Jam-packed

This is the first time I will have two entries that are a full week apart. I don't think that's because I didn't do anything last week, but I didn't seem to take any pictures of whatever it is I did do. So there you go. I'm sure I did all the normal sorts of things: going to work everyday, Institute, eating, etc.

I had thought I might try to go to Novgorod on Saturday, but then Saturday came and I hadn't planned anything and I slept kind of late, so I had to make other plans. I ended up filling the day up with no problem.

First I went back to the Russian Museum to see everything that I had missed the first time. Too bad a bunch of the rooms with things I knew I wanted to see (including some Chagall's) were closed. I still enjoyed myself and spent a couple hours wandering around, and in addition to the rooms that were open there was a really nice temporary exhibition of works by Isaac Levitan.

Barge Haulers on the Volga - Ilya Repin. Repin was one of most successful artists of the peredvizhniki movement.

Morning - Mikhail Vrubel

Flowers of the World Blooming - Pavel Filonov

Red Cavalry - Kazimir Malevich - I loved this painting for some reason. I tried to find a copy of it in the gift shop to buy, but they didn't have any. Too bad.

From the Russian Museum I decided to walk over to the Yusupov Palace, which is where Rasputin was murdered. On the way I took a few other pictures...

Yeliseev's Department Store on Nevskiy Prospekt, though I think the building is empty now. This is the building that the bronze cat is sitting on. It's also right next to Carl's Jr., where you can get all the ice you want and free refills on your drinks. Sometimes those things are really important.

Rossi Street was designed by architect Carlo Rossi. The buildings are both 72 feet tall, which is also the exact width of the street. The length of the street is exactly ten times the width (720 feet). At one end of the street is a square and at the other end is the Alexandrinsky Theater.

Just a little ways past Rossi Street I came across a massive outdoor market - mostly clothes and shoes. I don't know how I've never run across it before, as it stretches on for blocks. I enjoyed wandering for a while through the narrow allies. This was the largest street in the market by far. I'll probably go back and maybe I'll be able to better capture the market experience in a photograph.

From the market I went to the Yusupov Palace, which is situated right on the Moika Canal. The basement, where they have some wax figures that show the murder of Rasputin, was closed, so I had to be satisfied with wandering the other rooms of the palace. I was sorry not to see the Rasputin part, as the story goes that they first tried to poison him by feeding him cakes laced with potassium cyanide, which had no effect; then they shot him, hitting him directly several times, but he was still alive; finally they bludgeoned him and drowned him in the river. Pretty gruesome.

The palace was really cool on its own though. I LOVED it. This was probably my favorite palace that I've been in so far. While it was not as fancy as the royal palaces, it had some pretty incredible features (which you will see in a minute), and the Yusupov family was apparently even wealthier than the royal family and had over fifty palaces scattered around Russia, so it was nothing to scoff at either. When the Bolsheviks seized this palace, not only did they get the priceless art collection, but they also found a gold dinner service for 120 people, 70 trunks full of silver, a collection of rare musical instruments, and 111 letters from people like Pushkin and Napoleon. Felix Yusupov had already escaped the country at this point with two million dollars and some Rembrandt manuscripts.

This is one of the rooms in the extensive art gallery. The Yusupovs had over 45,000 pieces in their private collection, all of which now belong to the Russian state museums (The Hermitage and Russian Museum).

They also had their own theater in the palace, so that they could have private performances of some of the greatest musicians and dancers of the time. The theater seats 180. Mikhail Glinka conducted orchestras here, and Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann both performed here as well. The next three pictures show the stage,

the Royal Box and some of the second and third tiers,

and the ceiling.

What was so cool about it is that it really was just a miniature of any great European theater, with the multiple tiers, beautiful ceiling, gilt decoration, etc. They still occasionally have performances there, but I have no idea how you get invited or get a ticket.

The other thing I especially loved in the Yusupov Palace was the library. I don't think my picture does it justice, but it was really cool with all the wood panelling and multiple levels (there was a ladder hidden behind a cupboard door that you could climb up to the second level.

While they were renovating the Palace in 1925 they found a secret compartment hidden behind some of the book shelves where there was a strong box. In the strong box they found twenty letters written by Pushkin that were previously unknown. Someday I want to have a cool library like this.

After the Yusupov Palace I went on a walking tour of the northernmost islands in St. Petersburg: Kamenskiy Ostrov, Yelagin, and Krestovskiy Ostrov. It was a nice walk, as Kamenskiy and Yelagin are heavily wooded and Yelagin Island is closed to vehicles.

