Mother Russia: Day 2

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After a quite frankly embarrassing amount of sleep (my defence is that I am on holiday so leave me alone), I decided to go for a wander. As I was due to meet the Vodkatrain group the next day I had decided to see something that I was less likely to do with them so took a walk along Nevskiy to either see a museum or the Peter and Paul's Fortress which was supposed to have lots of interesting exhibits about Russian history. This is a rather sore point for me as I feel like I have done a magnificent tour through a great country about which I know NOTHING so I tried to take every opportunity to be less completely useless as a human and go to museums or just read wikipedia pages..

So I had a lovely walk along Nevskiy and then over the Neva river, taking everything in as I went. St Petersburg is so huge, not geographically, but architecturally. The roads are so wide, and the building fronts are incredibly imposing. One thing I didn't know before I went (along with ALL OF THE OTHER THINGS UK EDUCATION SYSTEM YOU HAVE FAILED ME) is how much water there is in St Petersburg. There are canals everywhere but the rivers are also absolutely massive.

The Peter and Paul Fortress was the first thing that really showed me I wasn't in Kansas anymore. It's the kind of place that the National Trust would have naughty thoughts about but there is no guidance at all on where anything is, no people standing around looking helpful, no signposts, no maps or even really any information on how to pay! It turns out you just walk in, then pay when you get to the exhibitions. I was looking for the Commandant's House as I had read that it had a Russian history exhibition that was worth seeing so I walked around for a bit trying to find it. I saw a freaky sculpture showing the apparently tiny-headed and giant-fingered Peter the Great. It seems that he was a seriously weird looking dude. Please refer to photographic evidence on this point. Eventually I found something that called itself the Engineer's House that claimed to be run by the Russian State Museum and I presumed there had been something lost in translation - I had found my place hurray hurrah. I paid for my ticket, turned round the corner and found a rather small room full of incredibly life-like waxworks. I had apparently paid for entry into a exhibition of waxworks of important people from Russian history, all well and good, except that the labels were all in Russian. At this point I had not properly spoken to another person in nearly two days (no-one at the hostel spoke English) and started to wonder whether actually these were the actual specimens, horribly preserved forever. They were seriously life like. One of them was looking into my soul I swear. So I waited the appropriate amount of time before I could walk back past the ticket lady, took a couple of pictures and ran for my life.

I never found the Commandant's House. I did however manage to walk along the top of the fortress wall, which was quite beautiful, before I wandered back to the hostel. I picked up a salad which was heavy on the mayonnaise (to be expected, Russia does not understand salad without mayonnaise) and light on the pickle (unexpected, as everything in Russia that is not in a dumpling, served with potatoes, or mixed with mayonnaise is pickled), and some bacon flavoured pumpkin seeds, some of which I still have with me in Beijing, which I have just realised is probably not good and I should throw them away. Will now go do that.

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Photos

IMG_0061
WHY IS HIS HEAD SO TINY.

IMG_0062
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

Comments

[Sue greenwood]

Hi ya.
Great diary. Read with interest. Take care. Lv sue