Saturday in St. Petersburg

We woke up and headed toward Annie and Tom's hotel.  I had planned on eating cinnamon sugar crackers as breakfast, but was thrilled to learn we were welcome to eat at the hotel buffet!  It was honestly the most beautiful spread of food I have ever seen at breakfast.  There were three kinds of eggs, salmon, bacon, pancakes, french toast, meats, cheeses, croissants, and an array of fruit juices...the list goes on and on.  This came to be one of the highlights of our mornings in St. Petersburg!

Once everyone had eaten we met our tour guide for the day, Julia, in the lobby.  Later in the day we learned some interesting things about her.  

The most captivating part of visiting Russia for me was hearing the variety of perspectives on the Soviet rule.  As an American, I feel I have been taught that Communism is not only a poor strategy which is rarely implemented, but that it is often presented as evil.  During our time in Russia we actually met individuals who felt their lives were better under Communist rule.  In a more free market, prices have risen and one man complained that in order to have housing he has to lives in a communal apartment because rent has sky rocketed.

Julia did not go so far as to imply her life was better under Soviet rule but there was not the sigh of relief about the change that I think I expected.  She is a sixth generation citizen of St. Petersburg.  The fact that the Soviets closed the churches did not bother her because she is at least a third generation atheist.  While I think these were her family's personal convictions she also mentioned that believing differently was not an option for her father who served as an officer in the military under the Communist regime.  

We started out from the hotel in order to meet our appointed time of entry at the Hermitage.  Annie had asked for a 2.5 hour tour of the museum catching all of the highlights.  

We walked past these large human pillars on our way to the river side of the Hermitage.  I believe this is part of the "Old Hermitage".  This museum currently consists of 5 buildings: Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and the Hermitage Theatre.  The word Hermitage is related to the term hermit.  Catherine the Great constructed these building to hold her art collection.  Only a few people we able to enter the building on her specific permission because she intended these five buildings to simply be a personal hide out with her art.  She acquired a remarkable amount of artwork; an average of 300 pieces were bought every day during 34 year Russian reign.  This is why the museum now owns nearly 3 million pieces of art.

St. Petersburg is called the "Venice of the North".  It is another city with consists of an array of islands connected with bridges and full of canals.  We were curious why the canals seemed to remain dormant.  Apparently tourist boats are more common starting in May.  The waterways are used to transport goods, but only in the early early morning.  All bridges between the islands are operational and raise to allow barges to pass between 2am and 5am.  This may be why some bars are open in St. Petersburg until 6am instead of the American 2am standard.  If you stay on the wrong island too long, you are stuck there until the bridges go down.

This is the Hermitage Theatre.  When Catherine the Great built this theater the seats were not given numbers, but instead names.  Her friends were the only ones invited to attend and had their names on their seats.

Entering the Hermitage.  I have never seen as much gold plating as I did on my trip to Russia!

One of the ballrooms of the winter palace

If we hadn't been part of the tour, this is the line we would have been waiting in to get to see the art museum.

This is the throne room.  It was amazing and very strange to actually be in the live version of a scene from the animated movie Anastasia!  

The floors in the Hermitage were lovely.  I think Sally took about 30 different shots of the variety of decoration in the flooring.  In the throne room, the floor patterns and light fixtures were related - almost reliefs of one another.  You can see the relationship between the image above and light fixture below.

This is in a unique room in the Hermitage.  I believe Julia called it the "hall of mysteries".  The amount of crystal hanging from the ceiling was incredible.  

Catherine sent some of her artists to Rome in order to look at their mosaics and come back to create a Russian version.  In the center of this floor mosaic is Medusa and other characters of Roman mythology are around the circle.

I don't know where these stairs lead.  To the right of this stair is a particular fountain which was designed to create music in the space.

This is a clock.  Welcome to one of the mysteries!  Apparently this still functions but because of its age they only set it to run on special occasions.  The detail was amazing and it would have been great to see in action.  The peacocks tail moves, nuts and other animals tell the time and date.  I do not remember where the clock was from.

This is a mosaic.  Which looks like a painting unless you get really really close.  Julia called them "micro mosaics"

I found a Monet among the French Impressionists.  According to the tour guide Annie and Tom had on Friday, a lot of the art in the Hermitage was stolen, particularly from German Jews.  I didn't hear the story directly from her and am not sure if it is true.  She did claim, however that for that reason the museum wasn't open to the public for awhile after WWII because if visitors saw the artwork, they might have been forced to return some art to its previous owners.  The was apparently a problem a few years ago when part of the Hermitage was sent as a traveling exhibition to London.  Now they will not send out their art because they had a hard time getting it back.  Julia is insistent that none of the pieces will ever be allowed to leave Russia, "these pieces have been here for 300 years, they are ours".

The wood for this furniture came from Karelia and presents another interesting impact of different perspectives.  Julia mentioned how this wood can only be found in Russia, but a Finn would claim it could only be found in the Finnish lands current under Russian control.  In one of our many meetings with Finnish officials, an interesting woman explained the geography of Finland as a maiden with a big skirt and her right hand raised.  Karelia was the maidens left arm which was chopped off by the Russians in the wars.  So...this furniture was Finnish but is not Russian.  It would be interesting to speak with some people from Karelia to see which country and culture they would claim.

