David Bennett

Continuing from Part One of our Saint Petersburg Diary…

We go to the Ethnographic Museum where the first thing is to get through the door. It is massive and heavy and gives way onto this main corridor – lovely, as you can see.

We spend hours there looking at rare photos, costumes, and things from cultures from one end to the other of mother Russia.

The people of the north as as different as you can imagine from the people of the south or of the east. One floor has the history and culture of Jews in Russia.

We wonder whether all these peoples have moved towards a culture of modern mediocrity in the 21st century. Perhaps we should journey all the way across Russia to find out.

Tamara wants to buy the guide to the museum and a guide to the history of the Jews in Russia, but the bookshop in the museum is closed. It closes well before the museum’s closing time. It is closed the next time as well when we make a special trip to the museum to buy the books.

It becomes a running joke between us. Will the shop ever be open? On the third or fourth try the shop is open and Tamara buys the books.

The next day we go to the Hermitage in what was the Czar’s Winter Palace. We climb the Jordan steps. I stand back on a corner of the staircase and find myself in a family group having my photograph taken along with the rest of the family. Tamara laughs to see me trapped in among this family, a foot taller than everyone.

I imagine the family back home after its holiday, showing the photos and someone asking who the tall man at the back is.

Once up the steps there are endless grand, opulent rooms packed to bursting with snaking lines of tour groups but empty of things. At every doorway there is a crush of groups going this way and that trying to pass each other

At one end of a palatial room there is Alexander Nevsky’s tomb in dark stone and black metal – the sole exhibit in the room.

This is not a museum with exhibits, it is a former palace. We really should have read the guide book more carefully, because the Winter Palace is just that – a palace. It is rich and sumptuous, but more or less empty.

What do the tour groups see as they rush with their eyes fixedly on their tour leaders as they snake through the palace and then back to the cruise ships in the harbour? They have the photos to prove it.

It is a crazy scene, filled to bursting with people.

Standing Where History Was Made

We go into a small dining room off one of the grand rooms. There is no one else in it but there are signs saying not to touch anything. In 1917 it was occupied by the Provisional Government that formed immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.

It is into this room that the Bolsheviks came and simply arrested the Provisional Government. It is eerie to stand in a room where world history was made.

Later we learn that the Bolsheviks had captured the Peter and Paul fortress across the river Neva and turned the guns of the fortress on the Winter Palace and shelled it. That must have added authority to their claim when they burst into the dining room to carry out the arrest.

Art, Give Me Art

We go to the cafe in the palace. It is set off from a corridor on the ground floor amid swirling tour groups. It seems that the whole world must have passed here.

We ask directions to paintings by Flemish artists. They are in a wing of the palace far from where we are. On the way we make our way through a crowd waiting for a clock to strike.

We reach the Flemish paintings. Bruegel and others are badly hung with poor lighting, high up and impossible to view properly. What a mess.

We find a better room with wonderful Rembrandt paintings.

We wait for a group to pass so we can see Rembrandt’s The Prodigal Son. It’s a favourite of the tour group leaders and as one group moves on another speeds in. We get near the painting by gatecrashing a tour group.

The Great Choral Synagogue

We go to the Great Choral Synagogue. This is ‘our’ section of town, not a foreign cultural experience.

In the synagogue shop Tamara buys a set of Russian dolls featuring Chagall paintings.

Prince Igor at the Mariinsky

That night we go to see the opera Prince Igor at the Mariinsky Theatre. Quite a lot of people are dressed stylishly. We have good seats (bought beforehand in England) with a good view of the stage.

We are in the dress circle and I imagined that would be raised higher up above the stalls. In fact, we can almost lean over and touch those seats. It is an unusual experience that feels like we are back in time when things were more intimate.

We talk to the man in the seat next to us. He is from Ulyanovsk and has seen the opera five times but never live. He tells us that Prince Igor had its premiere here in the Mariinsky. It is a two-hour flight from Ilyanovosk to Saint Petersburg but a day and a half by train because there is no fast train from Ulyanovsk to Moscow.

The opera is strangely different, with lots of people on stage and a weighty performance that is both strange and moving.

Not everyone is so taken with the opera, judging by people in the stalls who are looking at their cellphones during the performance. The lights of their phones show up with little rectangular lights in the darkness.

Saint Isaac’s Cathedral

We queue up for tickets outside the cathedral. I direct queue-jumpers to the line behind us. Russians in front of us are somewhat bemused at me directing people. When I smile, they come to life as though they previously thought we were in another dimension.

Nabakov’s House

We visit Nabakov’s house which near Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. Nabakov came from a wealthy family. The family owned and occupied the whole house and the house is in a good area and the rooms are wood-panelled. We learn that Nabakov discovered a blue butterfly in Albany when he was in the USA. It is named after him.

