Sunday, June 9
We said good bye to Nicholas at breakfast as he would be returning to
Switzerland this morning.
When we first arrived in St Petersburg, Sergey asked what we
wanted to do. One of the main
non-tourist things was to attend a church service to hear good singing. In fact, we scheduled our trip to include a
Sunday just for this purpose. Sergey
said that he would take us to a church with really good singers. We had extra time in the morning and he took
us for a tour of some places in the city.
Traffic on weekdays is horrible, but on Sunday, there were no jams. We focused on waterfront items across the
Neva from the Hermitage. Of special
interest was a submarine built by the Soviet Navy in 1955. It is the oldest surviving Soviet / Russian
sub and had been sunk for a few years before being raised to serve as a
museum. The contrast between it and a
cruise ship is striking.
Even more special is the pair of 3,500 year old sphinxes,
originally guarding a pharaoh’s tomb.
There were lots of souvenirs there, even though we were the only
tourists at that time in the morning (a bit before 10).
The sphinxes guard the massive Academy of Arts building which
Catherine the Great had built.
We headed back to the main part of town to go to
church. Shortly after we crossed to the
main part of the city, Sergey was pulled over by a policeman standing at the
side of the road. He took his papers and
went outside to talk with the cop. The officer
told him to get in the cop car and he did so. Jim took a picture, which made
Ardith upset. After about 10 minutes, another cop car pulled up and the officer
in there pulled a small case out of the trunk and went in the other car. He left after several minutes, but Sergey
remained in the car with Cop #1. A few
minutes later, Irina came walking up to the cop car. Sergey got out. Irina got in.
Several minutes later, she and the cop emerged. After a bit of discussion, Sergey handed
money to the cop. Irina got in the
driver’s seat and drove us to the church where the Swiss were. Sergey had been the “victim” of 2 fairly new
laws. One requires you to drive with
lights on, day and night. His car doesn’t
do that automatically. If that had been
the only thing, he would have just gotten a small fine. However, Cop #1 said he detected alcohol on
Sergey’s breath, so they brought in a breathalyzer. It registered 0.01. The other new law says no alcohol in your
system. If you have any, you lose your
license for 2 years. Sergey had a few drinks last night, but nothing for 10
hours. Cop #1 told Sergey that he needed
to work 12 hour days to support his family.
Sergey ended up paying a 5000 ruble bribe – about $165.
Finally, we went to church.
Services in Orthodox churches last 2 or more hours and people come and
go for portions of it. They also stand
through the entire thing – there are no seats.
They don't stand still for very long, though. People are regularly moving to different places. To the untrained eye, it seems random.
The Russian Orthodox Church does not allow instrumental music. The entire service is sung, with singing spread
between deacons, priests and the choir. Some
in the congregation sang the Lord’s Prayer and another piece. Jim recorded part of the service by having
his camera dangling from his neck and turning toward various things. The sound is good. He extracted some images
from the video after finding software to help with that.
At one point in the
service, we watched women kiss the panes of glass over icons. One woman was cleaning the glass, rotating among
the items. We also watched the center of
the iconostasis open and the bishop emerge just before we departed. While we enjoyed the singing, Sergey said it
wasn’t the quality of the church he wanted us to experience.
Before we went into the church, Jim took a picture of an
interesting building directly across the street. After church, we went to the coffee place
that was in the front of the building.
Jim ordered a Coke Light. Sergey
and Ardith wanted coffee, but their machine had just broken, so they had to
settle for tea.
While we were enjoying our beverages and a pastry, we heard
the bells ringing across the street. Jim
jumped up to record the sound. When he
got out, the doors opened and a processional emerged from the church. The Orthodox Church year doesn’t align with
that of the western church. This was the
season between Easter and Pentecost and each Sunday they ended their service
with a procession around the block with banners, robe and singing.
While Jim was taking picture, Sergey went to the men’s
room. When Jim got back, he told Ardith
he needed to do the same. She indicated
the direction Sergey went. He followed
the little corridor and found himself in a grand space of a huge shopping
center. He found a map on the first
floor, but didn’t see a sign for restrooms.
He took the escalator to the 2nd floor. Same result.
Same again for the 3rd.
He looked out over the open space and saw Sergey on the 1st
floor looking up. Jim went down and
Sergey took him to the far rear of the 4th floor. You had to go through several twists and
turns to get there and back.
After our second day on Metro, Ardith expressed concern about
taking our luggage on Metro to the railroad station for our trip to
Helsinki. The alternative wasn’t good
either. Driving across town either with
Sergey or by taxi would be terrible at rush hour. The next day she came up with a plan. Since Sergey was taking us on a tour of the
city on Sunday, we could have him take us and our larger bags to the station
and put them in a locker until the next day.
