. We went to a fortress constructed by Peter the Great. Inside the fort was the Peter and Paul Cathedral which held the tombs of virtually every Romanov tsar. Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Anna, Paul, Elizabeth and Alexander II were all buried there. It was so cool to have so much royalty in such a condensed area. In Moscow, it felt like we needed to search around the city for traces of history, but in St. Petersburg, it appeared as if everything was right under you nose. Connected to the Peter and Paul Cathedral was a cathedral built for Nicholas II and his family. Although the Bolsheviks killed them after Nicholas abdicated the throne and buried them in the woods, their bones were found in 1969 and brought to St. Petersburg. Interestingly, Anastasia’s bones were also found in the mix, debunking any myths of the missing grand duchess.

Coming out of the cathedral and into the rainy weather, hearing the church bells ring, I was so excited to be in St. Petersburg. This moment and the first time visiting Red Square had to be the two affirmations of the fact that I was not in Kansas anymore. It felt genuinely Russian (even though St. Petersburg is more of a European than a traditionally Russian culture).

Tsarina Elizabeth 

An interesting story that Sergei told us was about how extravagant Tsarina Elizabeth was. He said that she spent lavishly on herself (as was already evident in all of her carriages we saw at the Kremlin armory). At one point, Elizabeth decided that she was tired of ruling Russia and wanted to become a nun. Instead of going to a convent, she had a gigantic baby blue one built for herself that resembled another palace more than a place of God. She practically emptied the state coffers to have this built for her, but it was never used as a convent, because she changed her mind and decided that she actually enjoyed being tsarina. Catherine the Great decided to make it into the first school for girls in Russia and now it is used by St. Petersburg University as an academic building

Also memorable was our stop and visit to one of the only two synagogues in St. Petersburg.  The synagogue was huge and was constructed like an Orthodox Church. The Star of David was stained in glass, there was a huge alter in the front, and the temple was very decadent overall. My guess is that they hired a designer of cathedrals to build the temple because there were no synagogue architects available. It was beautiful nonetheless, and the prayer books were in Hebrew. There were even little kids running around with tafillin.

Peter the Great

At dinner, we discussed the differences between Moscow and St. Pete’s. It seems as though people in St. Petersburg are nicer. They smile when they speak to you, they are more willing to help you when you are confused, and they don’t bump into you when you are in their way. This is probably because St. Pete’s is more of a European city. It was meant to be Peter the Great’s “Window to the West.” It was constructed with the intend of being different from anywhere else in Russia. It was not supposed to have the hustle and bustle of Moscow. It definitely more accommodating to tourists. It is more likely to find people that speak English here. Several of the signs are in English and Russian. Food and souvenir shops are endless and the prices are very reasonable. Many of the historical buildings from the tsarist times have not been removed, either, because Moscow was the center of communist rule, and they were more focuses on destroying the palaces and cathedrals closest to them first. Because of this, St. Pete’s has more of an 18^th century feel, while Moscow feels as though Ivan the Terrible is losing a battle to Stalin, but is still hanging on for dear life.

6/3

The continental breakfast served at the hotel this morning was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I was slightly emaciated the day before, having only one meal, and everyone knows that when you combine unlimited free food and hungry college boy you get a very happy Marty. Every food known to man was served at the continental breakfast. Eggs, muffins, croissants, toast, cheese and cereal galore. Everyone was satisfied with the breakfast as some regretted not coming down soon enough to eat more. I made sure to stuff a couple of snacks in a ziplock bag for later.

St. Isaac's Cathedral

The first stop on today’s adventure was St. Isaac’s Cathedral. St. Isaac’s is probably one of the tallest buildings in St. Petersburg. It was constructed, destroyed and reconstructed four different times, getting larger and more beautiful with each reconstruction. It was originally meant to be a private cathedral for Peter the Great, but it was destroyed in a fire. Catherine the Great decided to build it up again, but after her death, her son , Paul (who hated his mother for killing her husband and sending Paul away from the capital as much as possible) used the marble from the cathedral to construct his own palace. It was finally rebuilt by Alexander II, but it took forty years to do it. It is rumored to have taken this long because the architect allegedly heard a fortuneteller say to him that he will die after his greatest work is complete. The cathedral was used as a storage facility for St. Petersburg’s treasures during World War II. The Soviets learned that the Nazis were using St. Isaac’s as a focal point to destroy buildings around the cathedral (because it was so large and tall), so they knew that it would not be a target of Nazi bombs. It was converted to a Museum of Atheism under Stalin (oh, the irony) and was put under state control after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Although we explored several cathedrals, it was nice to be in this one because it was no longer a cathedral, but a museum instead. This enabled us to take pictures and receive a tour. The girls were also more liberated in that they didn’t need to wear a scarf over their heads when they entered the cathedral. It also helped because they had a display of models of the four former cathedral designs and pictures of St. Isaac’s during WWII.

