St Petersburg Grandeur

  St. Petersburg, North-West Russia, Russian Federation
Friday, July 25, 2008

Packing our bags in the Volga

Tuesday 22nd July
Alison: We touched down in St Petersburg and got safely through immigration & customs, despite Michael's attempt to chat with stern and unsmiling Russian officials, withdrew some Roubles from the ATM & came out to see Katerina & her husband Alexi waiting for us. We had contacted Katerina on the Internet about 6 months previously as she offered a non-professional guide around St Petersburg for a small sum. When we had called her two days before and mentioned we hadn't yet organised a hotel, she generously said we could stay with her. Unable to resist the chance to experience Russian life first hand, we agreed. Alexi had an ancient Volga which excited Mike no end, it being a classic Russian car from Soviet times. We somehow managed to fit in all our luggage as well as us, but one of kids had to keep ducking down when went past a policeman as Katerina explained we were only meant to have 3 in back. Apparently the police in Russia are so poorly paid they are quite corrupt and relish the chance to pull someone over, so Alexi wanted to give them no excuse to do so!

Our bedroom vacated by Liza & Masha

We headed back to their apartment about half an hour's drive away, a classic Soviet Apartment block built around 1970. There we met Katerina's youngest daughter Liza who had moved into her grandma's room as she had gone to their summer house, while their middle daughter Masha with whom she shared a room was away at camp. Their eldest daughter Anna lived just 5 minutes away with her boyfriend. Their room was large enough for all of us and the girls had painted directly onto the walls to decorate the old wallpaper with great swirls of colour and flowers etc which looked great. Unfortunately it has given Tom & Rachel ideas about what they could do to their bedrooms which I am actively discouraging!

Katerina, Alexi & Liza in the kitchen

The kids were starving so Katerina made them some Pelemeni (a kind of Russian ravioli) & then we headed off into St Petersburg with Liza as well. Now there were 5 of us in the back so we took a rug that the kids could duck under whenever we spotted a policeman!

Liza, Katerina, Alison & Rachel by Hermitage

It was about an hour's drive into the centre of the city through crazy Russian traffic, with Alexi shouting "Poleizi!" every now and then, but once we arrived Alexi dropped us off and we walked around the streets of St Petersburg, past impressive buildings such as St Isaac's Cathedral & the Admiralty Building, and then along the River Neva and up to the famous Winter Palace.

Kids with icecreams in front of St Isaac's

We talked a lot about 'Storming the Winter Palace' but in the end, we 'Stormed' a restaurant where we had a nice dinner & Anna joined us there after she finished work. She spoke very good English, like her mother and we had a great time chatting. Interestingly, food is quite expensive in restaurants, even though the average wage in Russia is very low, making it hard for most families to eat out often. It was hard to gauge what the general cost of living was, but as a tourist, Russia is quite expensive. Finally we drove back to their apartment and headed off to bed after a long day.

Everyone with Anna as well

Wednesday 23rd July
Alison: We had a good sleep-in and then after breakfast we all headed off for a proper tour of the sights of St Petersburg after our preliminary introduction the afternoon before.

Catching the subway

This time Alexi drove us to the subway so that we could catch the Metro in. The subways in St Petersburg are incredibly deep and when we came up we couldn't believe how far the escalators had to take us. You couldn't see the bottom or the top of it while you were on it!

We emerged at the top and walked to the Voskresenia Khristova Church or Spasa Na Krovi meaning Our Saviour on Blood, which is very spectacular and was built by Alexander III as a memorial to his father Alexander II who was murdered on that spot in 1881.

Church of Our Saviour on Blood

Unfortunately it was closed on Wednesdays so we couldn't go inside and view its beautiful mosaics, but it was lovely to look at from the outside - very different from most of the baroque and neo-classical architecture of St Petersburg and instead deliberately copying Mediaeval Russian architecture like that of St Basil's in Moscow.

From there we went to one of the nearby canals and negotiated for a private boat cruise on the Neva River for an hour which was great as we could see all the amazing buildings and sights with Katerina's gentle explanations rather than the loud, relentless and boring commentary we had been warned about avoiding on the commercial tourist ones.