Church of St. John the Baptist on Kamenskiy Ostrov

Kamenskiy Ostrov was and is also home to some of St. Petersburg's wealthiest citizens. It is full of 19th century mansions, some of which have not been restored,

and some of which have.

Yelagin Island is home to the Yelagin Palace. There was a wedding going on inside. I looked in the windows and it looked pretty fancy. And it looked like they were having really good food at the wedding reception. I was a little sorry not to be attending.

Back view

Front view

There was also a pond on the island where people could rent rowboats. I stopped and read for a little while on a bench.

By the time I had walked all over these three islands I was pretty exhausted and it was after 9:00. I went home, ate dinner, watched a DVD, and fell asleep. I feel like I fit in quite a bit considering my late start and lack of planning.

This weekend I'm really going to try to make it to Novgorod.

A Day in the Life of Peter the Great

Not really. I'm not sure what a day in the life of Peter the Great would be like, but I did recently visit his favorite home, Peterhof. It's about 30 km from St. Petersburg, on the edge of the Gulf of Finland. I took a suburban train from St. Petersburg and spent several hours wandering around the gardens with what seemed like every other person from St. Petersburg. It was a beautiful day and the people were out in force.

The palace is built on top of a bluff, so the area is divided into the upper gardens (partially shown above), the palace, and the lower gardens. Leading from the palace to the lower gardens is the Grand Cascade, the most famous part of the complex. Apparently Peter the Great himself helped in the design.


One of the coolest things about the fountains, I think, is that they operate without any pumps. The pools in the upper garden are spring fed and serve to collect the water, and the elevation difference from the upper to the lower garden provides the pressure for the fountains to work. The highest of the fountains (visible above) shoots 20 meters into the air and is fed by a 4 km long underground aqueduct. Pretty cool and ingenious, I think.

The gardens were very nice, though I didn't enjoy them as much as the gardens at Tsarskoye Selo. I did appreciate that it was right by the water, though, and there were actually several smaller palaces and buildings scattered around in the gardens that were very nice, including a pretty awesome looking bath house. There were also some trick fountains, which soak unsuspecting visitors.

View of part of the garden

An aviary in the gardens

Last view of Peterhof

I didn't spend the money to go inside, as I've seen a few palaces at this point and read that this was not one of the most interesting interiors, but I enjoyed about four hours of park time. I took a bus back to the city and it dropped me off at this metro station (Avtovo), which I though was especially impressive.

It was a nice way to spend a Saturday, and I think the other 10,000 people who were there would agree. I even got a little bit of a sunburn.

Vasilievskiy - My Would-be Neighborhood

Friday after work I headed to the one major part of St. Petersburg's center that I had not yet visited - Vasilievsky Island. It turns out that I really liked it and if I were settling down in St. Petersburg for good, I think this is where it would be. It felt more like a neighborhood than a lot of other areas and was a little quieter, but still had all the things you need. It has a really nice, active pedestrian street and awesome views. I don't know if I have much else to say about it though...

So I'll just post some pictures from my walk.

A nice church


One of two 3500 year-old sphinxes, installed on either side of the steps leading down to the river in front of the Imperial Academy of Arts. They are the two most northerly located Egyptian sphinxes in the world and were brought to St. Petersburg from Thebes and placed here in 1823.

St. Peter and Paul Fortress

I feel like my blogging effort lately has been a little lackluster, for which I apologize. I'll try to make my posts a little more exciting, and maybe even a little more witty. I don't want to lose readers, you know.

Matisyahu

Not long ago I saw a poster advertising that Matisyahu was going to be performing in St. Petersburg. The Dutch intern, Michael, mentioned that he thought it would be fun to go, so on Thursday night I found myself in a St. Petersburg club for a Matisyahu concert.

Matisyahu is a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn (he was actually raised in a fairly progressive Jewish family and aligned himself with Hasidism in 2001) whose music is kind of a reggae, hip-hop mix with some Jewish themes and sounds mixed in. While I knew who he was and had heard some of his songs before, I was certainly never a devoted fan. Despite that, it was a really fun concert and he has some pretty cool songs. Listen here or here.

And I bought a t-shirt. I'm always looking for a new t-shirt.

It was pretty interesting to watch a guy, dressed in pretty traditional clothing, with sidelocks and exposed tzitzit, up on the stage at a concert. A couple of times his yamulkah fell off as he moved around the stage, but either he or one of his band members was usually pretty quick to pick it up so he could put it back on.

St. Petersburg's Jewish community turned out in support. There were a fair number of people there who looked like they were fairly Orthodox (sidelocks and tzitzit), and lots of guys there wearing yamulkas. St. Petersburg has a Jewish population of about 100,000, but this was the first time I had seen any Jewish people in the city. It made me wonder if there is a Jewish neighborhood somewhere. I haven't looked into that yet.



