A Weekend in St. Petersburg

Once again – where did the past month go? I almost refuse to believe it’s December already. That means that there are only four weeks left in the semester, I’m starting another round of traveling at the end of the month, and this weekend marks three full months of living in Russia.

                Prior to about three weeks ago, my experience of ‘living in Russia’ had been limited. I was learning the language, I had seen some of the touristy sights, was starting to pick up on cultural differences, and was easing my way into learning more about Russia and its history from reading and from my kids, but my life was more focused on work and adjusting to a new lifestyle. Then, through a lucky arrangement of covering some classes for another teacher who then covered for me in return the following week, I found myself with a three day weekend, and decided to spontaneously book a ticket to St. Petersburg. It was the best thing I could have ever done to help deepen my understanding of Russia and start to really develop a connection with the country.

                True to my budget traveler self, the cheap tickets I had booked left at 6 am on Saturday morning, so since the public transportation stopped running to the airport at midnight, I packed up my bag and headed out to the airport Friday night via the $5 airport train after celebrating a birthday with some friends, and slept rather soundly on a bench at one of Moscow’s three airports. My iPod’s Celine Dion Playlist is still my faithful travel companion thanks to its magical ability to put me to sleep in even the strangest of sleeping locations. I woke up at 5, zipped through security (an added bonus of odd flight times – no lines!), got myself a large coffee, and spent most of the flight reading Lonely Planet’s St. Petersburg PDF chapter to figure out what I wanted to see most.

                I was met at the airport by Tamara, who had informed me she would be wearing a red beret. I told her she didn’t need to pick me up, but she insisted, saying that otherwise she would worry too much. Who is this woman, you ask? Tamara is a connection of mine from my former Russian history professor at UWGB, who had lived in Russia for five years in the 1990s. While living there, she met Tamara, a now-retired English teacher from St. Petersburg, and has stayed in touch with her ever since. When I told my professor that I would be moving to Russia, she told me I had to “go to St. Petersburg more than once or twice” while I was there, and that I could stay with her friend Tamara. Actually, when I booked last minute I was prepared to stay in a hostel, as it’s pretty rude to invite yourself to stay at someone’s house only four days in advance, but I took a chance and e-mailed Tamara, who replied that she would “host me with pleasure.” I got lucky!

                 I didn’t even know how lucky meeting this wonderful lady would turn out to be when I first met her, but I realized it more and more as the weekend went on. She may have one of the most interesting life stories I have ever encountered firsthand. First of all, she was born in the 1940s during the German siege of St. Petersburg. She said that some of her earliest memories were waking up in the middle of the night to bombs, which has caused sleeping problems to this day. No one could get in or out, with the exception of trucks trying to smuggle people out by driving across the ice to Finland, but she said when the authorities tried to force all of the people from her neighborhood into the trucks to escape, her mother refused to go because there were so many stories of the trucks falling through thin ice. This happened three times, and each time her mother refused to go with her two young children. They later discovered that all of the people from their neighborhood had perished in the icy cold water trying to cross to Finland. In Tamara’s words, “there has always been someone guiding me through life.” 

The first children's hospital in St. Petersburg, where Tamara was hospitalized after the war.

                    She grew up in the heyday of Soviet communism, proudly joining the Young Pioneers and “believing in everything,” simply because she couldn’t imagine any alternative. After graduating from high school she went straight to work, but a couple of years later she decided to take some entrance exams to see if she could continue her studies. She passed the exams and was able to enter the State Pedagogical School, to train in both English and nursing. She became an English teacher once she completed her studies, and spent many years teaching “as much as I knew,” which lacked proper exposure to spoken English. She said they had occasional recordings to listen to, but most of it was guesswork, since there were so few foreigners and Russians weren’t allowed to travel abroad without special circumstances. Eventually, after the fall of the Soviet Union she encountered many more foreigners and, in her words, would “grab them and take them to my students at school” so that they could gain valuable language experience. She was even able to travel to America in the 1990s, where she said she learned much about and identified well with American culture.

Tamara and I with the Hermitage in the background. 

                The first day Tamara and I simply went for a long walk, where she brought the streets to life by telling me little tidbits about most of the buildings as we passed them. We walked from one end of Vasilevsky Island – the first civilian settlement in St. Petersburg - to the other, which culminated in the joining of the Neva River and its tributaries to provide a beautiful panorama of old and new St. Petersburg, spanning over three hundred years of history. Straight across the water was the St. Peter and Paul Fortress, the first structure built by Peter the Great in 1703, which contrasted heavily with the bright electric bridge and the name “SAMSUNG” lit up just behind it to the right. Turning more to the left provided a view of Petrogradskaya, a more modern area of the city, and turning more to the right yielded the western side of the Hermitage Museum, formerly the Winter Palace which had been stormed by the Bolsheviks nearly one hundred years ago at the start of the Russian Revolution and changed Western history forever. That’s a lot of history in one shot.