Approaching the Aurora

It was exciting to see the naval boat the Aurora which I could remember learning about in Year 12 History as playing a role in the Revolution. After the boat ride we had lunch at a very nice restaurant facing the park that holds the eternal flame memorial. Once again the service was incredibly slow - the Russians consistently providing the slowest service in all of our travels around the world - but the food was good.
That prepared us for our visit to the Hermitage which used to be the Winter Palace and is now one of the world's most impressive museums full of incredible art from various eras. Luckily for us, Alexi queued for an hour to get the tickets while we were on the boat ride so we could walk straight in, which was really wonderful of him. It was hard enough dragging the kids around the Hermitage, let alone getting them to have queued for an hour first! Anyway, we tramped through incredibly decorated rooms, looking at amazing art work, our favourites being the impressionists, amongst many others.

Rachel & Tom by favourite painting

Finally we headed for home, quite late already but I had promised to make dinner for everyone so we still had to go shopping for ingredients. The trouble is that we are so far north in St Petersburg that it is still light at around 11.30 pm so you easily get caught out. We went to a recently built, huge supermarket which was enormous and packed with both food and general goods. I had thought about doing a lamb dish, but it looked pretty bad, so I settled on a lovely piece of pork.

Our great (if late) meal

I cooked a yummy dinner and also made a cherry clafoutis, which went down a treat, but we didn't eat until about 10.30! Anna came also and a great time was had by all before we finally crashed into bed around midnight, just as it was getting dark.


Thursday 24th July
Alison: Katerina had managed to convince her boss to let her have the day off which was lucky as we had decided to go to Peterhof and were going to go just with Liza, but it was even better with Katerina as well.

Cascade Fountain at Peterhof

We slept in after our late night, so rather than going to St Petersburg and then catching the ferry both ways, Alexi drove us for an hour and a half to Peterhof and we would do the ferry home. Peterhof is a really spectacular place, with a series of palaces and gardens laid out by Peter the Great to challenge the mighty Versailles. We queued for a while to get in and then had lunch in a restaurant there before spending the afternoon wandering through the enormous gardens with their myriad of fountains.

Tricky fountains at Peterhof

The kids especially enjoyed what Liza called the 'tricky fountains' where you would walk along or sit on a seat and suddenly get showered by water! There were lots of Russian kids there loving getting drenched and squealing with delight every time the water suddenly poured on them.

Rolling down hills with Liza

Another highlight for the kids was rolling down the grassy hills with Liza.

Eventually we queued up to get a 45 minute catamaran back to St Petersburg which sped its way up the gulf of Finland into the Neva and docked just outside the Winter Palace. Alexi met us there and drove us back home where we had dinner and headed off to bed.

Catching our Aeroflot flight to Moscow

Friday 25th July
Alison: We were up early to say farewell to Katerina who had to go to work and then we packed, getting all organised before we flew to Moscow. We had good old pelemeni for lunch - a great hit with the kids so I'll have to see if I can get it back in Australia - and then Alexi and Liza very kindly drove us to the airport for our Aeroflot flight to Moscow. We said our farewells once more, very grateful for all their generous hospitality and efforts on our behalf, but looking forward to catching up with Katerina and Liza in the New Year as Michael has offered to fly them to Australia then which they were ecstatic to accept.

Liza, Mike, Rachel, Alexi & Alison

Mike: Russia was one of those places on this trip I had always been fascinated to get to, and it didn't let me down. This experience was made sooo much more enjoyable and interesting by the generosity of our new friend Katerina in offering to be not only our guide, but also to stay with her family in their small apartment (at no cost). To experience such a different culture from the inside, not as a mere tourist in a hotel, was a huge bonus.. and afforded us an insight we could not possibly otherwise have been privy to.
Being picked up at the airport in their old Volga was in itself a highlight, as this to me was so typical of the stereotype we have of the old Russian empire! Kids ducking down constantly in the back whenever Alexei said Polizei merely enhanced the sense of fun and excitement, and we would all laugh heartily together, as we did for so much of this brief but wonderful stay!

Their apartment was very typical of how most people seem to live in Russia.. a small, old, well worn and fairly cramped at best space in a big old block, two small bedrooms and very small kitchen plus tiny toilet, this was what they offered us to share, which was sooo generous of them.

Storming the Winter Palace!

We quickly learned that our hosts had a wonderful sense of humour, and I got to love Katerina's guffawing laugh and their gorgeous/unique ways! St Petersburg itself is, as is its reputation, a really beautiful and charming city, set along a river like so many of the worlds beautiful cities, with marvellous/majestic buildings lining it on both sides,
Each day we would wander into town for a new adventure, be it out on the boat, all 'storming the palace', heading into the countryside to see the magnificent Summer Palace, or whatever it was.. always with a smile on our faces.