We were also able to trudge up 262 stairs of death to the colonnade of the cathedral. Honestly, hiking up Madasa in Israel was much more difficult, but the winding staircase was a bit dizzying. The view from the colonnade was breathtaking. You could see several of the palaces of St. Petersburg, the cities several meandering rivers, and a couple public gardens around the cathedral. It was just my luck to have my camera act up on the colonnade, preventing me from taking any pictures of the beautiful scenery. Maybe that was God’s punishment for taking so many pictures in the cathedral. Oh well, I can always get them from others on Facebook.

Next on our list of Things You Must Do In St. Petersburg was the Hermitage Museum. This was the Winter Palace which was built by Elizabeth and refurbished by Catherine. It had over one thousand rooms and so many objects and pictures that if someone where to look at one picture every minute, then it would take them eight years before they saw everything in the museum. The historical significance is priceless. The square in front of the palace is where Nicholas II ordered protests to be fired on in 1905, and where the Bolsheviks stormed the castle and captured the royal family in 1917. Almost every Romanov tsar had stood in the corridors of the Winter Palace. It is the place where the fictional character of Anastasia (in the movie) discovered her long-forgotten past.

The palace was astounding. There must have been at least $100 billion of wealth in there. Everywhere there was gold trim decorated in baroque and rococo style. Chandeliers fell from the ceiling like raindrops. Where a ruby carpet wasn’t present, there was an extensively decorated wooden floor. Walking up the grand staircase, one feels like royalty. Although 30,000 people come through the Hermitage every day, it seemed like I was the only one in the museum as I was in awe of the 1000+ room building around me. Time froze as I gawked at the walls, each square inch of which must have been worth $1 million.

Winter Palace/Hermitage Museum

Objects that we were given permission to glace at included the royal throne, the room in which Nicholas II and his family were captured by the Bolsheviks, Catherine’s legendary golden farm animal clock, and paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Henry Matisse, Rembrandt, Van Gough, and Michelangelo. Apparently, you weren’t allowed to bring water into the Hermitage anymore, because one guy through sulphoric acid on a Rembradt painting in protest of the imperialism of the Soviet Union. This caused one lady to freak out when a member of our group started to take out a bottle of water and began to drink from it. Apparently, drinking sulphuric acid isn’t allowed either.

Though we had a three-hour tour of the Hermitage and I was very tired afterwards, it still didn’t feel like enough time. I still needed to absorb the fact that I was in one of the most famous palaces in the world. That the likes of Catherine the Great and Alexander II had stepped where I was stepping. Events that I had simply read about on paper had actually occurred in this place. It was a bit of a history shock, I guess. The art section in particular made me wish that I had looked up my notes from Art History 173 that I took freshman year once again. I was sure that I had seen at least ten of the art pieces in lecture and it was so amazing to be able to see and take pictures of the original works in person.

For the last part of the day, we went on a boat ride down St. Petersburg’s main rivers. Peter the Great wanted his city to be like the Netherlands. He admired the Dutch and envisioned an area of islands connected by several bridges. Part of the beauty of St. Pete’s is due to the fact that there is always a river nearby. This also leads to St. Petersburg to be one of the rainiest cities in the world. Along with have over sixty days of sun every year, precipitation is frequent. Luckily, it only rained one day of the three days we were here.

After the Hermitage, we ate lunch at went on a boat ride. The organizers of the boat ride gave us a headset, which provided a tour of the major sites in St. Petersburg as we drifted down rivers and under bridges. The tour mostly covered buildings that we had already seen on the bus tour, so I used the time to enjoy the cool, breezy boat ride. We have been on our feat all the time, so it was nice to sit, relax, and not have to ingest tons and tons of information. The little person in our ears gave us intricate details of each and every bridge we passed under. There are 342 bridges in St. Pete’s and almost all of then are drawn in at night to allow ships to pass through. Therefore, if you are out past one in the morning, it is not difficult to get stuck on one of the several islands of the city until about five o’clock, when the bridges are let down again.

