We arrived in the land of the cabbage cocktail and had all day (first of three) in Saint Petersburg. What an incredible place. Concrete blocks of flats with crumbling facades interspersed with magnificent palaces (also some with crumbling facades with literally piles of shattered masonry on the footpath), incredible museums and gold onion topped cathedrals. Re the crumbling facades, this place was under siege by the Germans in WWII for over 2 years so there’s a massive amount of restoration work still being done and they’ve done a brilliant job so far. Also there’re more statues than you can poke a stick at. It’s a bit like Paris in a lot of respects with Russian service staff about as humourless as your average French waiter. Three days here so another dose of culture tomorrow (today) then again on Monday.
Had our first Russian meal at lunchtime which started with a tot of ice cold vodka (very civilised), a bit of salmon caviar (so it was imitation caviar in fact) and a glass of anti-freeze champagne. The floor show was quite something. The establishment was a theatre restaurant so we had two musicians, one playing a triangular 3 string guitar type thing and the other playing a piano accordion without the piano bit. It had buttons on both ends. The guitarist could have got a gig with any thrash metal outfit. His hand speed had to be seen to be believed. Slash reckons he can play fast (he said it in his autobiography). He’d be pushed to keep up with this bloke. I was seriously impressed.
As the Japanese eat sashimi, the Koreans eat kimchi and the Indians eat curry, so apparently the Russians eat beetroot soup or borsch as it’s called and we were duly served it. We then had beef stroganoff naturally (chicken stroganoff on day two). Apparently stroganoff was invented by Count Stroganoff’s chef on account of the boss running out of teeth and not being able to handle steak.
We visited two palaces on day one and also a fort in which there is a cathedral where all the Tzars are buried including what they could retrieve from various mine shafts of the last lot, the Romanovs (the computer just changed that to “aroma nobs” for some reason). Visited yet another palace on day two being the one where Rasputin was murdered plus a spectacular church (The Church on the Spilled Blood) built by Alexander II’s son on the exact spot where the old man was blown up by anarchists and bled to death. We also did a boat cruise which is always a good way to see somewhere especially somewhere with over 300km of waterways.
The opulence and frankly, sickening extravagance of the nobility in the 18th and 19th centuries (the child bride, she who will never go camping, thought it perfectly acceptable) gives you some idea why the peasantry eventually got the hump in 1917. Ultimately it was just one mob of nobility being replaced by another set of self proclaimed nobility, the difference being that the second lot didn’t have the fashion sense of the first although I understand Raisa Gorbachev made Mikhail’s Kremlin issue credit card smoke whenever they got anywhere where the shops stocked more than turnips.
We saw a statue of Voltaire in the Hermitage Museum – Catherine the Great’s winter palace in Saint Petersburg and now a museum that rivals the Louvre. Catherine bought all of Voltaire’s books, letters and other writings when he died. It’s kind of ironic that his complete works are here and he’s the bloke who said “I may not like what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it” (or something similar). Hardly the motto of the communists (or the erstwhile nobility) and not something Vlad subscribes to either I’ll wager. That reminds me of another Estonian Russian joke. Apparently speech was as free in the Soviet Union as it was in the USA. In the USA you could stand in front of the White House and shout “Down with Reagan”. Similarly you could stand in front of the Kremlin and shout “Down with Reagan” as well.
Speaking of Vlad, he figures prominently on souvenir shop t-shirts, in a very positive way as action-man in various poses. Maybe it’s the locals taking the piss but I don’t think so unless the country that gave us the gulag is more nuanced than we think. I’m only aware of one t-shirt “celebrating” an Aus PM. It says “F….k Tony Abbott” and was produced by a journalist for The Age newspaper in Melbourne. Incidentally, The Age is known locally as Pravda on the Yarra so it stands to reason doesn’t it.
We saw quite a few wedding parties on the first two days. There are so many great places for photos so the bridal parties were out in force. I have to say, as a confirmed male chauvinist pig (do femonazis still say that?), Russian girls are extremely attractive (think female Russian tennis players) whereas the blokes all seem to be pasty faced petrol pump attendants. Talk about punching above their weight. All of them.
Question – why do Americans abroad think we are even remotely interested in what they have to say? We are in the bar part of the restaurant at the back of the ship and are surrounded by shouting Yanks. STFU readily springs to mind. It is possible to converse and laugh without taking everyone in the post code into your confidence. The CB thinks I’m getting grumpy in my old age. I’m not. My tolerance for stupidity is just reducing. The people on the next table must be on party drugs.