The young woman at the desk, Alina, shows us one of the rooms that have not yet been restored. The panels are stained and the ceiling is missing in parts. Alina tells us the house was in disrepair for years and it is a long job to renovate it. We ask her how Nabakov is regarded in Russia today. She said he is highly regarded now that censorship is less than it was – they have Fifty Shades Of Grey, for example.

She explains how when Nabakov was teaching in the USA, he translated Eugene Onegin into English and scoured advertisements in magazines to get idiomatic expressions that his students could relate to. She uses this example to explain how proficient Nabakov was, to be able to use idioms in a foreign language with precision.

Back on the street and opposite Saint Isaac’s cathedral, Tamara spots the Lotte Hotel. She thinks it might be Korean. We ask and it is indeed Korean and we are invited in and given a special tour of the atrium dining room and up to the sixth floor (as yet unopened) and the roof terrace for a view over the canals and the cathedral.

We learn that John Quincy Adams, when ambassador to Russia, stayed in the building that is now the hotel, and that Gogol lived there.

The Dostoyevsky Museum

The next day we go to the Dostoyevsky Museum, which is really just his apartment. It is an ordinary apartment, not grand. His hat is there under a glass dome, and his desk and papers. There is one poignant object – a box (a matchbox?) on which his daughter had written ‘Papa died today.’

We learn that the Kazan Cathedral we had visited features in his novel ‘Crime and Punishment’.

We read later that thousands of people attended his funeral. We knew he had fame in his own lifetime but we didn’t know he was so famous that thousands would attend his funeral.

Daily Life In Saint Petersburg

And now, as they say, for something completely different: It’s things we noticed, things that caught our eye.

The first observation is that pigeons are very relaxed – obviously nobody bothers them. They move out of the way a few scant inches and continue their lives. Lots of people feed them as well.

Everywhere – on the street and even churches in front of religious icons – young and middle aged women pose for photos. They pose provocatively like sultry 1950s pinups – three-quarters to the camera, bust pushed forward, head back.

House sparrows are everywhere – lots and lots of them. House sparrow numbers in the UK have crashed and now we know where they are: They have immigrated to Russia.

We have seen several men – young and older – with a mouth half full of gold teeth.

Metro stations are spotless. The metro trains are squat, square, and utilitarian. The corridors down to the trains are finished in marble and clean as a pin.

The streets are swept regularly.

Couples on the street kiss deeply and amorously – not just a peck on the cheek.

There are quite a number of Central Asian people on the street – mostly men.

Trash bins just a couple of feet tall are every thirty yards along the main streets and emptied overnight.

In the courtyards, behind the facades of the buildings – even on Nevsky Prospect – the paintwork is peeling and buildings are more run down. How deep is the prosperity? There are a lot of expensive cars on the road – top of the range Audis, BMWs, and Mercedes.

30.06.2017 Day Zero- and we are in Saint Petersburg. In the airport there are taxi touts hovering around where passengers arrive. We ask what the price is and decline it. A walk along the airport building to a young man by a sign advertising an airport taxi. Half the price and in line with what we read before we set off from the UK. Already we feel like savvy travellers.

Into the hotel and then a walk up to Nevsky Prospect, which is broad and shades off into the distance. The metro station is circular and I recognise it from Google street view when I searched back in the UK.

It was good to orient ourselves before we set off, but now I reflect on this and idly wonder whether there is anywhere that is off the beaten path anymore.

Our hotel room is large and well decorated, but smells of paint – a kind of dusty, plastic smell. And the bathroom smells of the drains. We read that Saint Petersburg has problems with its sewers. Giardia infections (giardiasis) are not unknown. There are three bottles of water in the room (and fresh ones every day), so wonder whether the risk of giardiasis is real. We don’t hear of anyone who has problems.

We call the staff and they send someone the next day to clear the smell from the system. It works for a few days and then comes back. The staff are friendly and we like them. Our first impression of Russians is positive.

I go out and am confronted by a begging drunk on the corner of Vosstaniya and Nevsky Prospect. He stands leaning forward a few inches from my face and moves off when I shake my head. I had this idea that I would see a lot of drunks in Russia, but he is about the only one I see in all the time we are there.

I am taken aback to see that Stockmann Department store is open until 11pm daily. A department store open until that time every day?

Stockmann’s links to a mall on several floors and there’s a Starbucks. Spot the Cyrillic alphabet. The second word is ‘cafe’. From our adventures in the Russian language before we left (YouTube videos) we learned that the letter ‘o’ is pronounced ‘o’ when the stress is on that syllable. But when the stress is on another syllable, then ”o’ is pronounced ‘a’.

In our hotel room the film on TV is ‘Salt’ – an American film about Russian agents planted in the US. Dubbed in Russian – I wonder what the local audiences think of the film?

We go into a couple of places and decide on one that serves Italian food. We talk with the waiter about literature and language. He tells us it costs a lot of money to live in Saint Petersburg, which is why he is working part time as a waiter. He is from the Urals (said, we think, with some reticence as though it is not a desirable place from which to come) and he is studying to become a neurosurgeon.

