Two days for the price of one

Two days for the price of one.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Ardith’s problems with her ankle and leg have increased, so she stayed home today and rested. Jim met the Swiss group’s bus just across the street from where we normally catch the Metro.  The bus headed to Tsarskoe Selo, also known as Catherine’s Palace or Pushkin (the name of the town where it is located).  Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great, then Empress (Catherine the not-so-great?) acquired the property and built a relatively minor residence on it. Her daughter, Tsarina Elizabeth, built a much larger palace to honor her mother in 1752.

After going to several places, Irina got me added to group of Swiss folks so we could all go through the place during the tour group time. The above photo is from the south side of the building where the light was perfect.  We entered through the north side which suffers from poor lighting, but not lack of splendor. 

Facing the north entrance were apartments for the senior staff and minor nobilities who were in residence,

This time we got to wear sturdy brown booties instead of the flimsy blue ones.

 

We ascend a grand stairway and entered the ballroom, also known as the Grand Hall or the Hall of Lights or currently the Hall of Tourist Hoards. Jim was thrilled to see that photography was permitted in most rooms!

 

 Next we dropped by the dining room for nobility in attendance.  I was hoping for a bit to eat, but they didn't seem to be serving at the moment.

 

 

As he strolled past a nice staircase and a few cozy, Jim was listening in on various groups, hoping to hear English spoken.  He heard Russian, some other Eastern European tongues, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Japanese, but none of the big groups seemed to have an English speaking guide.

Finally, he arrived at the most famous room in the palace, the Amber Room. Here he found and English speaking guide with leading a group of 2 Brits. This palace and Peterhof - the one we saw yesterday - were occupied by the Nazis during their siege of Russia.  When they retreated, the essentially destroyed both places. The original contents of the amber room were looted by the Nazi’s and have never been recovered.  This room was recreated by grant from German companies with $11 million worth of amber. The restoration of the room took 24 years. The walls are almost entirely line with amber.  The Baltic sea region is by far the richest source of amber in the world.  This was the only room that had a sign prohibiting pictures, but most people with cameras were taking photos, so Jim joined in.  The best guess why they say no pics is that they want to maintain traffic flow.  Jim's main objective was to stay within earshot of the English speaking guide, so he only took 2 photos and both came out reasonably well.

 

There were several more really ornate rooms. As I was leaving the last of the fancy rooms, I overheard a guy tell his wife/girl friend "You can see why they had a revolution".  Along a hallway on the ground floor were several historical photos and paintings.  The most moving were of the Nazi destruction.  Both this and Peterhof were rebuilt starting shortly after World War II ended.  The government felt that they were national treasures as well as good tourist attractions.

We walked through much of the grounds as a group.  They are not as formal or fancy as those in Peterhof, but are still a wonderful place to stroll.

The column on the left above is one of a pair on the waterfront of downtown St. Petersburg.  The one on the right is on an artificial island in the lake here.  They were done by the same person.  

Some of the Swiss folks are a bit reserved, but some are quite a bit of fun.

We saw several musicians performing for tips / CD sales both on and outside the grounds.  There was a vocal group performing in the blue building above - excellent acoustics.  They were very good.  After they sang, Irina approached their leader and explained that she did tours in the fall and spring. She gave him her card.  She is always interested in finding good vocalists to tour with her.  She said that these folks (and many others) can only find regular work in the summer, so touring can be attractive.

Irina is a very hard worker, in addition to being a very pleasant person.  She was always busy making arrangements for one thing or another.  She apologized several times for not being able to spend more time with us than she did.  We didn't feel neglected and enjoyed all the times we had with her.

Jim struggled to stay awake on the bus trip home.  He often takes a bus nap on his way home from his DC volunteer job.  About half the Swiss were sleeping.  He was getting off before anyone else and didn't want to have people wake him up.

When I returned home, Sergey prepared a meal of stir-fried vegetables and sausages for Anastasia, Ardith and me. Anastasia joked that her father usually only cooked things that were quick, bad for you and delicious.  She and Irina are watching their calories. As soon as we finished eating, Alexander showed up with his car to take us for an overnight excursion.  

Alexander - known mostly by his nickname Sascha- stayed with us 2 years ago when Lyra was performing at our church. In the next 2 weeks,he has 3 auditions.  One will be for a job in Rostov, a small city somewhat between St Petersburg and Moscow that has a lot of tourist traffic.  Another is for work in Vladivostok, a fairly large city on the Pacific Ocean - a long way away.  The third is with the Bolshoi, Russia's premier opera company.  Sergey has mixed feelings - he would like to see him succeed, but want to have him for his fall tour of the US.  We would like to see him when they visit us from September 30 to October 2. 

