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Published: September 29th 2014
4th of July Celebration in Finland!
Just a few of those on the OCC rally helping to celebrate with plenty of good old American favorites!Palaces, gold, Tsars, Russian Orthodox Churches, Fortresses, malachite, jasper, metros, marble, meat pies, parks, good luck charms, weddings, Faberge, Lamborghini, Vladimir, Natalia, gold, Gold, GOLD and
GOLD– these are a few of the words that come to mind when we start to think about our time in St. Petersburg, Russia. With the political situation the way it is we consider ourselves quite luckily we were able to make it to St. Petersburg this season. Unfortunately with what has been in the news recently we are concerned for many and what the impact will be on those that are dependent on tourism to this amazing city.
We have been talking about writing this blog for almost two months now and how difficult it is going to be. There are three reasons for this. First, we were there for 14 days; second we did something we have never done before, we took numerous guided tours; third and most important, this place is amazing!
St. Petersburg was built by Tsar Peter II for the primary purpose of giving Russia a port on the Baltic in 1703. Remember at this time the Baltic was where it was at economically and militarily. Peter the
Tsamaya came into the harbor in Haapasaari
which had a narrow entrance but worked out very well Great set out to build a city that would rival the great cities of Europe and become the administrative capital of Russia. Peter was not that fond of Moscow - he felt it was dark and old fashioned, so from that point until 1918 when the Bolsheviks revolted the Tsars (Romanoff family) built palaces to rival Versailles, theatres for culture and opulent cathedrals to ensure their entry into heaven.
By the end of the 14 days we were suffering from gold fatigue. These palaces defy description. The places we visited were filled with everything from 14 different types of marble, pillars made of malachite and jasper, gold covered domes and rooms covered in amber, mosaics and more gold. Hopefully the photos can give you just a taste of what we saw while here.
The marina we stayed in was in one of the wealthiest parts of the city. Lamborghinis, Rolls Royce and Bugatti were a common sight and Range Rovers were as common as Chevrolet and Ford in the US. The Yacht Club on the other side of the river from where we stayed was filled with custom built yachts and they had their own helicopter pad which
A View from the Island
looking over toward some of the OCC boats anchored out for the night. on weekends was as busy as the subway in London (Janice says this is an exaggeration of Bob’s, but in truth it was amazingly busy). In St. Petersburg the shopping district had all the major high end brands (Gucci, Prada, Cartier and the like). One shop we walked by had men in well-tailored 3 piece suits wearing white gloves whose sole purpose was to assist the shopper with opening the door and greeting them. They also had men stationed on the street to ensure parking spaces for their customers. Needless to say we didn’t’t do any shopping here! Our guide many times would refer to the “New Russians” meaning those that have this type of wealth.
On our free days from the scheduled guided tours we visited a few interesting museums. The Siege Museum covered the period of 900 days that the city of St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad) was under siege by the Nazis. Their plan was to starve out the population by cutting them off from any goods entering the city. September 8, 1941, is considered the official start of the siege because this was when all the railroads and highways into Leningrad were cut off. Over
A Few of the Structures in Haapasaari
The church, the one and only store and of course the ever popular ice cream & coffee stand! 200,000 people starved to death that first winter alone. The people of Leningrad recognizing that the Nazis were on their way took amazing steps to preserve their history by removing monuments, burying those that could be removed, packing up the artwork in the Winter Palace and even covering the gold domes of the Cathedrals to hopefully protect them from attack. So much of what stands and can be seen today is a direct result of the people of Leningrad realizing the value of these monuments and protecting them at such a difficult time.
Rather than have the battle fought in the center of St. Petersburg, the Russian army mounted a Herculean effort and was able to keep the Nazi’s in the suburbs. There is a book, “Enemy at the Gate” which was later turned into a movie about the siege which depicts some of the horrific conditions and tells the story of what was done to save St. Petersburg. One story we picked up at the museum which is well worth repeating is about the Institute of Science which had a collection of crop seeds. Many of the scientists that had the responsibility of overseeing this collection died of
starvation themselves rather than using the seeds as food themselves because they knew once the siege was broken it would these seeds that would grow the crops to feed the population. In the winter time roads were built across the ice to enable trucks to take some people out of the city – 550,000 people were taken out by April 1942 and another 90,000 by the winter of 1942-43. Even with the constant bombings from the air these “roads” were kept open for as long as the ice could support the vehicles. Unfortunately many vehicles and lives were lost at the bottom of Lake Ladoga. The first train arrived on February 7, 1943, and was called the “Road of Victory” however the railroad engineers called it the “Road of Death” as the bombing still continued. The Germans were finally pushed back 65-100 kilometers from Leningrad officially ending the siege on January 27, 1944. It is thought that between those that died from starvation, dystrophy and bombings there was a total loss of a million Russians lives.
