St. Petersburg

This is the fifth and final entry about our trip. Our photos from St Petersburg are here - it's a pretty impressive place, which means we took a lot of pictures. Pace yourself; there are a lot of great ones, but some of the best are towards the end.

When Peter the Great, one of the most influential Russians in history, became Tsar in 1684 he undertook a series of sweeping changes aimed at modernizing and strengthening what became the Russian Empire. In 1703, after winning a chunk of land from arch-rival Sweden, Peter, apparently none too fond of Moscow - decided that Russia needed a new capitol.

The spot was chosen because of its strategic importance: Russia could finally have a real seaport (Arkhangelsk, ice-bound every winter up on the White Sea, wasn't cutting it anymore). St. Petersburg was founded where the Neva River empties into the Gulf of Finland, a small offshoot of the Baltic Sea.

Peter had travelled extensively in Western Europe and decided that his new capitol should be built in the style of the great capitols of the West, and that it should surpass them in grandeur. He imported masons & architects from all over Europe to build the entire city out of stone. He ordered the Neoclassical buildings painted cheerful pastel colors (the weather is gray enough without the buildings adding to it), and he had a series of canals built to imitate Venice and Amsterdam.

In the city's center Peter built the spectacular Winter Palace, which is now part of the Hermitage Musuem, the largest and perhaps most beautiful art museum in the world. Outside the city he built Peterhof, his own version of the palaces and gardens of Versailles. Other Tsars followed this trend, and many of these beautiful places are now parks that are well worth the trouble to reach.

Upon arriving, the first impression I got of St. Petersburg (in Russian "Sankt Peterburg," or, more commonly, "Petersburg" or just "Piter") is that it is a monumental city. I mean that in two ways: first, the city itself - and everything in it - is huge. Forget the coziness of Venice or Amsterdam, this is a vast city designed to impress and, probably, to make you feel a little insignificant. If grandeur was the goal, Petersburg succeeds - and then some. The immense neighborhoods of Soviet housing blocks outside the center only add to the feeling of this being a city on a grand scale.

Petersburg is also monumental in that it's filled with monuments: war victories, politicians (especially Soviet ones), revolutionaries, authors, philosophers, composers, and poets. Even for a relatively young city - Philadelphia and New York, for example, are older - so many influential people and things happened in Petersburg that it's easy to lose track of them all.

Petersburg is also notable for being the world's northernmost large city (> 1 million people). For you geography buffs, it's at 60 degrees North - equivalent to Anchorage, AK. This means that June & July bring "white nights" where it stays light outside well past midnight (and gets bright again before 4am). The city seems to adjust its schedule and take advantage of this added light; it's a weird feeling to be walking around at 11pm, the sun still up, and the streets still filled with people going about as if it were late afternoon. I suppose they've got to make up for those short, cold winter days.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of the trip was getting to meet some great people: Anya's incomparable grandma (Babushka Raia), family friend Lena (privet, esli ti eto chitaesh!) and our super-hospitable host Boris.

Russia generally - and St Petersburg specifically - are places that any seasoned world traveller should visit. There are a lot fewer Americans (or tourists in general) than in Western Europe, which would make a solo trip there more challenging but more rewarding. Growing up in the States we're not taught much about Russian history or culture. That's unfortunate for us, but it makes visiting there that much more interesting and eye-opening.

Anyway, this blog entry has gotten long enough - congrats if you're still reading! I've added comments to many of the pictures in the photo album, so I'll let those do more explaining about the things we saw.