6/4: Catherine’s Palace and World War II Museum

After another amazing breakfast (even stuffing some food in my bag for later), we went to the countryside to visit Catherinehof, the Summer Palace of Catherine I (Peter the Great’s second wife). We were first given an opportunity to walk around Catherine’s garden, which was decorated in an oriental fashion. The grounds were absolutely beautiful and naturalistic. It reminded me of Henry VIII walking around his garden in The Tutors. I could picture Catherine walking around her garden with famous politicians of the time period, conversing about politics or whatever was on their mind. Taking a walk in the garden was like stepping into the past. It was easy to get lost in the maze-like area. One path gave way to several more, and if you went in the wrong direction, the next set of paths was a long ways off. The garden must have covered several anchors, and it didn’t help that the grass was very high, preventing anyone from seeing their way around.

When it was time to enter the palace, we had to stand in a very large line to wait our turn to enter. The Summer Palace is known for long lines. Although it only gets 15,000 visitors per day (half of that of the Hermitage) I guess they aren’t as efficient. While waiting in line, our group played a game involving counting off numbers. We made a scene and people stared at us, but we continued to play. Then people began taking pictures of us. I guess they’ve never seen Americans before. We are a sight to behold, after all.

The Summer Palace, or Catherine’s Palace, was built for Catherine I (Peter the Great’s wife), but was expanded heavily under Elizabeth, who decorated it in rococo style with gold trim up the wazoo. Catherine the Great viewed the palace as “whipped cream” and had it renovated in the neoclassic style. The palace is now an eclectic mixture of the styles of various empresses and tsarinas, and looks like the Palace that Anastasia when to in the movie (even though she really went to the Winter Palace).

Tsarina Catherine the Great

Stepping into the palace, my first thought was, “I know why those peasants revolted.” In fact, it wasn’t really a thought, because I said it out loud, and everyone around me laughed. But seriously, there was gold everywhere. It seemed like everywhere we went in St. Petersburg there were palaces. The Romanov’s would built castles to spite people (like the ice palace that Anna built to watch a noble freeze on his wedding day), to congratulate themselves, and as gifts to each other. There seemed to be castles for every season in each city. Our tour guide was saying that Elizabeth had four or five different castles and that the servants had to be ready with food every night in case the tsarina were to stop by for dinner on a whim. If I were a peasant, I would be getting pretty angry that none of the money was being used to help make my life better. One inch of that castle could have paid for a peasant’s food for a year. Those Romanov’s really were extravagant.

The Amber Room - Catherine' s Palace

Anyways, we toured the ballroom (which actually looked like it was from Anastasia) the changing room, Catherine’s study room for her grandson Alexander (she hated her son, Paul, and hoped that Alexander would succeed her), and several other unnecessary rooms in the palace. Catherine’s palace also held the famous Amber Room. The Amber Room is sometimes dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World” for its beauty and extravagance. Every inch of the room was either covered in gold, amber, or mirrors. It felt like walking into a cold fire. Everything was such a bright orange-brown that I practically had to squint my eyes to see each detail. The room actually went missing with the Nazi occupation in World War II (how the Russians could just lose a room, I will never know), but it was eventually recreated by 2003, the 300^th anniversary of Catherine’s Palace. We were unable to take pictures of the room, but several people were anyways (the official reason is that they “don’t know the effects of photography on amber”). I chose to go the honest route and purchased a postcard at the gift shop.

After exiting the palace, we took a walk around the gigantic man-made lake behind the palace. Sergei pointed to a pyramid during our walk and said that it was the burial place of Catherine the Great’s dog, Zamirah. When the dog died, Catherine was weeping for weeks and could not get on with her work. It wasn’t until a designer created a replica of Zamirah out of porcelain so Catherine could carry around the figurine and feel like the dog was still alive that she could go back to ruling the country. Reminder: this is the tsarina who had her husband murdered and tried to banish her son in any way possible.

Our next stop was the World War II museum of St. Petersburg. The museum consisted of only one room and was sticks and stones compared to the museum we saw in Moscow. There were a few artifacts that were found after the Siege of Leningrad and a video of the suffering and perseverance of Leningraders during the war, but I thought it was cooler to be exploring old castles than a museum about war and death.

Georgian Soda

For dinner, Dr. Goeckel took me and a couple other students to a Georgian restaurant a few blocks away from our hotel. Although the food was pricey and they gave us an unnecessary service charge, the food was beyond delicious. I shared Shashlik (Georgian shish kabobs) with Katrina and we had a delicious plum sauce to dip it in. The best part of the meals was the Georgian cheese bread, which was warm, gooey, and filling. Dr. Goeckel bought us a traditional Georgian soda, which resembled a green toxic sludge, but had a really sweet minty licorice aftertaste. By the end of the meal, I was ready to pledge allegiance to the Georgian flag. I was so full, but I wanted to finish the food so badly. Everything tasted so good!

At 9:30 PM, we hopped on the night train and it was off to Moscow once again.