End of St. P

August 16, 2006-Then & Now
(photos:Musicians,
Host family,
David in army hat)

David wanted to note some differences from his visit in 1985. Then there were only Russian Lada cars. Now there’s every variety with Honda and Ford made here and Toyota to follow. Then the airport had separate waiting rooms for Russians and foreigners. Food and goods are plentiful now and there are no lines in the stores since there’s no fear of shortages. The key-ladies who handed out room keys on each hotel floor are gone as are the bank of tape recorders in the lobby to record conversations in rooms that were all bugged.

We had breakfast today with Lorna and Yong . He is S. Korean and immigrated to the U.S. in 1955. She’s Hawaiian and is ¼ Spanish and ¾ Korean. He follows Confucianism and she’s a Buddhist who also follows the teachings of Confucius. We’re not alone among non-Christians in our group.

Catherine's

This morning we traveled past working state farms that survived “perestroika.” Farmers are still called “workers” but now have small private plots of their own with root cellars for storage. They live in crumbling Cabrini-Green look-alike human warehouse apartments nearby. We arrived at the Village of the Czars also known as Pushkin. It was the home of Alexander Pushkin and has many museums honoring his life and work. It’s better known as the summer home of the Romanoffs and looks like a precursor to modern gated communities. The entry is through an Egyptian arch reminiscent of the Temple at Luxor. Tree-lined avenues join one palace and dacha to the other. But the centerpiece is Catherine’s Palace. It was from this village that Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children were arrested and taken to prison to be murdered.

Catherine I, the washerwoman who became the second wife of Peter the Great, built a twelve- room dacha in 1710. It was added on to by her daughter Elizabeth I until it became an opulent 1000-foot long palace. The result was fifty-five rooms where the royals lived and a like number for servants and support systems to run the rest. The exterior is painted light blue to match Elizabeth’s eyes and is detailed in gold leaf. We were met by a band that danced to their own music to distract us from the long line where we waited with dozens of other groups. When we finally gained entry we had to put on surgical footies to protect the floors as we did at Peterhoff. I thought it was just an easy way to get the floors polished for free. I had fun “skating” as I slogged through the clutch of tourists. There’s so much gold leaf design in the interior I was glad I’d applied ample sunscreen. Elizabeth was big on Baroque.

Elizabeth I was a party animal. She had a ball every night for three reasons. She had the palace to show off and hundreds of servants to keep busy and she owned 15,000 gowns she had to wear. I finally got the lineage down and can elaborate on who’s who in the Russian royal zoo. Peter the Great married Catherine I. Elizabeth I was their daughter. Elizabeth didn’t marry and had no known children. She chose the son of her sister to ascend the throne after her death. Her nephew Peter III was mentally deficient and it’s reported that as an adult he played with children’s toys. He married Catherine who dubbed herself the Great and she had him assassinated. There you go. Even though C II was a lousy wife and mother she was an excellent grandma and nurtured her favorite, Alexander, to the throne.

The Germans occupied the Village of Czars and destroyed the palaces as they retreated. From the gilt details to the parquet floors to the delft floor-to-ceiling stoves that heated every room, Catherine’s Palace has been restored. In 1941, they even stole the walls of the amber room. They packed it in crates and shipped it home. It hasn’t been seen since 1942 and no one knows where it is. Ironically the amber encrusted walls were a gift to Peter the Great from Prussia. During reconstruction Germany helped pay for some of the costs. It took 20+ years to restore. I cannot even begin to describe what a room with amber walls looks like. Amber changes color with heat and there are many shades from the traditional yellow to red. It’s made up of individual pieces fit together to create repeating patterns including frames for art. Another irony is that the restoration took place under the Communist regime.

Hermitage

Everyone was looking forward to our visit to the Hermitage. It was the carrot on the stick; the last place we toured. We began our adventure in the Winter Palace and covered four of the five palaces that comprise the complex. The security was so bad as to be laughable. Some of us walked through and some walked around unsupervised metal detectors. We fought crowds coming and going through the same solitary detector. On our way out there was a guard sitting in a chair with his feet up and his hat pulled over his eyes. We were told that security had been beefed up after a curator and his family stole 231 objects over six years.

