I am going to try very very hard this time not to walk you through every moment of my day. Because really, the fact that the moments happened in Petersburg does not make them inherently interesting--but this day was something else.
The second day in Petersburg was a Friday. We woke up, had breakfast, and set out for our excursions—sans bus! It’s the little things. We took the Metro cheerfully and walked to the Hermitage. If you know nothing about Russia, you may not know that this is a Big Deal along the lines of going to the Met in New York or (probably a better comparison) the Louvre in Paris. What is now the main building of the Hermitage was once the Winter Palace of the tsars. We began our tour, led by a really adorable young woman named Ira (Ee-ruh, not Ay-ruh), in big grand rooms that gave you an idea of what the palace looked like when the tsars stayed there. Gradually the rooms turned into big grand rooms filled with art, and then upstairs they became small unassuming rooms filled with art. The best part, in my opinion, was the small unassuming rooms, which held newer art—Impressionist works and modern-era stuff. It was the obligatory St. Petersburg excursion, and I’m glad we went, but I don’t have much to say about it.
We grabbed (a slightly more successful) lunch at a café nearby and then headed across the river to the strangest experience of my life. An alley and a creepy barren courtyard let us to the back entrance to Kunstkamera, subtitled “Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.” Don’t let them fool you. Although most of the museum is occupied with weird “anthropological” exhibits of mannequins dressed up like people from various ethnic groups, what the museum is really all about is the biggest globe in the world, located in the barely-reachable tower of the building, and the 300-year-old, deformed stillborn infants that were the original exhibit of the museum in Peter the Great’s time. I am not kidding. 300-year-old, deformed stillborn infants. In jars. Please refer to the Wikipedia article for more information. It says this sort of collection was “a very typical type of collection in the period.” But it is no longer typical! Why does it still exist? I bet it’s because the curators have no idea how they would go about disposing of the 300-year-old fetuses.
I can’t believe I can say I saw that. To be honest, I wish I couldn’t—it was pretty disturbing. But some of our group really dug it.
Afterwards our younger tour guide dragged us off towards the river to show us “the sphinxes.” We apparently had to see these sphinxes—which turned out to be two small statues by the Neva, given to Russia by France. France apparently has a thing for statue-gifting. A very drunk middle-aged woman was swimming in the river in her underwear and talking to a bunch of young people hanging out on the steps near the Sphinxes. When she left, led by a younger woman, she let out a really excellent, animal howl. She was trashed.
We parted with our guide and Vera and headed to a dock nearby, where a few of the guys in our group were sitting with their feet in the river. Can’t say the Neva’s the cleanest water I’ve ever seen, but we all joined them anyway. The water was ice cold but we were all cheerful, looking out across the river at the beautiful European buildings that line it. Then we found a Baltika stand and indulged in beer and ice cream—some of us more than others. The sky looked threatening, so we dispersed.
A handful of us went and met up with a girl named Beth who was in our first year of Russian class and who has been studying in St. Petersburg for a year. We got potatoes at Kroshka Kartoshka (a potato-hawking chain that seems to be more popular in Moscow), then took a walk and talked. We saw some Ren-fair kids camping near the Petropavlovsky krepost—Beth explained, but I don’t remember why they were there. I heard Beth on the phone and died of envy—her accent is excellent.
Our group split up again and Trever, Kevin, Darcy, and I met up with Costya and Vladimir from the train. They took us to a place that sold beer in plastic liter bottles—whether or you were, uh, dining in or taking it to go. I found that really charming, although admittedly wasteful. The guys led us back to the apartment they were renting for their time in Petersburg, and Sasha, Masha, and Nikita were there. It wasn’t long before a Russian-English game of charades began, which was a lot of fun. Kevin got ahold of Adam and he showed up with Ben, Graham, and Steve in tow.
After the game, we all set out for the river, where we were planning to rent a boat. It immediately was obvious, standing outside the apartment, that the building was a popular place for young people. There were loud groups of people our age standing around and being idiots. Some angry tenant dropped a paket (a form of packaging that some liquids come in at the grocery store) of something from one of the top floors and it landed right in front of me, getting my feet (in sandals) and the bottom of my jeans wet, even splashing up to my shoulder. I was pretty pissed off, but luckily the liquid wasn’t sticky or fragrant. I’m just going to pretend it was water or beer.
We got to the river and each of us paid 400 rubles (about $13) for the boat. We climbed across a few others to get to ours—they were full of people, but ours was empty. It was just for us. Once we were all on board we pulled away from the dock. The buildings along the Neva were illuminated, the bridges were covered with lights, we were all giddy, and the wind was in our hair. I tiptoed to the rear of the boat to savor a moment to myself, riding backwards and watching the buildings and bridges and people rush away from me. Not far into the trip the bridges began to rise, as they do every night to admit big boats, and everyone cheered. We turned down a canal and wound through the center of the city. It was so beautiful. It felt like an eternity. It was one of the best nights of my life.
We got back to the hotel around 3:30 in the morning. The birds were already beginning to sing.
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