Baltic farewell

This Odysseys Unlimited tour was certainly too upscale for me, with 5 star hotels and meals in exceptional restaurants. A bit lost on me, being used to cheap motels, not a meat or salmon eater, more of a peasant in my pedestrian tastes. The Saint Petersburg Grand Europe Hotel was literally quite grand. A pianist played during our buffet breakfasts, there was turn down bed service, and our farewell dinner was in the caviar bar.

 

During the siege the hotel served as a hospital, and anyone fortunate enough to work there probably had access to slightly more food, but nowhere near enough calories to sustain health.

Overall the tour was good, based on the comments of the other tour members, but my own experience was shortchanged by initial jetlag from my inability to sleep on planes, and the quick onset of what turned into a bad head cold. I really got tired of the palaces, the crowds, the slow pace, museum back, the not very good alternatives for vegetarians, my hacking cough and congestion. My interactions with the other folks were limited by my being sick for more than half the trip but they were mostly a pleasant and thoroughly middle class privileged crew. 

Even now back in Northampton I'm still not over this cold.  I did see things and had experiences I could not have done as a self-directed tourist, given the language limitations and since the tour guides were so helpful and informative. I have been particularly intrigued with Russia since college history courses, but obviously also from growing up during the Cold War and subsequent events after the fall of the Soviet Union, and more recently from watching the TV spy drama "The Americans": this trip was enlightening. I knew something about how much the people of these countries have suffered, but it was difficult to fully comprehend until actually being here.

Leningrad

St. Petersburg, site of the 1917 storming of the Winter Palace (the Hermitage) was renamed Leningrad following Lenin's death in 1923. Below is the cruiser Aurora, whose mutinous sailors purportedly fired the shot from the bow cannon that signaled the start of the Bolshevik takeover.

The former Singer Sewing Machine headquarters on the Nevsky Prospect, now a cafe and shops.

Leningrad, with a population of about 3 million, was a prime target for Hitler, since it was home to the Soviet Baltic fleet and had significant industries. The Nazis advanced to the outskirts of the city in December 1941, destroying palaces such as Peterhof along the way, and Finnish troops moved in from north, encircling the city (except for Lake Ladoga on the east side). Hitler's intent was to level the city and cede the land to the Finns, but the Germans could not break through and settled into a seige, which lasted almost 900 days. During the first winter of the seige temperatures dropped as low as -40 degrees and food and supplies could not be brought in due to German bombing. People resorted to boiling wallpaper to make soup, the famous cats of the Hermitage were eaten, furniture was burned for warmth.  Estimated civilian deaths range from 700,000 to 800,000, or one in four residents dying, primarily from starvation or freezing to death.  Peter, the son of the family we had lunch with, said he lost two grandparents during the war, his grandmother dying March 1942 during the worst of the siege.  The large memorial and the site of mass graves were outside the center of the city, and our tour did not include visiting them.

After the 1991 end of Communist rule, the citizens of Leningrad voted to revert to naming the city St. Petersburg.

1917

I was curious about how the 100th anniversary of the February and October 1917 revolutions would be treated in post-Communist Russia. I had read that Putin, concerned about any potential questioning his own control of the government, wasn't keen on encouraging revolutionary revisiting. There had been some demonstrations recently protesting the suppression of political opposition such as banning popular candidates by trumping up coruption convictions to prevent them from running against Putin's one party rule.
But the only demonstration I saw on this trip was at the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, a very nationalistic one urging a return to using the old flag of imperial Russia (black, yellow, white stripes), with orthodox priests officiating.

The State Museum of Political History was fascinating, housed in two merchant mansions taken over by the Bolsheviks after the February revolt replaced Nicholas II with a liberal social democracy. Lenin had his office in this building until temporarily fleeing to Finland July 1917.

The museum was dense with displays  from 2 centuries of revolutionary activity and reactionary attempts to retain power while trying to bring about partial reform, with only partial translations. Easily a semester's worth of history, without much content in English, and only the stamina for a 2 hour visit, made this challenging. But despite all this, it was an amazing museum experience. There was a lot about the vicious civil war that broke out after the Bolsheviks seized power in the October revolution, particularly about the peasant "Green" armies, fighting essentially for self-protection, caught between the extremism of the "Reds" and the loyalist "Whites." Peasants, the majority of the population, were subject to forced conscription by both sides, deemed "bandits" by the Bolsheviks if they resisted, and cruelly suppressed.

Too much content covering too many decades of propaganda, oppression and suffering. And of course there seemed to be only cautious commentary on recent history, after the 1991 overthrow of Communist rule.

