First Days

Jim and Ardith travel to Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithunia.  

Writing the blog and processing the pictures takes lots of time, so we will always be a few days behind.

Sunday June 2

Things started out as planned today – we went to church and sang in the choir, Ardith taught adult Sunday School, we went home and took care of lots of last-minute details like watering plants, we drove to daughter Cheryl’s place, spent a bit of time with Cheryl, John and Madeleine and had Cheryl drive us to Dulles airport.  As we approached the line for SAS airline, we heard “oh, look who’s in line behind us”.  Dana and Debbie Danielson, who live at the other end of Fairhaven from us were going to be on the same plane.  We went through ticketing and security with them and enjoyed chatting while waiting for our flight.  When we booked our flight through Kayak, we weren’t given a choice of seats, but were told to contact SAS.  Their website said that we could check in and choose seats 22 hour before our flight.  We did so 22 hours and 15 minutes before and saw we were assigned seats at the far back of the plane in row 46 and there were only 2 scattered vacant seats.  We asked about changing while doing the physical check in, to no avail because the flight was fully booked.  When we were waiting for the plane, we were called to the desk and asked if we would switch seats as someone else wanted the far rear ones.  We were pleased to get a window-aisle pair in row 33 in 2-4-2 seating.   

Kiosk in St. Petersburg

As is happening on most airlines, the seating space continues to shrink, so we were squeezed in together for our flight to Copenhagen.  Everyone was on board 15 minutes before scheduled departure time, so we were feeling good that we would have no problem with our 2 hour and 20 minute connection.  As the scheduled departure time came and went and we weren’t moving, Ardith expressed concern about the connection.  Jim assured her that we would be fine.  The issue was that there were thunderstorms approaching.  We backed out of the gate about an hour past our scheduled time, with Ardith quite concerned, Jim not so.  About 40 minutes later, it looked like we were 3^rd or 4^th in the queue to take off and things began to move.  The captain said that we (and several other planes) were merely turning back on a different taxiway so that planes that were headed in a different direction could pass us and take off.  The current problem was the storm system ahead of us, not the weather where we were. Finally, about 2 ½ hours later, we took off.  According to the map on our seatback screen, we were scheduled to arrive in Copenhagen 3 minutes before our connecting flight took off.  This was enough to concern Jim.  We began making plans for what we would do if we missed our connection.  

 

Park scene

 As we progressed, the time gap kept getting a tiny bit better.  This led Jim to speculate about our Copenhagen – Saint Petersburg flight being delayed a bit.  When our plane pulled into the gates, we had a nine minute gap.  We deplaned very quickly and agreed we should pursue making the connection. Jim walked-ran from a gate at the far end of one pier to a gate at the far end of another.  When he was in sight of the other, a gate agent yelled out “Saint Petersburg?” and Jim yelled ”Yes!”. When Jim got to the gate, the agent asked if there was another passenger and Jim said that Ardith was coming as fast as she could.  When Jim explained that we had a much delayed flight, the agent looked at the computer and said “you certainly made great time”.  We puffed and panted our way to our seats seconds before the plane closed the door left the gate.

Monday, June 3

When we got to St. Petersburg, Jim immediately went to the lost luggage desk and speculated that our bags may not have made it.  The agent checked the computer and said one of our bags was still in Copenhagen, but she wasn’t sure about the other.  She said that the delayed one would arrive on the same flight the next day.  We watched the baggage carousel until the last bag passed by, but ours wasn’t there.  We went out of the customs area and met our friend, Sergey, who was just arriving.  He went back to the lost luggage desk and helped Jim fill out the paperwork so the airline would deliver the two suitcases to his apartment the next day. 

Sergey then took us to his apartment.  As we approached his building, there was a car blocking the narrow drive that led to Sergey’s parking spot.  He had to shake the car to activate the car alarm to get the owner to come and move it.  One of the problems in the area is that commuters from further south like to drive to this neighborhood to park and take the Metro to the center of the city.  Sergey and several of his neighbors installed locking, collapsible bars in parking spots they claimed.