We went to the Political Museum as well. It clearly laid out the history of the USSR with the rise to power of
A Few Views While Walking Around the Island
of Haapasaari where we stopped to check out of Finland on our way to St. Petersburg the Bolsheviks. Rather than tell the story here, we have included a few of the explanations that were posted in the museum to hopefully give you a sense of the political stronghold that the USSR had over its people and the amount of significant loss of life of the intelligentsia during this long period of time. There are two things we would like to mention; first we both knew that Stalin had ruled the USSR with an iron fist. What we didn’t understand was that he did this by standing on the corpses of hundreds of thousands of his own people. No one was safe, and the terror he rained down on his own people was often arbitrary which made it even more frightening. The second thing is that the Bolshevik revolution did not occur overnight and was not in fact a big surprise to the royal family. In fact at the time of the revolt Nicholas was in the process of negotiating a power-sharing agreement with a number of moderate groups. The problem was the Bolsheviks because of their extreme ideology were not part of that discussion and that’s why they mounted the revolt and killed off the entire
Our Evening View in Haapasaari
an island which is part of Finland & where we checked out before heading to Russia Romanoff family.
The Ethnology Museum was another that we visited on our own. It was interesting to see the various “costumes” that were common for the various regions of this huge country. It really hit home how vast it is when you would see scenes with people hunting reindeer while in other parts of the country they were living in the desert or near the ocean. It told how the various clothing and tools that people wore and used helped identify not only the region where they lived but also what they did for a living. It was a very well done museum and well worth the visit.
As for the scheduled tours that we went on during our stay in St. Petersburg – we covered most of the highlights of the city showing us the grandeur of the buildings and the extravagance of the royalty that lived here. We visited a few of the churches – the Church of Spilled Blood that was built as a memorial to Alexander II who was assassinated here; St. Isaac’s Church with its impressive gold dome and granite columns is the largest orthodox basilica in the world; and the Peter and
Everyone Had to Stop Here
to officially check out of Finland before heading to St. Petersburg. Paul Cathedral located at the Peter & Paul Fortress with its easily identified gold spire and the interment of the majority of the Russian Tsars. Palaces abound here and we took in many of them – the Winter Palace which also now houses the famous Hermitage Museum; Peterhof, with its extensive gardens and water fountains that were a technological marvel as no pumps were used to move the water; Catherine’s Palace located outside of town in Tsarkoye Selo which used 220 pounds of gold just to decorate the outside of the building; and the Fortress of Peter and Paul where we saw many of the buildings there as well as heard the noon time firing of the canon while there. We took a bus tour around the city with stops at the numerous highlights and the numerous statutes pointed out to us with lots of information on the history of this city thrown in for good measure. We can thank our guide Natalia for taking great care of us during the time we were there as she knew how to maneuver us through the voluminous crowds at many of these sights and have time to explain what we were seeing
The Border with Russia
where we had to call in on the VHF radio to let them know we were crossing into Russian waters and answer any of our questions.
As we were traveling through the city our guide, Natalia would point out new apartment buildings and tell us how nice they were and that they had individual bathrooms. At the time we thought it was odd but figured it might be something to do with translation. After visiting the political Museum we understood that for much of the history of the USSR it was common for several families to share one apartment. Having an apartment for your family with its own bathroom was a major improvement in the quality of life and historically was only available to the political elite.
Believe it or not we didn’t even take advantage of all of the events that were offered – we didn’t make it to the ballet or opera, but we did go to the Folk Music performance which was a spectacular evening full of singing and dancing. The costumes were colorful and the stories the songs told were enchanting.
We were helped through this whole process of getting into St. Petersburg and making sure our stay went smoothly by a wonderful person, Vladimir. He made us all feel welcome right from
Our "Night" Sail to St. Petersburg
where it never really did get dark making for a very pleasant crossing. the start when he helped us through the process of obtaining a visa to visit, meeting us at the customs/immigration dock upon arrival, our entire time there checking to be sure everything was running smoothly for our transportation to events and dinners and saying good bye to us at the dock when we left. Our stay in St. Petersburg was a very pleasant one and that is in large part to the efforts of Vladimir.
About the time that our visa was going to expire, the weather cooperated and came out of the East so we had a very pleasant journey back to Finland. There were several who questioned us on whether St. Petersburg would be worth the long distance and the time; there is no question in our minds now it was well worth it!
One other benefit of being in Russia was that we were able to buy diesel at about $.63 per liter which is considerably less than half of what we would’ve paid anywhere else in Europe. It’s times like this that having a sailboat that carries 800 L of diesel really pays off.
We realize that our visit to St. Petersburg was
A Couple of Moon Shots
as we head into St. Petersburg in fact only a small introduction to the vast country of Russia. It is our hope over the coming years we will have an opportunity to go back and see more.
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