In St. Petersburg, the Siege Still Looms

St. Isaac's Cathedral, St. Petersburg
Originally uploaded by ronald_gainey.

The trip has gotten steadily more "foreign," with St. Petersburg being a major leap into the different. Truly fascinating and stimulating. We had two rather full, rather grueling days of touring the city, sampling a wide array of the most famous sites. Tasha says it's on its way to being one of the world's great cities (again) but it still has a ways to go. I would call that a fair assessment. The war and Soviet era were clearly a bit, er, challenging for this city, but you definitely have a sense of a rebound still in progress, and you have to admire the resilience of the Russian spirit. I wouldn't want to drive here, though! Both drivers we had (Alexander and Vladimir) were amazing, maneuvering these giant tour buses through all kinds of tight passages, but it was a bit of a zoo. Worse than what I've seen of New York, definitely.

Apparently there was a bit of trouble with Germans a while back. I'd like to have had a chance to hear what the young people think, to see how much they feel the weight of history (I'd guess not so much), but clearly everyone over a certain age has a deep connection to the siege. Our guide was approximately my mother's age (I'm guessing a little), and while her mother survived the siege, her maternal grandparents did not. They died after giving her mother their final rations. Survivors and (now mostly) their descendents leave bread on the mass gravestones on January 27, the anniversary of the end of the siege, in memory of those lost. Not a lot of visible signs actively left after 60 some years, but there are shell marks on the columns of St. Isaac's cathedral. Of course, the Germans can't take credit for the massive, stark rectangular Soviet architecture that our guide called "Stalin Gothic."

I'd love to be able to spend two weeks at the Hermitage, rather than the two hours we had. We literally walked through three rooms of Picassos without stopping. It should be noted "largest in the world" doesn't necessarily mean "best" but it is a very impressive museum.