(Not Even) 48 Hours in Saint Petersburg

Ah, student travel, how I have missed you. I’ve missed your trains with sleeper cars where sleep is impossible. I’ve missed your dorm room bunk beds and hopefully clean sheets. I’ve missed the scouring of side streets and maps, the watching of weather and camera battery, the inescapable hunt for the one restaurant downtown that won’t cost $100. But mostly I’ve missed packing an amount of things you thought impossible in one day, seeing more of the city in 48 hours than some see in a week, and feeling damn well accomplished for doing it.

My class went to Saint Petersburg last weekend. Though it was a planned group trip, it somehow felt a lot more like the weekends I spent country hopping two years ago. 40 hours in Saint Petersburg (and that’s literally all it was) didn’t seem to scratch the surface, and I’m disappointed I may never get there again.

We took an overnight train both ways, leaving our dorm in Moscow at 9pm for a 10:40pm train. I was lucky my expectations for the train were low – my bed was hardly more than a park bench with sheets, and the compartment was so tiny one person couldn’t get by another if they were standing between the bunks. But hey, at least it had a door. (I was told there was a possibility it wouldn’t. Yikes.) After an 8-hour journey, the train arrived in Petersburg at 7am. Our leaders, Tanya, Nastia, and Polina herded our group of 21 into a Coffee House (the name of the chain) to have breakfast and await our bus tour, which didn’t begin until 9. A few hours and cups of coffee later, we headed out to meet the bus, some more cheerful, some…not. Our wonderful tour guide drove us around the sights of Saint Petersburg, which included quite a lot.

A brief pause to describe Petersburg and showcase all the fancy knowledge I’ve gotten from my history class. Saint Petersburg was founded by tsar Peter the Great (ahha!) in 1703, and built on a spot in the middle of swamps where there was absolutely nothing previously. Basically, Peter hated Moscow and decided to build his own new capital just the way he liked it, in just the place he wanted. The city is built on the mouth of the Neva River where it meets the Baltic Sea, and consists of the mainland and several islands. The entire thing was planned out in advance, meaning that it is both exquisitely beautiful and artificial. In the 1700s Peter thought that Amsterdam was the epitome of modernity, efficiency, and beauty, and though the reason for that will remain forever a mystery, Petersburg was built to model Amsterdam. Its wide avenues are lined with beautiful architecture and bridges arch across the canals and river. There are four major cathedrals and God knows how many pretty little churches, not to mention enormous palaces (note, plural) and official buildings. In short, the city was engineered to be beautiful and it is.

So, we drove around the city and saw all of these beautiful places. At some point, the sun came out – a seeming miracle, since the forecast had predicted rain and snow. We stopped at a cathedral to see an Orthodox service going on, the girls donning scarves out of respect. We drove around the islands, where the more industrial areas are, and saw Peter’s original log cabin (now with another building built around it to keep it intact.) We also drove up and down Nevskiy Prospect, the main avenue of the city and setting of many a story by Pushkin and Gogol.

That afternoon, we gathered again as a group to visit the Hermitage. The Hermitage is what they call the gargantuan art museum that is housed in the Winter Palace, the main residence of the Romanov tsars. Both the palace and collection are absolutely mammoth in size and completely overwhelming. You thought the Louvre was big? This puts those silly French to shame. The palace itself is breathtaking, but when you consider the art inside of it, it’s staggering: two da Vincis, Raphael, Michelangelo, a huge Rembrandt collection, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Gauguin, Degas, Cezanne, and room upon room upon room beyond. There’s also Asian art, modern European, Russian handicrafts, antique furniture and design, and Greek and Roman classical, none of which I even saw in the four hours we spent there. You could easily spend two days.

Unfortunately, as you might imagine, many of the group had either become sleep-deprived zombies or moaning malcontents, so we were happy to part ways for the evening. Some of us ended up at a Georgian restaurant for dinner, savoring our favorite hatchapurri (cheese bread from heaven) and a new chicken dish that involved honey, apricots, crushed walnuts, and cheese (also, apparently made in heaven, which seems to be in Georgia).

The next morning, the bus took us out of the city center to visit Pushkin, the town that houses one of the Romanovs’ summer palaces. I understand now why Russians refer to Petersburg as provincial, because it’s really a very small city, and once you hit the outskirts, there is basically nothing. Tsarskoye Selo (Tsar’s Village) is just one of several suburban palaces. I get the impression that every new tsar felt the need to build a brand-new palace, more lavish than the one before. This palace wasn’t really lived in, just used for parties. Somehow the Revolution of 1917 has ceased to seem so drastic. During the siege of Petersburg in World War II, Germans occupied the palace and between bombing and looting it was completely destroyed. The restoration work is really incredible to see, because after the war there was basically nothing left.

We had the afternoon free, so Sara and I set out to cram as much as we could into four hours. We started at the Russian Museum. The Hermitage may be massive, but surprisingly, it has no Russian art. The Russian Museum houses works from famous Russian artists like Kandinsky, Chagall, and Vrubel. It was a really great museum, and we got a surprising amount out of it in our two-hour speed through. Mostly, it was game to spot the works we had learned about in our art history class.

It was 4:30, and we had until 5:45. After hitting the 20th century and picking up some postcards, we ran across the city to St. Isaac’s cathedral, stopping only to pick up a blini (think crepe) on the way. Though they’re usually eaten with knife and fork, we pioneered the eat-off-plate and walk method with enormous success. Our goal was to have time to climb to the dome of St. Isaac’s and take in the view, which had been recommended by several professors. We made it (just barely) and climbed the spiral staircase to the top – not nearly as difficult to climb as some of the others I’ve seen, but definitely a cool view, especially since the weather was nice. Sadly, we didn’t even have time to see the inside of the church, since once we got back down to the ground, we had to hurry along the Moika Canal to meet the group.

That night, thanks to Anatoly, we saw a performance of Berthold Brecht’s Man = Man at the Alexandrinsky Theater, one of the famous imperial theaters of the city. The inside was beautifully decked out in red and gold, but the lobby was an 8-floor maze of staircases. Instead of orchestra and balcony, there was an elaborate system of several balconies and boxes, each reached by its own seemingly secret passageway that puzzled us all to no end. I don’t even want to talk about trying to find the bathroom. So, after seeing a great show, we only had enough time to get a quick dinner and head to the train station for our next overnighter. Thankfully, this train was a bit more amenable to sleep. Or maybe it was just our exhaustion.

The pictures tell the story better than I can, probably. Take a look: http://picasaweb.google.com/lmhenry16