We went into the apartment where we could put down the small bags we had on the plane and relax for a bit.  For Jim, “relax” doesn’t last long.  In less than a half hour, he and Sergey were out exploring the neighborhood.  The first special thing is that the apartment is only about a 5 minute walk from a metro station.  Metro will be our main means of transport for much of our time here.  The main street at the Metro station is Moscovsky Prospekt or Moscow Boulevard. This is the longest straight street in St. Petersburg, extending 12 km (7.5 mi). 

A block away from the Metro stop is a huge statue of Lenin surrounded by jets of water from a large fountain.  These play with water in a variety of patterns.  Kids aren’t supposed to play in the fountain, but some do (and a few adults).  Sergey joked that I could go worship at the shrine to Lenin anytime I wanted to.  

 There is a big, elegant building behind Lenin that was built to be the main city government office center, but at the time it was far from most housing and most workers said they didn’t want to be there, so the city now leases it to a variety of commercial firms. 

Another long block farther on Moscovskiy Prospekt is a park dedicated to the Russian victory in the long struggle against the invasion by Germany in World War II and to the many who died there.  The site was a brick factory, but was used as a crematory during the siege of St. Petersburg for the 100,000-600,000 Russian dead.  Much of the original “landscape” of the area is preserved.  We didn’t have time to explore it.

We also went past the Chesme Church, with an architectural style unlike almost any other Russian Orthodox church.  It and the adjacent palace were the first non-Gothic buildings in St. Petersburg.  The “palace” was as stopover place for the imperial family roughly midway between downtown St. Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo (a place we will see later in the trip).  It has since been expanded and is now part of a local college.   One of the gates to the college has Olympic rings on it, suggesting that it was used during the 1980 Olympics when St. Petersburg hosted many of the soccer matches.

Our host, Sergey, is the leader of a group of professional singers that regularly tours the US.  We have hosted them for 6 years in the past and they have enjoyed our hospitality and have regularly invited us to visit.  After we got back from our walk, we got to meet his wife Irina who leads a sometimes overlapping group of singers on European tours.  Later that evening, we got to meet their daughter, Anastasia who is 17 and has classes until 9 PM. They also have another guest, Nicholas – a young man from Switzerland who is studying Russian for 2 weeks.  He works at an Apple store and has a lot of Russian-speaking customers. 

After a nice dinner of chicken with dill and home fried potatoes, Jim decided he needed more exercise to help stave off jet lag.  It is 8 hours later here than at home.  Jim did a further exploration of the neighborhood.  There are lots of sidewalk extensions to restaurants, all of them set off from the street by an enclosure of some sort.  On the earlier walk, Jim saw 2 attractive young women taking pictures of a dish at one.  Jim took a picture of them taking the picture.  Sergey told them that Jim was a famous American photographer.  On this walk, Jim saw one outdoor space that was set off by old bicycles.

Jim also went back to the fountain.  There were more people there and they tended to be a bit older.  Jim had lots of time to get good picture of the fountain.  As he was approaching from a different angle, he saw a cheerful little boy with his father and thought that would be a good subject.  As he was getting his camera ready, the boy stood and pointed exactly the same way Lenin was pointing and directly beneath him.  Jim just missed this wonderful shot, but got the boy and his dad in a reasonable picture anyway. As usual, he has a hard time not taking lots of pictures.

One street music group that was unusual was a group of guys dressed like North American Indians, but playing pipes associated with Ecuador and Peru.  They were playing to a rock beat.

He also noticed for the first of several times this trip, a pair of well dressed young women taking “glamour shots” of each other.

As he was walking near some shops, he noticed a particularly sexy young woman walking ahead of him with friends.  He got a picture showing other guys admiring her also. 

The sun was still shining as Ardith went to bed at 10pm.  Jim was still uploading his pictures onto the laptop, but only managed to stay awake until 10:20, but that should be about right to start chasing away jet lag.  This extended daylight may be a bit of a challenge.