Look, a seagull!

(Please back date to 3/7/13)

Have you ever watched a movie dubbed over in another language? I have seen plenty of foreign films spoken in other languages but they have always had English subtitles, they were never dubbed over in English. I am watching a black and white German film (I’m guessing from the 50’s?) dubbed over in Russian in the kitchen of the hostel. It’s the weirdest thing. I can hear the spoken German in the background as if the editors made no attempt to change that part, made no attempt to remove it or soften the volume. Instead there is a single Russian narrator translating all dialogue slightly more loudly than the actual actors. Isn’t that distracting? Is it just because this is an older film? I guess it doesn’t really bother me much - I wouldn’t understand it in German either. And this is the kind of film where dialogue is the film so I get nothing from context clues. I think it’s artsy, it’s hard to tell.

I like this hostel, I just scored a free piece of cake.

I also just received an email from Marina Avvakumova, Sasha Timikova’s (Sasha from my homestay in Ekaterinburg) sister who lives in a suburb of St. Petersburg with her husband Victor and her small daughter Katya. Sasha had told her I was coming to St. Petersburg and she contacted me and invited me out for a day trip to a village called Vyborg, located right on the Finland border, about a one and a half hour train ride from the the city. I don’t know much about Vyborg, but Marina says it is a beautiful village and an excellent day trip. I’m excited for that and a chance to meet her and her family and spend the day with them. Russians are so friendly!

I did go for that walk around the city today and I did make my way out to Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress. St. Petersburg is a great deal smaller than it’s big brother to the south and most of the more interesting areas for walking and sightseeing are centered around one, long, straight avenue called Nevsky Prospekt that cuts through the city north to south and ends in the Neva River, a river that dumps into the Baltic Sea. The avenue is wide and regal, lined by European style buildings from the 18th century and theaters and museums and restaurants and cafes. St. Petersburg is often called Russia’s gateway to Europe and it is obvious why. Moscow looked like Europe but St. Petersburg is Europe.

Nevsky Prospekt

St. Petersburg is famous for its European style of architecture

Since I got to the hostel so early, I decided to check in and relax in the kitchen (that looks like the kitchen from the set of Friends), check email, write, and plan a bit. I made some coffee and enjoyed the silence while the rest of the hostel guests slept away. Then I set out for a walk. St. Petersburg is an old port city, riddled with canals and waterways that branch off the Neva, all leading to the Gulf of Finland and ultimately the Baltic Sea so the city, historically, had become a huge shipping port. In fact, I saw and heard my first seagulls in months (Tianjin didn’t have any - too polluted I think). But since we are so well connected to the sea here, the city funnels in cold Arctic air from the Baltic which drops the air temperature to well below freezing. The combination of cold air, wind, and at times, snow, can be brutal here. Luckily though it was at least sunny when I first set out. I walked the length of Nevsky Prospekt, taking photos and taking in my first impression of the city. Another thing I noticed while on this walk is that there are a lot of tourists here - I heard a lot of non-Russian being spoken by camera toting pedestrians. Not a lot of English, but a lot of other European languages. It is kind of a comforting feeling.

I walked south until the major part of the avenue, then turned back north and walked the length to the river. Where the road meets the river, the space opens up to a very large circular square to the west of the street, bordered by the river to the north. This square is ringed by beautiful government buildings to the south to make that half of the space an oval shape, there is one of the largest monument towers in the world in the center of the square, and the Hermitage, a palace turned museum, one of the best in the world, takes the square’s northern border, separating it from the river. You feel like you’ve walked into the Colosseum when you walk into this square. Like lions will jump at you from behind while you’re taking photos of the Hermitage. I left the square, crossed the river at two points, and walked to Kronversky Island, famous as the site for Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress.

A view of the Hermitage

Looking out over the Neva River, Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress is just to the left

The fortress is famous for two things. Firstly, it was built by Peter the Great to be used as a stronghold point to protect the booming city of St. Petersburg in the south from the ever annoying Swedes to the north. For centuries, the Russian slavic people had been fighting in this area of Northern Russia against the Finno-Ugric people and more famously, the Swedes. Ownership of this region north of St. Petersburg has gone back and forth between the two peoples for a long time. After making some headway and beating back the Swedes, Peter the Great had the fortress built. But Russia made further headway in its campaigns in more northern parts so the fortress never actually saw any action. The Swedes were eventually beat back and held near the village of Vyborg (where I’m going tomorrow). The second reason this fortress is famous is because it became a political prison, holding some of Russia’s best known dissidents. It first held the wave of Decembrists, a group of young military officers that had tried to remove the czar from power and failed horribly. The Decembrists were captured and held here in the fortress. When walking around I found what is called the Commandant's House, a building that they used to prosecute and hand out sentences to the Decembrists. I stood in the room where many of the young officers were sentenced to death and many more sentenced to exile in Siberia, to places like Irkutsk (and the Volkonsky Mansion - where the museum that I visited and was followed around by elderly Russian women now stands). The fortress also held prisoners from other, less famous coup attempts. The prison held and then hanged Lenin’s older brother for his part in an assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II. And after the Bolshevik revolution, the socialists turned the fortress against the imperialists and held many of the White Army prisoners there until the prison was closed soon after. So this place has some history.

The room where the Decembrists were sentenced within the Commandant's main office

I finished with the fortress, after a few hours of museum visits and general walking of the grounds and then wandered my way back through the cold to the hostel for a rest. Before I left Moscow, Yana had helped me score a cheap ticket to the ballet at the famous Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg to watch “Spartak” on Saturday evening. I figured ballet would be a great way to sample a bit of real Russian culture and this venue is one of the most famous in the world. I was assured that I could where whatever I wanted but I also figure I owe the venue a bit more respect than showing up with my traveling clothes. So after my rest, I bought a cheap, collared, button down shirt so that I will embarrass myself slightly less than I would have originally.

Tomorrow I have to wake up super early to meet Marina and her family at the train station, the same train station that will eventually take me to Finland, to make our way up to Vyborg, a Russian border village that’s historically more Finnish (and even more Swedish) than Russian. Apparently the old town is supposed to have historic Scandinavian buildings and seaport views. And I can’t wait to meet more of Sasha’s family!