St. Petersburg

Forest Mushrooms and Vodka

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The night before we leave St. Petersburg, Elena and her childhood friend, Dula, breathlessly excited, bring home bags and boxes of forest mushrooms. Bob and I haven’t eaten and we hope the noises coming from the kitchen mean we will be invited to join them for a meal.

Finally, Elena knocks on the door saying “10 minutes! 10 minutes…come!” When Elena says “I must go out first, I smell a rat and grab my purse to join her. “I am buying the vodka,” I insist, glad I had my wits about me on this one at least! The four of us sit down to the little table set with her best for a wonderful meal of musky black mushrooms stewed with potatoes and “grass” salad…toasting with Vodka, (Bob with water because he doesn’t like the taste of alcohol) every few minutes. Bob and I gratefully hit the sack, leaving the two to themselves to finish off the bottle late into the night.

Our last night in St. Petersburg, we invite Elena and Dula to their favorite restaurant (an inexpensive one we never would have found ourselves) for Shashlik of beef, pork and lamb, eggplant appetizers, “grass” salad with tomatoes, cheese, olives and cucumbers, “beautiful water with gas from the Caucasus mountains” and more vodka…all the while entertained by a resident karaoke singer singing traditional Russian songs and served by a lovely man who treats us all like extended family.

Afterward we buy Elena a bottle of Tequila and she gives me a knit neck scarf and a Russian nesting doll. Dula gives me a little bag of mushrooms she dried herself. We all hug and reluctantly leave for a midnight overnight train that will arrive at 8am in Moscow.

A Day With Sasha

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I had watched “Russian Ark,” a movie about the history of the Hermitage before I left home so I was excited when we found Sasha, a university educated art historian, to take us through the museum (actually 5 linked buildings) set in a magnificent palace from which the tsars ruled Russia for one and a half centuries. Sasha had an unusually sophisticated command of the English language and an ironic sense of humor and made sure we knew the history and context of each painting we viewed…until we were absolutely exhausted.

We managed to keep up with him, however, when afterward he says “da da, you must experience a few more places” so off we trudged to see babushkas selling a few possessions…knick knacks, flowers and little piles of vegetables on the street, to buy historical propagada posters designed by Soviet-era Futurist artists in a little hidden art supply shop, to see the little Dostoevsky Museum which unfortunately was closed and finally by 10pm to view thirty-somethings drinking beer in a modern upscale bar right out of the Village in Manhattan…we were even instructed to go upstairs to see the industrial design bathrooms which had fixtures that looked like they were designed by Siemens and purchased from the KaDeWa Department store in Berlin.

Sasha was obviously very proud of this new Russia. Only we already knew that about 1% of the people, who buy everything they own on the black market, can afford a place like this where a beer will cost the equivalent of 20% of their monthly wage.

On The Street In St Petersburg

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Video

We hail down a minibus, just like we did in Viet Nam, which takes us across the Neva River to Nevsky pr (like Rodeo Drive in LA which has to have some of the most expensive stores in the world) where we peer into windows…looking for T-shirts..and graffiti. View image Hungry, we walk some steps down to the door of the Propaganda Cafe only because we are illiterate in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and the restaurant thankfully has a menu in English. We find out later the Propaganda is a chain of expensive cafes all over the city catering to Westerners…a young Brit behind us is on the phone trying to peddle cheap tables to someone who seems skeptical.

We find a Georgian restaurant that night (with a “river” running through it, stained glass windows and walls carved with Georgian motifs) and relish traditional mutton and cabbage stew, stuffed peppers and sweet cheese blinis for dessert. Next to our table are three men, I imagine to be closing a business deal, toasting with vodka and chasers of cranberry juice at every shake of the hand (of course between multiple mobile phone calls).

The ‘Venice of the North’, with its numerous canals and more than 400 bridges, is the result of a vast urban project begun in 1703 under Peter the Great. Later known as Leningrad (in the former USSR), the city is closely associated with the October Revolution. Its architectural heritage reconciles the very different Baroque and pure neoclassical styles, as can be seen in the Admiralty, the Winter Palace, the Marble Palace and the Hermitage. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Beslan…Russia’s 9/11

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St. Petersburg, Russia September 6, 2004:
We had been monitoring the hostage crisis in Beslan, North Ossetia, all through Europe…but was one day late to witness a demonstration in Palace Square on Monday where 40,000 people gathered to express outrage at the terrorists.

The English language St. Petersburg Times reported that “fear and horror were reflected on the faces of the people in the crowd” and many held signs reading “You Don’t Scare Us” “Ossetia, Beslan–We Are With You, and “Terrorists Are Not`People.” View image

The presidential envoy to the northwest region said “There are no words that can express our feelings about what the terrorists have done to the children and adults in Beslan. The terrorists are animals who should have no place in Russia or anywhere else in the world.” A famous St. Petersburg film director Alexei German called for ending the moratorium on the death penalty so that terrorists could be executed.

The respected editor of Izvestia, an important Russian newspaper resigned Monday for reporting that Kremlin authorities had covered up the number of hostages (over 1000) being held at the school.

St. Petersburg Homestay

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A Homestay has been arranged for us by our tour company, White Knights, with Elena who lives in (and owns) a 3 room very cluttered flat four flights up in a poorly maintained government building in the heart of St. Petersburg. The muddy alleyway leading to the door of the building is stewn with garbage and open manholes with rats…the chipped stairs, plaster peeling off the filthy walls, broken windows and a smell like damp cat litter in the air testament to the lack of resources and care. It’s a typical apartment house.

“We pay good money to the government for upkeep of the building, she says, but they do nothing!” Elena is a dear and makes sure we are comfortable in our room with two single beds…thin pieces of foam on cheap frames. Elena lives alone…she gets her married daughter who speaks English on the phone to make sure we have all our questions answered and who tells us she will be meeting a student at the apartment the next day to give him an English lesson. He tells us he is an ice skater who will be competing internationally and that he “must have English.”

Elena, who is a retired mathematics teacher only gets $17 a month retirement. She goes to work each day but it is not exactly clear what she does. Most nights she stays with her daughter or comes in very late.

She opens the small refrigerator and shows us eggs and bread we can use to make our breakfast each morning. There is virtually no other food in the tiny kitchen except some wonderful cherry jam and coffee and tea. I don’t think she means for us to eat very much. She shows us how to use the pitcher water purifier which we use to make coffee for ourselves in a small French coffee press she has on her counter.

That evening we find a neighborhood cafe where I nostalgically enjoy “lamb cooked with bones” and Lagman Soup (mutton stew with noodles) just like we had on a trek in the mountains of Khrgystan several years ago.