Wednesday, 5 August, 2009

St. Petersburg, Russia

The weather report suggested that we would have a sunny day with cool temperatures. But when we docked at the new facility in the St. Petersburg harbor, it was a typically dreary, cloudy Northern European day. Having misread the meeting time for our Excursion, we were a little late, but thankfully not the last people to check in and receive our little blue stickers for tour #20. Russian immigration is a little more bureaucratic than other countries (surprise!) and so we all had to fill out immigration cards and get our passports stamped by the officious Russian Immigration people, who are equipped with smiles, but they don’t mean it. Fortunately, we did not have to have gone through the month-long process of obtaining a Russian Visa for this trip. As long as we are on an organized tour from the ship, we only had to fill out the immigration form and get a stamp in the back of our passport.
We boarded the bus and only had to wait a few minutes for the last members of our group to catch up. There were only 24 of us on the tour, and so there was plenty of room in the coach to spread out. Some of the seats were permanently reclined, so that reduced the comfortable choices. St. Petersburg is no different than other Russian cities. It seems that a good number of buildings were in the process of being con-structed or de-structed…but it was hard to tell which one. It’s good that there is a lot of work going on, but the direction of movement should be more easily identifiable. We drove across the Neva River in St. Petersburg and 50 minutes later arrived at Catherine’s Palace. The front of the palace is almost 1000 ft wide and a beautiful blue, white and gold façade.
The Palace was significantly damaged and burned by the German army when they were driven back during World War II. It is only through the significant effort of the Soviet Union restoration experts, referring to black and white photos taken before the war that the Palace has been returned to its former glory. Some of the artifacts had been hidden as the German army approached, but only some. There was much looting and destruction by the occupying forces.
The process of moving through the palace is well orchestrated. Our tour guide has a microphone and transmitter and all of the members of her group have receivers and earphones. If reception starts to break up, we are falling behind and need to catch up. We moved from one room to the next, with a rather sour-faced Russian woman in a chair in each room to check that people taking photos had the little sticker on their camera, showing that they had paid for the photo permit….and giving a tsk-tsk if a flash was used when it was not supposed to be.
We had lunch in a restaurant near the palace, which consisted of borscht, a stroganoff and ice cream with some kind of a fruit goo. It was certainly more of a re-fueling event than fine dining. The restaurant is obviously a hot spot of activity for the locals, with Karaoke machine, mirror ball in the ceiling and a dance floor. There is probably much vodka and beer consumed on a regular basis there.
We had a short drive to Paul’s Palace. It was a gift from Catherine to her son Paul when his son Alexander was born. It is in a different style from Catherine’s Palace, but was designed by the same architect that designed two of the rooms in Catherine’s Palace.
Paul’s Palace was also mostly destroyed near the end of WWII, but again rebuilt through the use of photos which had been taken before the war. Many of the artifacts from the Palace had been hidden on the site as the German army approached and remained hidden during the war. As a result, more of the china, lamps, furniture, statues etc, are the originals instead of restored copies.
We had a nice drive back to the ship, with the sun finally breaking through the clouds. There are still a number of monuments and statues in St. Petersburg from the Soviet era. It’s interesting to hear the jokes that the locals tell about the statues of Lenin and Stalin. There is one of Lenin where his right hand is extended. The locals say it stays out because he is trying to flag down a taxi…and it never arrives.
After our long day, we had a quick dinner in the “Lido” restaurant (industrial, assembly-line food) and then Pam headed off to the Gym and Jim tried to catch up on personal email (NO work emails !!). We get to sleep late in the morning, as our excursion tomorrow does not leave until 12:30 pm.