After we leave the restaurant we smile at the recollection of a good conversation with the waiter. We say ‘Only in Russia’ does one meet a trainee neurosurgeon and talk about Dostoyevsky, Bulgakov, Nabakov, and others.

It is nearing the end of the White Nights, the midsummer period when the sun hardly sets. Late at night we can see across the street as easily as if it were daytime. It’s a lovely feeling in a grand old city.

The Next Day

What do we notice? Ripped jeans, black chokers, spinners – how do these ideas spread worldwide so quickly?

Tamara notices that quite a few women have very long hair stretching down their backs. And many have their hair in braids. We think braids must be a Russian style. Later we see tourists from other countries with the same style. Is it Russian then, or just the latest world fashion that has spread here?

We play a game of deciphering the Cyrillic names on the shop fronts. We get excited when a word jumps out at us.

We go to the famous Cafe Singer – a bookshop with cafe. After exhausting ourselves among the bookshelves we go to the cafe and eat a chewy, doughy Danish. Unhappy, we order more food. This time we order wisely and eat good smoked salmon. Across the road there is the huge frontage of the Kazan Cathedral.

We cross to the Kazan cathedral and wander around inside its massive interior and sit next to an older woman. I notice that she magically moved seats to allow Tamara and me to sit together. The ‘magic’ element is that she moved before she saw Tamara. Did I look like someone who was with someone else?

We exchange nice smiles with her when we leave.

One note of interest is that we learn later that the Kazan cathedral features in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

Church of the Spilled Blood

We walk up the street by the side of the canal to the Church Of The Spilled Blood. It was built in the site where Alexander II was assassinated.

We reflect on how world events turn on small aspects of human character. The assassins threw a bomb at his armoured carriage and succeeded only in hurting some people who were nearby. Alexander got out of the carriage to see what was going on and that is when the second bomb killed him.

The seeds of the Russian Revolutions can be traced through this event.

We don’t go in to the church, deciding to leave that for another day. It is magnificent from the outside as we walk around it staring upwards.

Only In Russia

Outside the Ploschad Vosstaniya metro there is a man with a raccoon around his shoulders, handing out tickets (the man, not the raccoon). We stroke the raccoon and discover that its fur is strong like horsehair- not like a cat. He tells us he has six raccoons in his apartment and feeds them dog food.

I go out to pick up a sandwich at Stockman’s cafe in the mall and the young woman who serves me looks like she is from Central Asia. She bright and quick and speaks good English and she tells me she is doing a Masters in BioEngineering. Another student working part time to make ends meet.

Day Three

The buffet breakfasts in the hotel are magnificent. The mix of guests is interesting, with people who look like they could be from Iran or Turkey, and others from Central Asia.

Out of the hotel and a metro along Nevsky Prospect where we take a boat tour along the canals. We choose to go with Anglotourism (commentary in English). We arrive late at the jetty to buy tickets and it is a mad rush while we try to find out where Anglotourism leaves from, which is their ticket office, and how to get down to the boat.

I am not handling it well and part with the cash with the air of a man not expecting to receive what he has paid for. In fact the tour is excellent.

The boat threads its way around the concentric canals and under bridges, working its way towards the old centre of the city. We go under the Bridge of Singers and the Three Bridges of Centuries. The views of the twists in the canals and the old buildings lining them are lovely.

The bridges are low and we have to lower our heads so as not to whack ourselves against the ironwork. One of the bridges is so low that the boat barely scrapes under it.

We see the Mariinsky Theatre ahead of us. We have tickets for a performance of Prince Igor at the Mariinsky later in the week, so as we pass under the bridge we look up at ‘our’ theatre.

And then we are out and into the open water and the broad mouth of the Gulf Of Finland with impressive views across the gulf to the fortress on the islands across the gulf.

People are sunbathing on the stony shore by the fortress. In this climate we see that people need to grab every drop of sunshine.

Good commentary from the guide, Maria. As we pass some merchants buildings she mentions that the god Mercury did additional duty as the god of commerce. She tells us that Mercury’s entwined snakes are on many commercial buildings including the ‘profit houses’ – the 18th century apartment buildings that were rented out to the poor of the city.

Contemporary writers wrote about the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions of the apartments, and they were a national scandal that went on for years.

Back on land we find a small cafeteria and eat kacha and spinach cake with vegetables. Tamara jokes that eating in Russia is like being at a Jewish wedding or bar mitzvah – it’s the same food.

Then on to the Museum of the Siege of Leningrad. A raggedy building with good art on the walls. Half a million dead in a 900-day siege. There is a terrible authenticity to the exhibits. I stand stock still in front of an SS officer’s uniform and spit quietly.

Afterwards, we sit in the Summer Garden of the Imperial Palace and watch the people. It feels good to be here.

We walk and get tired. We catch a bus 90-K. In the bus I think it is more like what I had thought of as Russia nowadays – poorer under the glitz. I could have stayed on the bus all day just absorbing the tone of the people.