I stopped breathing for a second entering this library.  It's a large scale version of what I always pictured when playing the board game Clue.

Sunshine in Russia!  One concern we had in the museum was how the Russian curators are caring for the art.  I often had to move around a painting to lessen the glare on the oil based paint to see the figures in the work.  Windows were open in almost every room.  The only paintings which were lit well and protected from natural sun were part of a traveling exhibition from...I believe Spain.  Julia explained that there are only 40 sunny days in St. Petersburg so they leave the windows open in the museum.  I would think that could still do plenty of damage to the paintings and I was particularly surprised this was the approach taken with the 26 paintings of Raphael and 2 by Leonardo di Vinci.

I would never make an entire building this color....but the winter palace seems the fitting place for such extravagance.

This river flowed more rapidly that any other body of water I can remember.  The chunks of ice are not from the river itself, but from the lake upstream.  Apparently that  lake just started to melt and pieces of ice will be flowing for quite awhile.

The Eiffel bridge - yes the same Eiffel as the tower a saw about a month earlier!

This island is where St. Petersburg started.  I believe it was Peter the first...but whoever founded the city moved the capital from Moscow and wanted to have a more European city in Russia.

First church in St. Petersburg...I believe Julia called it the John and James church, but that seems odd now.  

This statue was initially hated for it's contemporary nature but now seems to be embraced.  People like to touch the long finger and get their photo taken on the large lap.

St. Petersburg has an interesting fusion of church styles.  At the time this church was being designed there were no architects in the city so the Czar brought in a European.  This is why some of the Russian Orthodox churches in St. Petersburg do not adhere to the typical style, Catholics were the designers.  A Russian Orthodox church is typically dark and very ornate which both gold and a lot of figures on the walls.  Here the space is tall and well lit without paintings of Biblical characters.  

This church is also used as a burial site.  Julia walked us through the history of the Czars (many Peters, Catherines, Nicholas, etc) tomb by tomb.  In one corner of the church is a group grave for the Romanov family.  Their remains were recovered from Siberia and proven to be theirs by DNA (this seems a bit sketchy to me, but apparently that compared it to their english cousins for verification) and brought here to be buried.  

The lives of these Czars, their wives, and children sound a like a really over the top soap opera.  One Czar fell in love with a commoner so had his wife arrested and then forced her to become a nun so he could divorce her.  One woman didn't have any children so adopted her nephew and went to look for a bride for him.  She chose the least important German princess she could find in an attempt to secure her adopted son's safety.  That little German girl became Catherine the Great and assisted in the revolt against her husband.  We all felt the most intelligent of the bunch was one man who was told he was Czar when his brother was killed.  This member of the royal family was in Poland at the time and chose to just stay there instead of returning to Russia.

Saturdays are clearly the wedding day in Russian culture.  Apparently after the ceremony, it is typical for the bride and groom to rent a limo and take the wedding party to part of the city for photographs.  We saw at least 5 brides as we drove around the city.

St. Issac's Cathedral

The light streaming into the space was simply amazing

When Russia was part of the Soviet Union almost all churches were closed down and/or repurposed.  Some churches became swimming halls, others discos, and this became a temple to science.  None of us completely followed Julia's explanation, but a pendulum was hung in the center of this space (all the beautiful decorations were covered with boards).  As the earth moved, the pendulum began to swing.  A few meters away were placed some boards which were knocked over by the swinging weight.  This was apparently determined to disprove the existence of God.  All school children (Julia said this was part of her education) were brought here to be shown science is to be worshiped and God does not exist.

Russian painted eggs!

The various forms of St. Issac's church throughout the years.

This is Julia teaching us about this systems which was used to erect the large columns on two sides of the church.  It is amazing what kinds of things people have been able to do with pulleys for centuries.  We got a little lesson about serfs because they constructed nearly everything of interest in St. Petersburg.

Being a good tourist is exhausting.  My main issue during the day were my feet because my deteriorating boots have resulted in the largest blister imaginable on the bottom of my foot.  We returned to the hotel were everyone sat and enjoyed olives and nuts again.  I tried the wasabi nuts each day and just think I don't enjoy the painful burning sensation others find fun.  We went back to the apartment and Sally and I crashed.  Todd might have slept a little, but mostly was watching the most recent Chronicles of Narnia movie on his laptop.

Around 9:15pm he said we needed to start heading to dinner.  We went to an interesting place - they had sushi and borsch on the menu.  I confused the kitchen because everyone ordered a salad except me so my entrée came out half way through their salad course.  It was so challenging not to eat up all of my wonderful meat and potatoes but I paced myself so there was still food to eat when my tablemates got their main dish.  We ordered 2 desserts to share.  One was a white chocolate mousse - completely fantastic - and the other was essentially a meringue sandwich with custard.

On our walk back from the restaurant there was a processional of people.  Annie wanted to follow them but the rest of us were a little leery about being disrespectful and were tired so we didn't.  There were priests carrying banners, people carrying candles, and everyone was singing.  We later learned this is an Easter tradition for the particular Russian Orthodox churches (it was midnight when we saw them).

We needed to be reading to head to an Easter church service at 9am Sunday morning, so to bed we went.