Churches

I decided you all deserved a break from reading. I didn't want you to feel obligated to check in on me everyday, especially when I don't have anything special to say. As I looked at my pictures from the last couple days I realized that I have basically spent them going into some of St. Petersburg's big churches.

On Thursday I walked down the street from my apartment to a church I could see every time I went to get something at the grocery store. Turns out it is called the Cathedral of the Transfiguration.

There was a service going on, so I didn't take any pictures inside. I don't quite understand Orthodox services. They seem in some sense very informal. There is always a lot of activity going on in an Orthodox church, even while services are going on. People don't sit during Orthodox services (there aren't any benches), and the people participating are scattered around, while the rest of the church is full of people praying independently, cleaning, or walking around. The services also are entirely sung, much of it by the priest, but there is also a small choir. I really like the music at Orthodox services. It was nice to spend ten or fifteen minutes at the end of the day quietly listening to the music and enjoying the peace of the Cathedral. The other thing that is pretty awesome is that the fence around this Cathedral is made of guns captured during the Russo-Turkish wars.

I finally made it back to the Isaakievskiy Cathedral on Friday. You remember - the one where the lady sold me a ticket even though the building was already closed.

The building is a museum now, though really all that's on display is the building itself. It is pretty spectacular - a lot of gold. My favorite feature was the dome, an 8,780 square foot painting by Karl Bryullov, one of the greatest Russian painters.

In a building where everything felt pretty heavy and dark (marble, gold, dark colors, etc.) I thought the dome was very light. I can't imagine being able to execute my vision for a painting on a huge curved ceiling (not that I would be able to execute my vision for a painting on any other kind of surface). I helped my sister paint a ceiling in her house once that had some curves in it and it was one of the most annoying things ever, and we were just painting it a solid color (remember when we painted the ceiling on the front porch, Ali?).

Here are some bonus photos I'm not going to talk much about.

This is Peter the Great's Summer Palace. It was one of the first residences built in St. Petersburg and is in the Summer Garden, which is right by my apartment. Unfortunately the entire park is closed for restoration.

And this is the building that Tchaikovsky was living in when he died. His apartment is on the top floor.

As I was walking to the subway this morning I looked behind me and this is what I saw.

Pretty awesome.

Last night I went out for the first time since I've been here. I met up with the Dutch guy, Michael, from work, his girlfriend, and a couple of Irish people he knew. We went and got dinner at a Georgian restaurant (Georgian food is a big thing over here) and then went to a lounge kind of place where they were playing a lot of American funk music. It was good to be out socializing with people, though I don't love staying out late. It was nice, though, that as I walked home at 2 am it was pretty light out.

An interesting thing about staying out late in St. Petersburg is that every night for about four months of the year (during the summer), they raise all the bridges across the River Neva so that ships can come upriver from the Gulf of Finland. They start raising the bridges around 1:30 and they stay up until about 5:30, so you have to plan all your activities carefully and make sure you're on the right island before the bridges go up because otherwise you're stuck for the rest of the night. And you really are stuck because the subway stops running a little after midnight and doesn't run again until morning. Unfortunately Michael and his girlfriend missed their bridge last night. However, the one they needed closes for about twenty minutes at 2:45, so they were able to get home a little after 3:00. I find it kind of amazing that a city this big (5 million people) gets cut in half every night. Some night I'll walk down to the river and take a picture of the bridges up and the boats coming upstream.

As a result of staying up so late, I slept in this morning and had to cancel my plans to go to Tsarskoye Selo today (one of the big palaces outside the city). Instead I went to the Peter and Paul fortress on an island on the other side of the river. The dominant feature of the fortress is the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which is where all the tsars were buried from Peter the Great on.

This is Peter the Great's tomb.

They even brought Nikolai II (the last tsar) and his family here about ten years ago. They are all buried in a separate side chapel.

The fortress was founded in 1703, and is considered to mark the founding of the city itself. I spent several hours at the fortress, visiting museums, touring a prison, and admiring the views across the Neva of the other half of St. Petersburg.

Do you recognize some of the landmarks in this picture?

And now I need to try to go to sleep, though I'm not that tired. I hate when I stay up late and throw off my sleep pattern! Do I sound like an old person? I hope you're all having a great weekend.