Operation Baltica

Phase I: Russia

Day 5: Art and Walking, Walking, Walking

We woke up to a table full of breakfast - the cheese, sausage and hard-boiled eggs we had munched on the night before. Anya, the fifty-something-year-old lady overseeing our 3rd floor section of the hostel, adopted us as grandsons and automatically assumed the role of the Babushka. Lovingly referred to as "the babs," Babushkas are notorious in Russian culture for looking after any and everyone younger than them. From that first morning on, she lovingly nagged us about eating all our breakfast, dressing warm enough and keeping our door locked so that the drug addicts couldn't steal anything. She didn't speak English, so all her advice and judgments about Bryan had to come through me. It was entertaining, to say the least, to see them look at each other: her, wondering why he didn't like rice and milk cereal; him, wondering why she was looking at him so funny.

We decided that the Hermitage, being the big world-famous museum that it is, should be knocked out first, so we set out at 10:30 to see the artwork of Russians and Frenchmen alike. I'm a fan of art in general, but as a rule I don't like being in a museum for much over an hour, so after our 45-minute walk to the museum and an hour and a half strolling the hallways looking for things we recognized, we were ready to leave. We did see cool tapestries depicting epic battles involving snakes, a big throne room from the tsarist days, and famous Matisse and Van Gogh paintings. Incidentally, the Hermitage holds the largest collection of French art outside of France. Finally we saw a decent collection of Picasso’s work, mostly from his earlier years.

After the Hermitage we stopped for some lunch at the ILI café on Nevsky Prospect, a hip little bar/café where we had some delicious borsht. We went from there to buy my bus ticket to Tallinn, Estonia, the first of four more countries I would see before going home. That evening we went out to eat at The Idiot, a Dostoevsky themed restaurant on the Moika canal. The place was done up as an old sitting room or study, and the waitress gave us a free shot of vodka as a welcome. Story enjoyed the atmosphere. I enjoyed the vodka.

Back at the hostel we were exhausted. We had spent all day walking and were just beat.

Day 6: Cannons, Rasputin and the NEVA

We hit the streets again early the next morning, though not as early as the day before. I think the fast pace of our sightseeing was catching up with us, but there was still lots to do and see. Thursday’s plan was to see the Peter-Paul (Petropavlovsky) fortress and cathedral and then meet a girl for lunch whom we had met on CouchSurfing.org. The fortress is on a small island in the Neva River, forming a central point of the surrounding islands that make up the river’s mouth. We took a bridge near the Palace Square in the center of town to Vasilevsky Island where we saw St. Pete’s famous red columns. The columns appeared to be old lighthouse pyres, and stand guard outside the 300-year-old Naval Academy, now a museum.

Across one more bridge we found the fortress which holds the Petropavlovsky cathedral, whose gold spire can be seen almost anywhere in the city. Inside, scattered across the entire main sanctuary, lie the granite tombs of the last three generations of the Romanov royal family. Nikolai II and his family were killed in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and moved to the cathedral in the late 1990s. Even his mother and grandmother, the famous Catherine tsarinas, were in attendance. The souvenir shop had some great things at the lowest prices we had seen so far, so we got tumblers and glasses and Story bought a scarf. At 11:50 we went up the stairs of the south wall to see the 12:00 cannon firing where every day they fire a military cannon toward the Hermitage and Winter Palace on the opposite shore. It scared the hell out of both of us, but luckily didn’t do any damage to the city skyline across the river. From that wall we could easily point out all the places we had seen that morning and the previous day.

We met Marina at Pizza Hut for lunch. She had found me on CouchSurfing and although we didn’t stay at her place, she was eager to meet us just to chat. She spoke brilliant English and wanted to tell us all about her recent trip to the US. She had a pen-pal from Owensboro, KY who had invited her to visit. Marina and I were both surprised to have a close KY connection. She was also surprised/impressed by my Russian and my two years in Kazakhstan, saying that most Americans in St. Pete don’t even speak Russian, and there’s no way she would live in KZ for two years even if she was paid. We ate and talked and made plans to meet on Friday night before Story’s train back to Moscow.

On our route back to the hostel, we stopped by the Yusopov Palace, located on the Moika Canal like The Idiot, which is where Rasputin was poisoned, beat and shot before being thrown in the river. A friend of mine from college wanted me to bring back the head of Rasputin as a souvenir for her, but all we could find in the gift shop were magnets. We found out that the story of Rasputin, which we all read in high school World Civ, is much more famous outside of Russia than within.

Another big plan we had for Russia was going to the Banya. Story wasn’t so excited to be beaten by birch branches in a hot and steamy room with lots of naked dudes, but I wanted to teach him about it anyway. That evening we gathered our bathing stuff and walked three blocks through the snow and slush to the nearest public banya, only to find that Thursday was women only. Pancake! I had been looking forward to a Russian banya in Russia, but that wasn’t going to happen. We could have paid double for a private room, but we didn’t have money for that.

So we drank. We first stopped by an Irish bar with English football club memorabilia which served Czech beer and played American pop songs. Then we had dinner at the hostel and went down to the river to see the bridges open. We got there way too early and walked a lap around the streets and two bridges enclosing a section of river. We took pictures, taunted the bridge to open while we were on the wrong side of it, and dipped our heads in the icy current of the river. I think the dipping of the heads was a conciliatory action for not being able to see the bridges open because we were ready to go back to the hostel by midnight. We headed back toward Decemberist square where we met some guys building a snowman. We stopped to help them and play with their beautiful white huskie dog. They told us that the first bridge should open at 1am. We changed our minds about going home and went back to the river, arriving just in time to see the drawbridges slowly rising. We did a little dance and walked back home. By 1:30 we were dead asleep.

St. Pete Pics are here.