Mike, Rachel & Tom by fountain

For me, as is so often the case, it was veeeeery much the people that made this experience so memorable. Very much openminded and progressive by comparison to most there, we talked openly into the night about all things Russian and Australian, and were equally mututally fascinated to realise just how enormous the difference is between our cultures. A biiiig lesson that was hugely reinforced to me during this time was the power of the media. Far from the impression we are given in the west that the Russian people yearn for a better life, a more open and capitalist market or a more democratic model, indeed in many ways quite the opposite appeared to be the case.
They were all very happy with Putin's leadership, seeing him as strong and representing their interests extremely well, particularly in light of the massive corruption experienced in daily life there, and saw that he had been very effective in helping to get on top of this and put the bad guys/Mafia where they belonged, in prison etc. Thus, whether it was Medvedev in the actual seat or Putin, they were all happy in knowing with whom the real power lay, in someone they implicitly trusted.
Their dabble with freer elections had been widely regarded as a failure, largely given that with this endemic corruption came the ability for candidates to effectively buy their votes and thus their seat in parliament, thus they were then able to represent their own self- interests, with quite disastrous results. As a result the more recent trend back to the traditional pure oneparty policy was welcomed with quite some relief, with Putin seen as somewhat the benevolent dictator ruling with a firm but fair hand.
We were fascinated to realise too the extent to which this still this was a culture where authority was very much feared, again largely because of the ability for people to use this power corruptly, which they did regularly.
And in regard to the outside world then, they held a therefore understandably slightly paranoid view, that they really had to do it alone.. as the west was very much aligned against them and doing their best to repress them. When we asked them which countries did they like and admire there was a slightly puzzled reaction before they admitted surpise at the question as the answer was pretty much none, they were proud of their empire and this apparently pretty much precluded finding friends abroad!

To we Aussies clearly this was increeeedible!.. espeeecially in light of the fact that these particular people, as I said, were very much at the openminded end of the spectrum, but it just goes to show that history tells very different tales across the globe..
When pushed they conceded they probably admired the German work ethic and discipline, and this we could understand, as certainly the service ethic in Russia was like no other we are yet to see in this world! Meals in restaurants where we were the ooonly diners aaaalways took more than an hour to arrive.. what the heck they did out back we will never know, but they sure didn't feel a sense of urgency!!
Consistent with this they also, unsurprisingly, kneeeew very little about the rest of the world too, so were fascinated to hear just how differently we lived in Australia. It was when chatting with them one night that something dawned on me... They had been soooo soo generous in sharing what little they had so freely with us, so I decided we should do likewise, and muuuuuch to their surprise told them we would fly them out to Australia to come and stay with us and experience a new place firsthand.

On the Neva with Hermitage in background

This was an opportunity that VERY clearly they would never otherwise have, and after ten minutes needing to convince them that no I was NOT joking, they would come as our guests for a few weeks, a mild state of shock mixed with euphoria settled over them. This gesture though was only in keeping with the extreme generosity they had shown us, no more, and I felt that in the scheme of things and given how fortunate we all clearly are (not just us but more generally anyone living in Australia) I was delighted to be able to make a difference for someone who had been so good to us.
Flights are now booked and they arrive in early January for a couple of weeks which we know we will very much enjoy, and undoubtedly all laugh a lot again!!
Liza her daughter too had such a spirit of fun and liveliness, and we felt that within minutes we had known them for a long time. Alexei, Katerinas partner, spoke no English but nonetheless we communicated very effectively in the language of the world, ie hands and smiles! Only on our last day did I realise he spoke French too, thus the door opened further for us and we both enjoyed chatting in our similarly limited French!

Grand rooms in the Hermitage

Visiting the Hermitage was just uuuuunbelievable. The building itself sooo grand, a sight to behold, and then the art, oh my goooood! They have amassed a collection here apparently second only to the Louvre in its volume, but more to the point the quaaaality of this collection is just mindblowing. On every wall and around every corner were pieces we instantly recognised, or at minimum the artists names. Maybe its a while since I've been to the Louvre but gee this is something else!!!

Mike by his favourite sculpture

Given the kids were with us, let alone my own limits, we had to choose where to devote our efforts for a few hours, so we fairly raaaaced around large sections each of which would justify a day in itself. We then allowed ourselves a bit more of a close look at the Impressionist and then more modern works that we both so love, as did the kids. Wooooow, faaaabulous!
Anyway we are very much looking forward to showing some of our wonderful country to our new Russian friends, and it will be fascinating to see their reaction to our very different culture and surrounds.