Before going to Russia I had heard so many conflicting stories that I really didn't have any idea of what to expect. I had heard that it is dirty and dangerous, and I had heard that it is incredibly beautiful with some of the best art in the world. So I think no matter what I found in St. Petersburg, I was going to be surprised, and what I did find just amazed me! I had never even imagined anything like it. In the ride from the airport, I started seeing all these large, relief-decorated buildings with fantastic architectural style, and statues and monuments everywhere, and I thought to myself that I need to come back out here to take some pictures of this. But then it all continued and continued for several miles into the city center. It was like an entire city filled with building equal to those along the mall in Washington, DC. I visited a couple of the many palaces in the city as well as a couple old churches that are now museums. I think the most beautiful building I've ever seen -- inside and out -- was The Hermitage Museum. The building was originally built as Elizabeth I's Winter Palace. Seeing the excess in which the royalty lived, art everywhere and rooms painted in gold, and knowing that the majority of the common people lived in poverty on the countryside certainly helps me understand why the Russian people were looking for a radical change in government at the end of the czarist period.
It's incredible to learn the history of how and why socialism was adopted and then actually get to stand in one of the palaces and see it! On one audio-taped tour I took of Rasputin's Palace, they pointed out pieces of art that used to exist there, but were removed and sold by the Soviet government. You can see that in the early Soviet period a lot was done to carry out the fundamental ideas of socialism -- taking things away from the very rich in order to improve the conditions of the poor. One book showed how at the beginning of communism many of the excessively large apartments in St. Petersburg were split into several smaller apartments. You can also easily see the Soviet-style, "Constructivism", of the buildings built in the 1920's to 1960's, with none of the relief sculptures and excessiveness of the older buildings. The neglect of the later Soviet period is also obvious. Many buildings are literally falling apart. These buildings with their great sculptures are covered in scaffolding. When I first arrived, I thought, "Oh, they're restoring another old building, that's great", but I later learned that the scaffolding has been there for years and is rather permanent -- it helps protect pedestrians and cars from the falling pieces of statue and building.
The buildings that have been restored are just fantastic, and I can only imagine what the city looked before it went through a couple of civil and world wars, and what it will look like again in 10-20 years as they continue to restore it.
Several pictures of the Hermitage, inside and out....
The Palace Square behind the Hermitage:
A few of the beautiful churches....
St. Peter and Paul's Cathedral (1703):
The Church of the resurrection (1883):
Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan (1801):
Some of the buildings...
The St Petersburg Stock Exchange (1804):
Monument of Catherine II (1873) in front of the Alexandrinsky Theater (1832):
This next building is St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Compared to the other buildings around it, it didn't seem all that special other than in size, but inside I can't begin to explain the 20 foot tall mosaics, all the gold, statues around the ceiling -- just spectacular and no photographs were allowed. A month after visiting St. Isaac's Cathedral, I was in the Zurich Kunthaus (art museum in Switzerland), and I walked past a painting and almost fell over. I recognized it immediately. I thought there couldn't possibly be another building that was this excessive inside, and when I went to read the title of painting, I was right! Here I was in Switzerland a month later and I had walked up to a painting of a building I had been inside in St. Petersburg. It blew me away because the picture really captured the excessiveness inside with the little tiny people in this huge, elaborate hall. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it could be real!
Here are the guys from Motorola who showed me around. Everyone at Motorola was very protective of me. I was picked up at the airport and taken straight to the hotel, where I was told to wait for someone to meet me for dinner. After a couple of days when I told them that I would walk to work in the morning by myself, they didn't like it at all and insisted that someone meet me at the hotel. I really never felt unsafe. After all, there were police on every corner. Although I was informed me that the police shouldn't necessarily make me feel any safer.
Here’s me, Alexander, Mikhail, and Kostya:
One night the four of us went to see Swan Lake ballet at the 
. Something interesting happened here. Tickets for Russians were about $8 and tickets for foreigners were around $50. The guys thought that since I was with them, it would probably be OK to get me a Russian-citizen ticket, but as we were walking into the theatre, the woman collecting tickets spotted me instantly. She started to speak Russian to me, which we had prepared for. Kostya shook his head no, so I said, "Nyet". Then, she started to speak some more, and the guys tried to answer for me, but somehow she knew I was an imposter. I had to go pay the difference for the ticket. The Russian guys were a little embarrassed, and thought that it was unfair that I had to pay a different price than them, but I really don't have a problem with it. I know that in the US, I'd have to pay at least $50 for such an event, and that on Russian salaries, there is no way the average citizen could afford the ballet at that price. A similar thing happened when Mikhail and I went to visit St. Isaac's Cathedral. First, we waited in line for about 45 minutes to buy $2 tickets, but when we got to the front of the line, we found that foreigners should go straight to the door without waiting in line and pay $8.
I'm sure you're tired of hearing me say how beautiful things were, but the theatre was...
One night I was lucky enough to be invited to dinner at Mikhail's home. His mother prepared several traditional vegetable salads and meats, and we had crepes with caviar (I tried the caviar, but I preferred my crepes with strawberry jam). Mikhail's Mom told us how she went to Las Vegas and won some money, and then I told them how I went to Vegas and lost money. The rest of the night we all laughed so hard about how everyone wanted me to become successful and rich so that I could loose my money in Vegas, Mikhail's mom could win it, and of course share it with her son, Mikhail, who would of course share it with his friend, Alexander, who would of course share it with his girlfriend, Juliya. Dinner was great, and of course we drank lots of vodka. I learned that in Russia, vodka bottles don't come with twist-off tops, so they can't be closed once opened. (This wasn't literally true, but for us it might as well have been.) After dinner, Juliya played the piano and sang for us. It was wonderful, like something straight out of a movie. Finally, at about three in the morning, we caught a cab and went dancing!
Here's Juliya, Mikhail, Mikhail's Mom, and Alexander:
This is one of the pair of Rostral Columns. Originally, they kept a fire on the top to guide the ships.
In this picture, notice the way the high wind has streaked the clouds:
People ice-fishing:
Here's a building that is nicely lit up at night in one of the restored districts:
Here's some of the permanent scaffolding protecting pedestrians from falling statue pieces:
Here's an example of a building being renovated on the corner, and a dirty one right behind it:
This is the very typical Russian car. It's pronounced Wolva, but I have no idea how to spell it:
Here is a typical bus. It runs by electric power from cables above. Most of the busses are this old, and on workday mornings they're just jam-packed with people:
No trip to Russia would be complete without a visit to a military museum:
How about this gun?!?:
Visiting St. Petersburg was on overwhelming experience -- full of sights and events that I never imagined. As I'm putting together this collection of pictures, I am still feeling the amazement of this city, and I know that I only visited a very small portion of all the sites. Hopefully, I'll get to return and see the Garden of Statues, Peter the Great's freak museum where he kept deformed animals and other weird stuff, some of the palaces outside the city center, and of course, The Summer Nights. During the summer it stays light 24 hours a day, and in the evening they open all the draw bridges around the city to let the ships pass through. It's supposed to be a great sight, and I certainly don't doubt it.