It was fun to do something different and to get out and experience a little St. Petersburg night life, even if I did second-hand smoke several packs of cigarettes over the course of the evening (I'm second-hand smoking at least a pack a day over here - one thing I will certainly not be sorry to leave behind when I go home).

My Favorite Lunch and Other Things

I think I've mentioned a few different times on my blog that I really like Georgian food. Unfortunately, Georgian food isn't something we get a lot of back in the USA, but there is plenty of it here. One of the best (reasonably priced) Georgian places in St. Petersburg, Хачапурная (Khachapurnaya) happens to have a location a short two-minute walk from the office where I work. At least once a week, and sometimes much more, you can find me there eating lunch.

This is my favorite lunch.

Let's get a close-up of the key part.

That, friends, is khachapuri po-adjarskiy, and is perhaps one of the most delicious, and deadly, things that I have ever eaten. It is a bread-boat kind of thing, filled with cheese, an egg on top, cooked in the oven, with a little butter melting on top for good measure. Yum. I could easily eat one of these everyday. But I don't, because I value the work that my heart does for me. Most khachapuri is a kind of flat bread filled with cheese, that is baked and served hot and melty. Also delicious. The other dish in the first picture is a kind of spicy beef stew, with tomatoes and onions. Don't you want to come eat lunch with me? I realize this doesn't seem like super summery food, but the weather in St. Petersburg also hasn't been super summery. And when something is super delicious, sometimes it doesn't matter what the weather is. If it's hot out, I replace the stew with something more appropriate.

This is another church that I happened upon after work the other day while on my way to Institute class.

I've been really enjoying going to Institute classes, now that I know they exist. It's been fun to meet some of the Church members here that are around my age, and gives me a lot of opportunities to speak Russian and interact with people in an informal setting. I love the network that the Church provides, wherever I happen to be. Instant friends. Fantastic.

In addition to the new people I've met, I've run into some old friends to.

This is me with Julia Sokolova. She is from Ufa, Russia, but moved to St. Petersburg about six months ago. She was a missionary in Lithuania at the same time as me, so it has been fun to see her again.

As an added bonus the Institute building has a pool table and ping pong.

Valaam

This is going to be a big entry, so prepare yourself. There are going to be lots of pictures, though, so it shouldn't be too difficult to get through.

Valaam is a small archipelago of islands, located here. I read about Valaam a couple months before leaving for Russia and determined that this was one place I was definitely going to visit. The archipelago has about 50 islands, and since the 14th century (some claim the 10th century) has been the home to a monastery. There is a central monastery complex, around which there is a small village where the non-monastic inhabitants of Valaam (about 300) live. Scattered around the rest of the islands are small chapels, hermitages, and sketes (a small monastic settlement). Judging by the varying sizes of the different sketes, I would guess that they hold between 3 and 20 monks, while the main complex could hold many more. There are currently about 200 monks living on the islands around Valaam.

I tried to figure out the best way to get up there, and in the end it seemed like it might not be feasible for me to do without going on an organized trip. I had a hard time discovering any information about boats that went to the islands that were not run by a private cruise company, so in the end I booked a trip with Русские Круизы (Russian Cruises). As it turned out, this is not a common thing for foreigners to do. I was the only non-Russian on the boat, and when I talked to one of the employees she said she had never had another American, and rarely any foreigners. I guess they have longer trips that most foreigners do that stop at Valaam on the way somewhere else. There are week long trips that go from St. Petersburg all the way to Moscow, stopping at various towns and sites along the way. Those trips looked pretty awesome.

We left Friday night at 9:00 pm from the St. Petersburg River Terminal on the Святая Русь.

Me, at the beginning of the trip

I had decided I couldn't afford to splurge for a nicer cabin, so I was down in the very bottom of the boat, sharing a small space with three other people. When I got there there was a lone middle-aged woman in the compartment. She was from Khabarovsk, which is a city way over on the eastern edge or Russia, right on the border with China. She was very nice, so I thought maybe our room wouldn't be so bad. Pretty soon after me our other two roommates arrived, Pavel and Roman, two 22 year-olds who had just finished college and brought a huge case of beer. They were on the trip with a bunch of their friends. It's still not clear why they decided to go to Valaam, as they hardly got off the boat at all on the islands and didn't go on any excursions. It seemed like they had a fantastic time anyway. For me and my other roommate they alternated between being hilarious and infuriating. Ultimately they became exhausting, but contributed a lot to my fame on the boat. By the time we got back to St. Petersburg everyone seemed to know that there was an American on the boat called Tomas (everyone here really struggles with my first name). I was stopped by a lot of people, especially 22 year-old guys, that wanted to hang out and speak English. "Hey, Tomas, you from America, right?" I heard that a lot. It was actually pretty fun.

