Illiterate in Санкт-Петербург

By Michelle Nelson

Splilled Blood Church - This picture was taken by an older Chinese gentlemen laying on the street.

Chinese people are really experienced photographers

We arrived by ferry boat from Tallin after a 14 overnight trip. Uli tried to sell me this ferry trip as a cruise ship. I have never been on a cruise but I think they are usually a lot nicer than this.

The best part of the trip was the show with Cossack dancers, classical violins and some folklore dancers.

“Санкт-Петербург” is Russian for Saint Petersburg and is an example of all the things we tried to decipher in St. Petersburg. Navigating, finding the exit from the metro and reading a menu proved to be quite a challenge until Curtis told us about a great app for our phone which scans the Cyrillic letters and translates them to English. It was like being illiterate and I now have great sympathy for people who cannot read!

Fortunately, there are Servas people in St. Petersburg and we got a hold of a native named Valentina who showed us some places off the beaten track and also explained some things about life in post-soviet Russia. Thanks Valentina.

Valentina took as to a spy bar and explained that like the East Germans there is a certain amount of nostalgia for all things soviet among the younger Russians. Like this bar dedicated to the KGB spy organization.

With lots of old spy paraphernalia. Another favorite among St. Petersburg natives is Daschinka, a cafeteria where you are served soviet style food in a dacha setting, complete with funny old movies. (A Dacha is a Russian country house). I think you have to have grown up in Russia to find the food good, kind of like Americans with their mac-n-cheese. Our travel advice: Skip the compote, unless you like really sweet drinks.

St. Petersburg is a relatively new city, founded in the early 1700s by Czar Peter as a “European” style city. Architects from France and Italy were brought it to build it. St. Catherine’s Winter Palace, for instance, is the home of the Ermitage a world famous art museum which we visited.

The interior of the museum is at least as amazing and beautiful as the art it houses.

Russian Men Choir
Michelle bought two CDs from them, because of their wonderful deep voices.

St. Petersburg is also the city where the revolution was started – maybe because the people were dirt poor and starving and had to walk by this palace every day.

Private Chapel inside the Winter Palace

Stalin and Lenin and his cronies decreed that the Soviet Union would be atheist so most of the churches were turned into museums such as the Church for the Saviour on spilled blood which was built where one of the Czars was assassinated. I cannot remember which Czar it was. They lived dangerously.

The pictures on the inside and outside of the church are mosaic and are fantastically detailed. The whole church is also very colorful almost like Walt Disney designed them.

Metro stations

To replace these beautiful churches, the Soviet Union created metro stations which were named “palaces of the people”. Believe me, these stations are really palaces and I have never seen anything like it in a public transportation system.

They were built in the 1950s so they are complete with the hammer and sickle.

Omnipresent Vodka

In St. Petersburg we went to a restaurant that had a whole menu dedicated to vodka and we asked the waiter if it was normally drunk before dinner, after or during the meal. He said “all of the above” and we decided to give it a try. First of all it was hard decision to pick our vodka. There was a whole page of vodkas in the menu.

It was very good Altai Vodka that went down smooth but I do not think I will make it a habit. It is very, very strong. Well, as they say “when in Rome, do as the Romans”.

April Thesis

I mentioned in a previous blog that Uli and I are interested in the history of the USSR and communism and we got our fill in the fantastic “Russian State Museum of Political History”. The museum is in the mansion that was used by the Bolsheviks and Lenin in particular during the revolution.

Lenin's Office

Also, there was a lot of material covering WWII and the crumbling of the Soviet Union. We had a guide for this tour which was a good thing as she was very knowledgeable, the displays were in Russian and we had a good long talk about politics. What does she think about Putin? Do most Russians vote? Our guide, who is a historian and political science does not vote because according to her there is not yet real democracy in Russia. Polls show Putin as having over 80% of the vote but this does not reflect the reality according to her and other Russians we talked to.

This is the balcony where Lenin presented his April Thesis` to the people like “Land to the People” and “All power to the soviets”.