St. Peter and Paul Fortress

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

Though Tamara went back to her flat for the evening, I chose to stay out a little later and finish my walk across the Neva to cross the bridge into the City Center. I walked through the expansive Palace Square, in front of the entrance to the Winter Palace, then continued onto what is perhaps Russia’s most famous street: Nevsky Prospect. Nevsky is a delightful street lined with beautiful buildings, canals on either side, fancy shops and restaurants, bookstores and cafes. It is a place to see and be seen, and a delightful walk through history, as many of St. Petersburg’s famous sites are located on or near Nevsky, such as the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, so called due to it being built on the assassination location of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. I returned to the flat for a delicious dinner that Tamara prepared, elated at the sights of St. Petersburg I had seen that day and excited to visit the world famous Hermitage Museum the next morning.

Rastrelli's Jordan Staircase, Hermitage Museum.

After a much needed restful sleep, I woke up on Sunday morning, shared coffee and breakfast with Tamara, made plans to meet up with her in the afternoon, then took off for my morning at the Hermitage. The beauty of the Hermitage is that not only is it an expansive museum with an impressive collection of European, Russian, and world art, but it is in the former Winter Palace of the Tsars, where the Russian royals lived not even one hundred years ago. Beginning with the Jordan staircase, designed by the famous Italian architect Rastrelli, each room through the Hermitage was a delight to walk through. It’s also a workout to walk through – the Hermitage Museum itself is about 15 miles worth of gallery to walk through. I knew I wouldn’t be able to see everything, so I planned to attack it in sections. But then, nature threw a wrench in my plans and decided to clear the cloudy skies to reveal the sun, not even one hours after I started at the museum. I decided that since I got in at a discounted rate, and that I would be back, I would rather spend time outside in the sun to walk around. So, I left the Hermitage much earlier than planned, but it was worth it to see the city through partly sunny skies. I met up with Tamara in the afternoon at the Pushkin statue (in front of the Russian Museum), and she walked me around some more of the Nevsky area, before we returned to the flat for dinner. She pointed out the various art, music, and ballet schools that still continue to train some of Russia's finest artists today. St. Petersburg has always been a city of culture, and as one walks down the fine streets lined with an impressive variety of European architecture, this impression remains. 

Nevsky Prospect

                    My last full day in St. Petersburg was spent, of course, walking around and taking pictures. I started the morning at the Russian Museum, set in another former palace for one of Russia’s richest families, where I took in a morning full of purely Russian painters, sculptors, and designers. I don’t know much about Russian art, and since many of Russia’s greats studied abroad or under European tutelage, most of the art seems pretty standard European. The earliest displays in the museum were Byzantine art, which focuses more on icons (with the gold halos behind the heads of the saints) than typical French or Italian religious art, but all of the religious art still came from the Bible, therefore I was able to recognize some of the stories portrayed in the paintings. Three hours later, I had managed to see the entire Russian museum, and I had even recognized a modern Russian artist that I remembered studying back in the fourth grade. Museum success.

Pushkin and the Russian Museum

Sunset walk

St. Issac's at sunset. 

                The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around with Tamara, after a coffee break at an old Soviet café, which still keeps their Soviet prices ($2 for two cups of coffee and two doughtnuts) and is hidden on a street off Nevsky – somewhere I would have never found on my own. She took me to  the other side of the city center, where we could see famous sights such as the Mariinsky Theater and St. Issac’s Cathedral. After she went bac, I spent the early hours of the evening wandering alone and taking pictures, and already planning my return trip to St. Petersburg. As I finished my walk and waited for the bus to take me back to the apartment, where Tamara was planning a lovely dinner for us, I reflected on my impressions of St. Petersburg. I remembered learning about how Peter the Great had set up shop on a swampland over three hundred years ago, after traveling abroad and seeing the great cities of Amsterdam (why St. Petersburg has so many canals), Paris, and London, and everybody thought he was crazy for trying to build a city in such an unfavorable setting. But, looking at his grand city three hundred years later proves that he had a vision that he realized, and I’m sure he would be proud to see what it has come to, with thousands of visitors each year to see its splendors.

Sunset on the Neva

For me, understanding and appreciating both sides of Russia – the more traditional and Orthodox buildings of Moscow, built centuries before the grand European style St. Petersburg, creates a more complete picture in my mind of Russia. Moscow appears to be the soul of Russia, where St. Petersburg is a display of its beauty. But of course, neither city takes into account the true heart of Russia, which lies in the vast expanse of farmland, villages, and towns where Russia first began. This is where I must visit next to continue to understand Russia and its people better, but for now, I’m grateful for the opportunity I had to visit St. Petersburg and be hosted by Tamara. It was a wonderful introduction to this stunning city that I’m very much looking forward to going back to next year.

Goodbye St. Petersburg

And today, as everyone back home celebrates what they are thankful for with their friends and family, I feel thankful to have these opportunities to continue exploring and learning about the world. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!