Most of our trip was along the "ring road", similar in function to the Baltimore and DC beltways, but located further from the city center.  Outside of the Ring Road, things are largely undeveloped, but some growth is encroaching.  Inside is being rapidly developed.  Alexander is unhappy about the very high apartment buildings. The previous limit was 7 stories, but curiously, he lives on the 13th!

After driving perhaps 5 miles on a highway off the Ring Road, we went another mile or 2 on a very rutted dirt road and went to Alexander’s parents’ dacha where we were introduced to Svetlana (mom) and Liev (dad). A dacha is a small house in a community in the country.  Most dachas are just used in the summer, but Liev and Svetlana have lived in theirs year-round since he retired 3 years ago.  Liev was a colonel in the St. Petersburg police department, in charge of traffic and roads.  He built most of the house himself. 

 

Svetlana has assembled and tends to an amazing garden. She has greenhouses for starting plants and giving them a boost early in the growing season.  There are a lot of wonderful flowers, but she said the best time to see them is during July.  There is also a wide variety of vegetables, herbs and berries.  We were served an amazingly good herbal tea made from leaves dried the previous season.  They still have a few months’ supply left, so will do well until next year’s crop is in. 

 

After our refreshment break, Alexander, Ardith and I headed for the local lake.  It is called Pastor’s Lake because a Finnish pastor had built a church on a high overlooking the lake.  The church was destroyed in early Soviet times.  We took a longer than necessary walk to the lake from where Alexander parked and walked along a path that goes on to of a major oil pipeline.  There are logs across the path that had served as the paving for a construction road.  

There was a small beach at the end of the path where a few kids were playing.  Alexander dove in right away and swam across the lake and back.  Jim went in slowly to accustom himself to the water temperature.  After being in it a few minutes, it felt great.  Jim swam about 2/3rds of the way across before he was summoned back. We needed to get back for banya and dinner.

Banya?  What on earth is a banya? A tropical fruit? A squiggly tree?  Actually, it is the Russian version of sauna.  Many rural homes in Russia have these outbuildings partly due to lack of good water supplies for indoor plumbing and partly by tradition.  They are quite beloved. Liev's banya has 3 rooms: one for removing / adding clothes and cooling down, one for scrubbing with cold and hot water and one for sweating.

Jim speaks essentially no Russian and Liev an equivalent amount of English. Liev did a good job of communicating how to do things, sometimes speaking Russian, sometimes a word of English, mostly with gestures.  The 2 of them entered the inner rooms wearing nothing but caps to protect our hair from the dry heat.  We went to the sweat room and sat.  Liev started sweating in about 2 minutes, then profusely shortly after.  Jim didn't begin to sweat until Liev mildly beat him with the bouquet of birch leaves.  He never did sweat really hard.  Jim reciprocated the "beating". After that we went to the wet room and scrubbed each others' backs then ourselves.  Liev had us do 3 rounds of scrubbing.  Jim thinks he has never been so clean.  After rinsing, we went back to the hot room for a short period of time, then to the cool one to ease our bodies back toward normal temperatures before dressing.

While we were doing banya, Svetlana collected things from her garden toward a very tasty salad.  Sascha /Alexander started the grill and began roasting vegetables and chicken, despite the fact that he is vegetarian.

 

Liev wanted to show us his fun antique samovar.  He opened it up and put in a supply of wood chips.  He lit some dried leaves and put them in with the wood chips, then attachecd a chimney to vent the smoke.  When the smoke abated, he replaced the chimney with an attractive tea kettle that just fit where the chimney had been.  This was to boil water the old-fashioned way.  They had done this half hour process in 2 minutes when we first arrived.

We enjoyed a delightful dinner and great conversation, thanks to Sascha's translations. They told us how they disliked city life and enjoyed the countryside, despite having about 2 feet of snow on the ground for most of the long winter. We enjoyed the drink called kvass, a fermented drink Liev had made from fermented black rye bread.

 We slept very well, then headed back to the city after an 8AM breakfast because Sascha had an appointment.  This was a truly wonderful experience!!!

Friday, June 7

Not much to post today.  We went around the ring road in the opposite direction, traversing the recently completed stretch that crosses the Gulf of Finland via bridges, tunnels and islands.

We did domestic chores like laundry and blogging, the we treated Sergey and Irina to dinner at their favorite nearby restaurant - Maryella's Italian.  The food was excellent and distinctly less expensive than ones in the heart of the city.