St. Petersburg draws to a close

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I have just completed to very long exhausting days as a tourist once again. This time, my tour guides were Dmitri and Igor, who are a faculty member and student respectively in the Information Technology department (computer science) at Herzen University (as opposed to my earlier trips which were either arranged tours as a group with my colleagues from UNI, or were me off exploring on my own).

On Saturday, they walked my legs off. I wish I had had a pedometer with me to estimate how far we walked, but my guess from looking at a map (and from how long we walked and how tired I was) is that we had to have wandered 6-8 miles. They picked me up at 10:00 and we did not return until 6:00.

The morning was spent looking at many of the sites which I had already seen. That is fine. You sometimes see things from a different perspective when you see it a second day, and you certainly hear different stories from different people.

We did see two new things however.

First, we went to the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great was very interested in people, and in his travels to Western Europe he became interested in the idea of collections. He began a very interesting collection of artifacts from cultures around the world, including some interesting displays from the Plains Indians of the United States (although it is hard to tell which items he helped collect and which came along later). The “showcase” of this museum is a large room filled with jars of preserved specimens of human oddities and “monsters.” On the surface, it looks like a freak show filled with dozens of variants of Siamese twins, children born with no arms/legs, fused limbs, Cyclops, etc. However, the Russians would spin this as the fact that this was right at the beginning of the “modern” era of anatomy and that Peter’s collection was heavily studied by scientists of his time learning about anatomy.

The second new thing that I visited was the Peter and Paul Fortress. This fort was really the first thing built at the founding of St. Petersburg. It is built on an island in the Neva river and was meant as a defense against invasion during the war against Sweden, although it evidently has never seen battle. It is an interesting site if for no other reason then the Cathedral of Peter and Paul in the fort. This cathedral contains close to 40 crypts containing the remains of most of the Emperors of the Romanov dynasty including Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, etc. We took the tour up to the “clock level” (50 meters) of the spire for some amazing views of the city.

By the time they dropped me off last night I was exhausted. Unfortunately I was supposed to be going to a concert. FORTUNATELY, my “escort” was evidently planning to simply take me to the concert (a free concert of music from Scandinavia) and then leave me to enjoy the concert by myself and find my way home. I went into the theater for a few minutes to look around, and then snuck out to come home and rest).

It is a good thing I did, because today’s adventure was also a long one.

Today we took a combination of subway and “bus” out to Peterhoff which is the summer residence of Peter the Great and his family. It sits approximately 30 kilometers away from the city on the Gulf of Finland which leads into the Baltic Sea. This palace is known as “The Versailles of Russia” and “Fountain Park” because of its opulent palace and even MORE opulent gardens filled with fountains. It was heavily a tourist destination, but the gardens were lovely, and we walked among them for probably six hours before catching a high-speed ferry through the Gulf of Finland, back up the Neva River, and to the port of St. Petersburg. Again, my entire trip lasted from 10:00 until 6:30.

Today’s trip was very enjoyable not only because of the lovely gardens and views, but also because I had a chance to talk with Igor and Dmitri in much more depth about their program and our program and discuss the things we liked and the things we didn’t. One of the main reasons to take this trip was to learn about computer science in other cultures, and what a nice way to do it today. Strolling through a beautiful garden with good friends and occasionally talking shop!

I may be offline for a couple of days. Tomorrow afternoon I depart by train to Moscow. It is unclear what my access will be to the Internet but I will keep my notes on my computer and post them as I get a chance.

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