One of the things that I thought was especially great, was that when we pulled out of port, both leaving St. Petersburg for Valaam and leaving Valaam for St. Petersburg, they played very cheesy, sentimental orchestral music over the intercom. There was something kind of awesome (funny) about standing on the deck, listening to the sentimental music, and watching the scenery go by. It definitely felt like they were working hard to create a mood.

On Friday night, about a half hour after leaving the port, we entered a thunderstorm. The sky was so black! It was kind of cool to watch it roll up and to see the line where the storm began.

This did put a damper on my deck-sitting, though, so I went inside to the "reading room" and spent the evening with my book. Pavel managed to get exceptionally drunk that night, and didn't sleep at all, but came into the cabin talking loudly every thirty minutes or so. "Tomas, you go walk with me?" It didn't matter how many times I told him I wanted to sleep and that I didn't drink, he kept coming back to ask. Also, at some point Pavel managed to disappear with the stash of water I had brought for the trip. I managed to feel very well rested in the morning, though, and about the time I was getting up (8:00), Pavel came in and went to bed.

Another quick side-note. I'm amazed at how comfortable Russians are scantily clad around other people. Roman had no problem stripping down to his tighty-whities and hanging around the cabin talking to a 50 year-old woman. She, on the other hand, had no problem sleeping NAKED(!!!) in a tiny cabin with three 20-something year-old males. While she took pains not to expose herself, it was still weird. She always asked us to turn around so she could take her bra and underwear off, or put them back on in the morning.

When I went out in the morning it was foggy, so I wasn't able to get a good look at the lake, but Lake Ladoga is about 200 km long and 80 km wide, so probably all I would have seen is water.

There was actually something kind of cool about the fog. About the time I was finishing my breakfast of some kind of porridge with butter in it, we were able to begin seeing the islands.

We pulled into port and began our activities. My first excursion was to the main monastery complex. To get there, those of us heading that direction boarded a pontoon boat that took us from where our ship was docked. The view around the islands was beautiful. Every once in a while a steeple would stick up above the trees or I would catch site of a stone cross erected on the shore.

The view as we were getting close to the main monastery

The main monastery complex, with the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral, is the large grouping in the background. The smaller building in the foreground is actually a small skete, located on a small island.

Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral (Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior)

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the walls of the monastery, but the cathedral was beautiful inside. It was divided into two churches, the lower one being for regular worship, and with low ceilings and arches. The upper church is for special occasions and holidays (and warm weather), and has more traditional high ceilings, domes, and decoration. One of the highlights of this excursion was attending a short 20-minute concert in a chapel in a different part of the monastery. Five male Valaam residents sang some traditional Russian religious music, much of it either written at or about Valaam. They were really good singers, and the music, combined with the setting, made for a really amazing experience. If you want a little mood music for the rest of the time you're reading, here's one of my favorite pieces they sang. This recording obviously isn't great, but it's the best I can do.

After visiting the monastery I wandered a bit around the village and the areas around the main monastery.

Somebody's flowers

A road heading away from the monastery

A small chapel, close to the monastery walls

This is what I wish I had been able to do - take a row boat and visit some of the tiny, otherwise inaccessible islands with their chapels.


After riding the pontoon boat back to our ship it was time for lunch, at which point Pavel and Roman put in their first appearance of the day. "Tomas, you come swim in Ladoga Lake with us?" I had to carefully explain, that while I would love to go swimming, priority number 1 was exploring the islands. Also, it was maybe fifty degrees and I'm pretty sure that water was freezing. After all their big talk they didn't end up swimming anyway. I ate a lot of borsch at lunch. Yum.

After lunch I had some time before the excursion around the island, so I went for a walk by myself. This may have been my favorite part of the day. Once I got up the dirt road from the boats, where there were people selling souvenirs, etc., it got very quiet very quickly. It was raining a little bit, but it was the kind of rain that was nice to walk in. The drops on the leaves were very percussive, and added nicely to the drumming of my own feet. The woods were full of pine trees, ferns, and wildflowers. It was very peaceful and I felt very happy.

My path through the woods

The Skete of Gethsemane, which I happened upon during my walk.

A stone cross that I caught a glimpse of through an opening in the trees. I would have liked to figure out how to get down there, but I didn't really have the time and didn't want to tramp around off the paths. A fair number of tourists go to Valaam during the summer, and I know the monks try to protect the islands by asking people to stick to the paths.

