Scandinavia-Touring At Last

August 14, 2006-St. Petersburg
(Photos:Chezma Church,
Romanov graves,
Peter tthe Great's crypt,
Church of Saviour on Spilled Blood)


Tomorrow is our granddaughter Talia's birthday and we have no way of calling her. It makes me sad. We celebrated with her before we left. It satisfied her but not me. As you know it’s hard for me to adjust at the beginning of our trips. This isn’t making it easier.

Our group staggered onto the bus for a tour of the city of St. P. I should cut myself some slack on learning the names of our fellow travelers. There are twenty-two in all. I know most of the women but the men seem to run together. Our hotel is outside the city center. The guide said there was no suitable place closer in. We were joined by a student photographer who is taping us as we tour. He will edit pre-shot footage of the sites we have seen into it. Of course it will be for sale.

We got a lesson in Communist architecture. There is ugly, uglier, and ugliest. The styles are named for whomever was the dictator at the time of construction. Stalinist is the best constructed and most attractive with the Khrushchev era the worst. Fortunately we quickly found the adorable pink and white wedding cake-like Chezma Church built around 1770. Russian Orthodox services are 1 1/2 –2 hours long and the congregation stands the entire time. The larger more ornate churches are cavernous since there are no seats. They’re also now mostly museums. Worship is conducted in “church Slavonic” and the younger people don’t understand and cannot read it. Under Communism some churches were used as warehouses and one had a swimming pool built inside. There’s still a church housing the Museum of Atheism. After three generations of atheism, it’s difficult if not impossible for religion to gain a solid foothold. Padded theater seating might help.

We rode down Muskovsky Prospekt, a wide boulevard, and benefited from the sprucing up done for the G-8. Most facades were freshly painted and flowers were in abundance. St. P has always been a clean city and is famous for lovely public parks where even on a Monday we saw four wedding parties taking photos. Citizens enjoy owning their apartments now but since the state is no longer responsible for providing housing homelessness is a new problem here. Prosperity for some has brought more cars and cars too are homeless as parking was never a consideration in the old days. History Lesson St. Petersburg is 300 years old. It was founded by Peter the Great and became the capital from 1712-1917. It sits on what used to be Swedish territory but around the 1600’s Peter wanted to build a European capital and fought for twenty-one years to get this marshy location. It was Russia’s by history since in the 1300’s it was Novgorod. When Peter got it back from the Swedes he went to England and Amsterdam to study shipbuilding. He learned well. Shipbuilding is still the main industry here. He never lived to see his city plan completed but it was followed to the letter. Today they still adhere to his limit on the height of buildings in the old city being less than seventy-five feet tall. After WWI the name was changed to Petrograd since St. Petersburg was too German a name. In 1917 it became Leningrad and in 1991 it was back to St. Petersburg by a slim majority of 54% in a democratic vote.

Peter the Great was dubbed “Great” after his death based on his achievements. Peter tired of his first wife and sent her to a convent. He took as his second wife, Catherine who became the 1st. She was a washerwoman/”entertainer” for the troops who made it big but not “great.” It was Catherine II who named herself “great.” Perhaps she based her honorific on the number of lovers she had. The Neva River is lined with pastel colored palaces many of which she built for her favorites. Five of those palaces comprise the Hermitage.

Peter built Peter and Paul Fort and Church on an island in the Neva River. There are 308 bridges in the city limits twenty-two of which are drawbridges. The drawbridges are only open from 2AM-5AM for the larger ships to pass. The fort never saw military use but has housed political prisoners and is presently a mint. P and P Church was built in 1712 in the European style loved by P “the Great” and is the resting place for the Romanov family. Russia is in the process of gathering the remains of its dead princesses who married into other European families. They’’re re-interring them in crypts in P and P. But tit for tat, one crypt is empty. A princess who married Russian was recently sent home to her country of origin. The Romanovs and all the servants who were killed with them when they were assassinated were re-buried in the church and DNA testing shows that the ephemeral Anastasia is among them.

St. Isaacs Church was built in the1850’s. It’s not dedicated to the Isaac we know but to a Byzantine monk. It escaped damage in WWII when many of the gold church domes were painted gray to camouflage them. Flanking the entrance to the altar are ten columns encrusted with mosaic malachite veneers. The two columns immediately on the sides of the massive entrance to the altar are lapis lazuli. It’s overwhelmingly opulent in a good way. In winter ice formed on the inside of the dome and upper walls. Braziers were placed around the sanctuary to warm the worshippers and their breath added more heat. Candles were used in the chandeliers. What was created was a weather system with chunks of ice falling on the faithful. Many oil paintings were replaced with exact replicas in mosaic to avoid deterioration from the weather. Italian artisans didn’t come to Russia to create the mosaics. Russians went to Italy to be trained. The results are remarkable. Some originals are shown next to the mosaics and are indistinguishable as to color, composition, and shading. The only give-aways are the edges of the tiles. Eventually the weather problem was solved with the advent of central heating and electricity.

The Church on Spilled Blood was the place where Alexander II was assassinated. It’s built in typical Russian onion-domed splendor featuring multi-colored roof tiles. We didn’t go inside and I think that’s the last of churches for this leg of the trip.

On Our Own

The Red October beckoned us as the “official” gift shop stop. So far I’ve been able to resist buying anything but this is only day two For the first time in our travels I’m wearing a money belt under my shirt. David has some money and a credit card hanging in a pouch under his shirt. We hate it but our guide said it is necessary. She told us only to use credit cards in the hotel or approved shops since credit card fraud is rampant. One woman has a fanny pack with a steel wire through the belt part. I may invest in one when we get home. It has to be more comfortable.

All but four of us are going to see Swan Lake tonight. David saw the Kirov dance it when he was here in the 80’s. We saw the Kirov in Cleveland so we decided to skip it. We decided to ride the Metro downtown on our own. Susan and Chester Watson joined us. Chet is retired from the military and had a top security clearance. He doesn’t talk much about what it was he did. Susan is a CPA. He’s a Republican who says he’s been disappointed by some of his choices. He thinks that Mitt Romney would be a good candidate and he would vote for Joe Lieberman. I think Susan may be a closet Democrat. We followed the instructions given to us by Nadia and entered the Metro station near our hotel. We bought tokens for twelve rubles each (fifty cents) and descended an endless escalator into subterranean St. P. Built in the good old days, subways doubled as bomb shelters. A free economy is evident in ads displayed in the train cars and on the walls of the stations. Train stations aren’t necessarily labeled and the announcer tells the next stop so we counted out six stations and got off at the seventh. Stations are a mile apart. As we surfaced David was jostled by someone who kept saying, “Excuse me,” but was blocked by someone else. He thought it might be an attempted pick pocketing so veered off to the side. He didn’t have anything in his pockets anyway but was uncomfortable with the situation. His reward for his quick thinking detour was finding a street vendor selling Diet Coke, his first in a few days. We negotiated the street scene ending up sitting in a park near the river until it was time to go. Sun sets around 10PM and we wanted to be back by dark.

I napped a lot on the bus and feel more rested. I think I’m settling in. Tomorrow we go to Peterhoff, Yuspupov Palace, and take a cruise on the canals.

Toby