Peasant weapons, note the crude sword at Top.

Sunny St. Pete

According to our St. Petersburg guide Sasha the city usually gets just 60 sunny days a year. Our 5 out of 6 days of full or partly sunny days far exceeded the quota. There is a small beach below the walls of the Peter and Paul fortress, across the river from the Hermitage, where determined sunbathers could get out of the wind and soak up the rays.
Peterhof, Peter the Great's summer place on the Baltic, was totally destroyed during WWII but now restored in all its gilded splendor. Once overrun by the Nazis, it's now overrun by large tour groups. Best of all on a beautiful day were the outdoor fountains he designed and engineered himself. This fun one has circling geese being perpetually chased by a (hydraulically) barking dog.

But being a tsar had its risks. Palace intrigue as well as revolutionary turmoil took its toll. Catherine the Great's son Paul I only reigned for five years before he was murdered in his bedroom. Ironic since he was so fearful for his life that he built a special palace for protection from conspirators. His grandson Alexander II (famous for emancipating the Russian peasantry from serfdom in 1861, as well as for selling us Alaska to help pay debts from the Crimean war) was blown up in 1881 while riding in his carriage. The Curch of the Savior on Spilled

Blood was built on the site -- even retaining part of the street with original cobblestones. 

Москва day trip

4 hour train ride on a 7:40 am 200 kilometer high speed train, but the economy seats were not exactly comfortable for napping through the dead flat terrain. Better than Amtrak, everything new and clean. I can imagine the shocking comparisions foreign tourists make when they encounter the sad state of our own travel infrastructure. But best of all another sunny day, luck with weather continues. Nice to be away from my tour group, but being guideless meant having to figure out Cryllic alphabet signs.

Red Square was blocked off due to a concert venue being set up, but did see a memorial service at the Russian tomb of the unknown soldier at the Kremlin wall in the Alexander gardens, with band, soldiers parading.
Inside the Kremlin swarms of Chinese tour groups as always, but the cathedrals were small enough that fewer people could enter.

So much for the view of Red Square and Lenin's tomb (and John Reed's grave)

 Steps away, the once famous GUM department store, propaganda showpiece of Soviet days (how they would "bury" us with consumer goods, non of which were available to the Soviet people) now just looks like another silly upscale mall.

Just a block away from all this was a small coffee and sandwich shop called Prime Star, part of a chain but very reasonable prices, think Dunkin Donuts but tiny comfortable spot (wouldn't be out of place back in Northampton) to drink tea, recover from not enough sleep, museum backitis and still nagging cold) and rest before the next hopefully open museum. The State Historical museum turned out to be under some mysterious renovation but next door was an exhibit of "the Great Patriotic War of 1812." 

 War seems to be the flavor of the month: the train showed WWII themed movies and documentaries coming and going, and offers free firstclass seats to those few surviving 90-plus veterans of that other great patriotic war, celebrating the May 1945 victory.

Famous marble Moscow subway station

And return to the train station for a beer and salad and almost missed the 7:40pm St. Petersburg train since they didn't bother to post the gate or even announce it until just minutes before departure.

The real attraction of travel is never the destination but rather the journey, as they say.

Hermitage

Much of this first full day in St. Petersburg was spent in the Hermitage museum, the former Winter Palace of the tsars. Arguably the largest art collection (more than 3 million pieces) in the world. Too much marble, gilt, malachite, lapis lazuli, jasper, et al.

My cold continues but so do I, just my pace slowed to match the rest of the old crew. Lunch was our group split between two Russian families in their tiny apartments, very pleasant encountering locals so closely. Peter, the 30 something son still living with his divorced English teacher mother, proudly showed off his military knife collection, as well as his impressive sets of plastic model tanks and other military items. Yet his university deferment has kept him from his one year service obligation, while he peacefully runs his cookie business. Friendly, engaging, comfortable, but very one way as we asked all the questions.

Санкт-Петербург

Arrived in Saint Petersburg yesterday after an all day bus ride, "only" taking 2 hours to cross the border. Eve made sure we were on our best behavior, though she was wise cracking about Russian efficiency. Our young Lithuanian bus driver Vlad sweet-talked the woman border guard to not make us drag our luggage through the non-functioning x-ray machine, and we were lucky there were not many  tour buses ahead of us in line.
Out to dinner at the restaurant that Pushkin frequented. He left from there to fight the 1837 fatal duel (with his brother-in-law, for trying to seduce his wife)  The owner of the restaurant enthusiastically recited several Pushkin poems.
Eve and the owner:

Wax Pushkin greets you at door:

Saint Petersburg, Venice of the north