When I got back from my walk one of the employees of the cruise company was very concerned about the fact that I was wet. "We don't want to have a sick American on our ship! It would be a medical emergency!" I tried to reassure her that I would not get sick and that I would put on a sweatshirt and take an umbrella next time I went out.

I spent the rest of the day on the island on an excursion with about ten other people and a guide, who took us along trails to some of the other chapels and sketes that are scattered around.

My group, walking down a road.

A really pretty view

Again (and improved by my face)

A small chapel by a pond in the middle of the island

The monastery on Valaam is a working one, and one of the things they have is a dairy farm. Visiting the farm was one of my favorite parts because there was a little milk stand where we were able to stop and get cups of milk and some homemade bread from a monk. I'm not sure exactly what kind of bread it was, but it was a little like sourdough and tasted really good. I wanted to take a picture, because I enjoyed sitting here eating my bread and drinking my milk so much, but I also didn't want the monk to feel like he was some kind of spectacle, so I didn't take one. Here are some cows, though.

And another pretty view

And another skete, up on a hill

Inside the above skete's church

At the end of the excursion I talked to the guide for a while. She was curious to know where I was from and I was curious to know how she had gotten started giving tours at Valaam. She went there for the first time as part of a group that volunteered on the island - they went and worked with the monks doing whatever needed to be done, whether construction, farm work, etc. She enjoyed being there so much that she applied to become a guide. She had to study, pass some kind of test, and now she is there for the summer. All the people working as guides leave at the end of the summer, because at the end of September boat service to the islands stops because Lake Ladoga is apparently subject to really bad storms. After that, of course, it's freezing cold. I think it would probably be a beautiful place to see in the snow, though. She told me that there are a couple small guest houses on the island, around the main monastery, so it seems like it would be possible to go there on your own schedule, if you can just figure out how to get a boat to take you there. I'm sure they exist. I think if I were to go again it would be nice to have several days and some good books. There would be enough hiking to last for a while. When I saw some maps of the islands, I saw just how little we had been able to cover. While we saw many of the larger sketes and some chapels, there are others scattered all over, together with ruins of chapels and sketes that are no longer active. It seems like it could be a really cool place to get lost for a while.

After talking to her I still had about a half-hour to wander before heading back to the boat. I enjoyed sitting up on one of the cliffs and looking out at the view, and then went back.

A monk and his dog walking out to the boat landing. This dog was huge!

The view from the boat deck as we're preparing to leave

As we left the harbor and the islands we reentered the fog, so I was never able to get a really good view of the lake. Oh well. This was the view before I went to bed, exhausted, at about 10:30.

Fortunately Pavel and Roman kept things a little more under control the second night. While I think they were up and drinking until 4 or 5, Pavel managed to not barge into the room over and over, and they were both there asleep when I got up at 7:30. I slept REALLY well that night.

Out boat pulled back up to the river terminal at St. Petersburg at about 8:00 Sunday morning. I was very happy to head home and take a shower before church.

Me at the end of the trip

The last thing I heard as I left the boat - "Hey Tomas, see you later. Good luck, man!"

Pretty awesome, all in all.

White Nights

Some people have asked about how dark it gets and my taking pictures late at night, so here's a brief explanation.

St. Petersburg is the northernmost city in the world that has a population of over 1 million people. It sits just below 60 degrees latitude, which puts it almost as far north as Anchorage. Other cities that are as far north, like Oslo, Helsinki, and Anchorage, do not approach 1 million people, while St. Petersburg has between 4.5 and 5. million. Because it is located so far north, from about mid-May to mid-July it never gets completely dark. Today, for example, the sun will set at 11:24 pm and will rise in the morning at 4:39 am. For the five hours between sunset and sunrise twilight persists, which is why I am able to take pictures late at night where it appears to still be light out. It is light out. You can see examples of these pictures here. It's pretty great, actually. I don't have any problem sleeping with a little bit of light, and the fact that it's never dark means people stay out really late. It adds a sense of security to being out on the street at night.

In St. Petersburg they celebrate this time by having a festival called the White Nights. The festival is not the traditional kind where streets are closed all the time, etc.; instead, they step up their arts programming for a couple weeks at the end of June, and some nights there are concerts and things going on in the Palace Square. The ballet I went to was a part of the "Stars of the White Nights" festival, and the event that I skipped out on with the ship with the scarlet sails is the crowning moment of the festival.

I don't have a lot to update you on from my activities during the week. I went to Institute on Wednesday for a class on Teachings of the Living Prophets, I got my hair cut, and I went to The Other Side (pictured below) to watch some world cup.

Mostly just a quiet, normal kind of week.