Thus, Sergey took us from the church and shopping to the Finland
Railroad Station. He was also going to help us with purchasing our tickets for
the next day’s train trip. We had tried
doing it on line, but the Russian Railways web site refused our credit
card. We arrived at the train station,
pulling our two bags, and went to line up at the ticket window. After several minutes, Sergey went over to
another widow to ask if this was the place to purchase tickets to Helsinki. The cashier told him that the Allegra Train
station was around the back of this station, so we headed outside, pulling the
luggage and looking for the entrance to that station. It was at the diagonally opposite end of the
building in its own quiet station office with its own boarding platforms for
the international trains. Jim and Sergey
quickly took care of purchasing the tickets and then we discovered that the
luggage storage was back in the main train terminal so we headed back, pulling
the two suitcases once more.
When we got to the luggage storage area, there were very
large lockers available but there didn’t seem to be a place nearby to pay and
activate the lock on the locker. While
Sergey and Jim went to find where to pay, another family was trying to get
their locker open to retrieve their stored luggage. The husband returned with an attendant who
used her computer card to shut down and reboot the system and they were able to
open their locker. Jim arrived with our
card that looked like a charge card. We pressed the display screen with the
number of our locker, pushed the door shut and it actually locked. We will see if it opens as easily tomorrow
morning when we arrive to pick up our luggage before our train trip to Helsinki. Jim was so focused on the process that he didn't take a single picture!
Sergey said it was even hard for someone from Russia to
handle the ticket purchases and the luggage storage since there weren’t even
signs in Russian explaining how to do everything. We were very grateful that he
was with us to make this all happen, but it took a very long time and
conversations with lots of people to make it actually happen.
We returned to Sergey’s apartment, had a meal, then headed
off to the Metro to meet Anna 1. While
we were riding the Metro, a guy was pushed in a wheelchair onto the car by a
woman. He held out his cap and asked for
money as he was wheeled through the car.
They got out at the next stop and went to the next car. We met Anna at the appointed place and headed
toward our evening activities. We went through a market area where we saw advertising animals, just like you sometimes see in the US.
Jim spotted a guy in a crazy hat and was jealous. As Jim raised his camera a gust of wind came up and the guy's girlfriend's hair blew straigh out.
Our first actual
destination was St. Nicholas Naval
Cathedral, a lovely Baroque style church a bit away from the main areas
frequented by tourists. St. Nicholas is
the patron saint of Russian sailors and the church has many naval memorials. The sign on the gate said the church closes
at 8 PM. We got there about 7:15 and the
doors were locked. Anna asked someone
who said that it closed at 7, so we didn’t get in. There are actually 2 worship
areas in the building, one above the other.
The second story is only used during special times. This is the only cathedral in St. Petersburg
that stayed open during the entire Soviet reign.
There is a monument
on the church grounds commemorating fallen sailors from the Russian – Japanese War.
Our next destination was the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
This is where all the singers in Lyra have been trained. Other students have included Rimsky-Korsakov,
Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Anna told us a lot of her experiences
at the school, including the fact that she studied here for 6 years. She still has contacts here and will be
meeting with one of the faculty while Ardith and I attend the ballet Swan Lake
in the conservatory’s theater. She
showed us which door to use. We showed a
guy our tickets and he said to go to the left and take the stairs 2 flights
up. There were 2 sets of stairs next to
each other and actually intertwining. We
walked part way up one set and saw a sign of the door above us saying Dress
Circle. We weren’t sure, but thought we
had balcony seats (Sergey had ordered them for us). So we went down one and a half flights and up
3 to the balcony. We went in and showed
a woman about our age our tickets. She
explained that they were for Dress Circle, not Balcony. We shuddered at the thought of going down 3
flights, then up 2. The woman said “follow
me” and we went across the balcony to a set of stairs that took us down to the
Dress Circle. She took us to the
opposite side and showed us our seats.
We had first row seats, but they were set 90° to the view to the stage.
That meant that we would need to twist to see. On top of that, there were 2 teenage girls
next to us that sprawled across the padded ledge for the entire first act,
partially blocking our view.
There were lots of empty seats above us and we moved to the
3rd row just before the start of the performance. Our new seats were wonderful. We could see all but a tiny bit of the stage
and had a great view of the orchestra.
The show started a bit off. The
conductor was very young, probably a student.
The orchestra wasn’t showing much energy and the non-principal dancers seemed
passive. 2 of the trumpet players were
having a conversation when they weren’t playing. Somehow, things came together
about 10 minutes. The performance of the
Jester was top flight as was that of the female lead who played a princess and
the daughter of the evil sorcerer.
The theater is quite elegant, but has a lot of signs showing its age. It looks like efforts are being made to gradually refurbish it.
We left the theater at 10:30 and walked with Anna to a tram
stop and took the tram to the Metro. Near
the entrance to the Metro was a bride walking on the street at 11PM.
Since the is the last post all about St. Petersburg, here ar some "extra" pictures to enjoy with alost no explanation.
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Neither Ionic nor Doric but Adoric |
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