Vijay and Shefali's TAtW

Wow… just wow. St. Petersburg is exactly as it was described to me – indescribable. I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll just ramble on and on. This should be familiar territory for most of you. It started out kind of rough – we booked our tour, albeit at the last minute, but the tour company said it was okay and they confirmed it. We step off the boat and what do you know, they can’t find our booking. So they tell us they’ll give us a different, lesser tour while they sort this all out. Red flag number one. But the bus has left and we have to go catch up to it. We have no choice but to get in some stranger’s car so she can drive us to meet it. Somewhere a tiny alarm sounds persistently. We get in her car, our gazes steadily shifting between the road ahead and the potential danger looming over our shoulders. She drives in a fractal manhattan path, taking calls abruptly and speaking in frantic Russian, which, I now know, sounds exactly like fluent Russian. I feel the inside of my skull teem with neural activity. Fight-or-flight begins to kick in and I no longer have to eat or urinate. My focus peaks. She informs us that two people didn’t show up for the tour we had booked and that we can take their seats. She drives us to an empty parking lot and the bus comes to pick us up. That’s it. Everything worked out. In hindsight she was really friendly if you didn’t come out the gate assuming she was kidnapping you so you could be beaten with rubber hoses until someone paid the ransom. I guess everyone learned something that day. The architecture of St. Petersburg is striking; there’s a stark contrast in styles. In some areas it’s depressing. It’s gray, cold and mechanical. It’s oppressive to look at, resembling a housing project or a labor camp more than a hub of art and culture which (at least for the ruling class) clearly existed in other parts of the city. There’s a sense that it was planned to keep people from congregating (absence of inviting common areas) and also to avoid stimulating thought (copy after copy after copy of colorless, neutral cement and steel). It’s called Neoclassical Revival or some shit and it makes an appearance in WW2- and Cold War-era Berlin. Or some shit. But as I said there’s another side that is nothing short of breathtaking. The visa requirements are strict, so we couldn’t really hang out here at night or have some time to talk to any of the people here – and to be completely honest, I wonder if we would be able to survive had we even had the option. So, as is compulsory, we booked a two-day tour where we hit as many sights as possible and all but ran down the batteries in our cameras [I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Russia isn't terribly concerned with IP - they were fine with us taking as many pictures as we wanted of literally everything everywhere except for one room in one museum (which may have ended up on my photostream anyway, somehow)]. Our guide was fantastic and aptly presented us historical context to fully appreciate the city and its myriad changes, politically as well as culturally. I’ve learned a few things from this:

1. Russians love gold. I feel like this is something I already knew.
2. "Great" means the same as "Tyrant."
3. Catherine the Great was GANGSTA.
4. Etc.


You’re probably tired of reading this and the galleries at [1] and [2] simply don’t do it justice, so you’ll just have to go yourselves. Book in advance and bring some sunscreen, St. Pete’s was the hottest place we’ve been yet. And keep your eyes peeled for some of the coolest pics we got including a frog begging for money, unintentional swastikas and jesus giving the Shocker. Oh yes. You read that correctly.

Love and matroyshkas,

Shefali and Vijay

[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157634412668988/
[2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157634449671849/