The crushing crowds made it hard to stay with our group and I had to keep reminding myself to look at the architectural features and art rather than focus on where our guide was. The one word to describe it is overwhelming. The original palace dates from 1763 but there was a fire in 1837. It was re-built but during WWII little old ladies who volunteered at the museum managed to crate and transport 2/3 of the collection to Siberia by train before the bombs and shelling reached the building.

Unlike the gold painted papier-mâché chandeliers of the Yusopov Palace, the chandeliers in the Hermitage were bronze covered in gold leaf. One weighed two tons. The gold swirls and curlicues on the domed ceilings were echoed in the intricate parquet work of the floors. A partial list of Masters hanging in the galleries includes Rembrandt who is sadly displayed behind glass after a deranged man threw acid on one piece. El Greco, Goya, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Van Dycke, da Vinci, and Rubens hang one after the other like so many trophies. There’s an entire floor devoted to Impressionist paintings given to the museum when the collection of two local merchants was nationalized.

Numb from hours of gawking we returned to the hotel to find that it had a new name. It’s now a Radisson Park Inn. We rested for an hour and climbed back onto our bus for an hour drive into the countryside. It was time for the home-hosted dinner, a signature of Grand Circle Travel.

Meeting the Natives

Our guide said that because Russians are reserved it was very difficult finding a family to host the dinners. Even after seeing Luba and Nicholai host dinners for three years their neighbors aren’t willing to give it a try. Nadia is always amazed at how friendly Americans are and how easily they’ll strike up a conversation with a stranger. Luba is a former history teacher who is now principal of her 600-student school that spans grades 1-11. Nicholai is a stevedore at the port of St. Pete. He’s a local boy and she’s a Ukrainian who came to study teaching at the university. They’ve been married 25 years and have a daughter, Katya, who is 18 and a university student. Their son, Dennis, is 24, living at home, and a worry to them.

Nicholais father built the house fifty years ago. His father now lives in a house across the street. We learned that a dacha is a summerhouse owned by city apartment dwellers. A doma is a freestanding house. Domas are in the country too since there are no detached houses in the city. The houses we passed were run down. The roofs were in terrible disrepair and the wooden walls needed painting. All had vegetable and flower gardens but the grounds weren’t tended as ours are. There was little room for a lawn and priorities emphasized the need to grow food rather than pristine grass.

The house is small with two bedrooms. The son sleeps in the living room, which was turned into our dining room. We sat down to eat the meal Nicholai cooked when four singer-dancer types burst into the room and entertained us. The family cat sneaked in and was given dispensation to stay since he had taken a liking to one of us. He ended up sleeping on my lap after a while. The meal was meatballs made with beef and pork so we were given chicken. Dessert was a delicious flaky pastry swirl topped with sugar and made by Luba’s mother.

After the meal we asked questions. Luba speaks some English and was part of a teacher exchange in Chicago. Nadia did the translating when necessary. Luba said that public schooling ends at grade 11. One-third of the students at her school leave after ninth grade and 90 per cent of the remainder go on to university after graduation. When asked about life before and after Communism she said that it’s better now but not easier. It’s freer, not more secure. The health insurance they have through work only covers emergencies, health care is poorer, and pensions are less now. Nicholai likes Putin and is optimistic about the future of Russia. Luba said that even though they grew up during the Cold War they were never afraid of the U.S. As far as Bush goes, she diplomatically said that,” if you like him he is good.” They stated that Putin and Bush are friends. Labor unions aren’t strong and Nicholai didn’t feel that the ones in existence represented the workers well. They had strong negative feelings about the army. Conscription is alive and well, but they advised their son to become a policeman rather than risk going into the army. There have been several hazing scandals resulting in the deaths of new recruits. The Russian army hasn’t changed too much I suspect. In our grandparents generation young men would break their trigger fingers or worse to avoid the draft.

We didn’t get back to the hotel until 10:30pm. We had to pack tonight to be ready to leave for Finland after a lecture tomorrow. It’s after midnight. Pleasant dreams.

Toby