Russia 2018: St. Petersburg

Kaliningrad to St. Petersburg

One of the places that I planned to visit in St. Petersburg was the General Staff Building on Palace Square. The complex was built to house the offices of the General Staff, the Foreign Ministry, and the Ministry of Finance. In 1993, the East wing became part of the Hermitage. After an extensive renovation, the museum relocated its art collection of impressionists to the new premises and in 2014, the East wing was open to the public. inThe building is now an interesting combination of contemporary steel and glass design with restored classic interiors.

Another thing that I wanted to do was to visit the house on Vasilyevsky Island where I spent the first 8 years of my life. In the late 1950’s, it was a shabby 5-story building painted yellow-brown where most of the apartments were communal. Ours consisted of 4 rooms, a kitchen, and a lavatory. When I was born the apartment only had cold running water and electricity, no gas and central heating. We had a coal stove made of bricks in the kitchen and iron wood-burning furnaces in the rooms to keep us warm in winter. A few years after my birth, we got gas, a water heater and wall-mounted radiators with centrally supplied hot water. I remember how wonderful it was to brush my teeth with warm water instead of cold one in the morning. There was no place to install a bathtub, so everyone continued to go to to the communal baths across the street.

Our family of six occupied two rooms. There were two more families in the apartment who lived in the other two rooms.

It looked like some tenants installed new windows. That and a couple of modern cars were the only signs of the present times. The rest was just like in my childhood. I went up the stairs to the fourth floor. The same worn down, grey stone steps, cracked and peeling paint on the walls, broken window frames – everything was as I remembered it. The door of our former apartment opened and a teenage boy came out. I asked him if the apartment was still communal. The boy nodded not sure why a stranger would want to know that and quickly ran down the steps in case I had further questions.

I went under the arch to the other side of the building where was a small park in which I used to play as a child. The park did not change either, and the other houses around looked just the same. It was weird to return almost 60 years later and to find everything untouched by time.

Meetings with friends were a lot of joy although people did change with time. It was great to catch up on what was going on in our lives. One couple, our long-term family friends, invited me to stay with them in Voeikovo, the village about a 40-minute drive from St. Petersburg where several departments of Main Geophysical Observatory (MGO) of Russia are located. Years ago, parcels of land around the MGO were sold to scientists and other MGO staff so they could build summer houses. These days, it is an elite settlement for the wealthy because of Voeikovo’s proximity to the city, clean countryside air, and a nature reserve there. Some scientists or their descendants still live in Voeikovo, but many turned their land into cash. As a result, imposing mansions grew all over Voeikovo. The house of our friend-scientist looked very modest against the backdrop of these mansions.

We had a lot to talk about although we stay in touch. Then my friends took me for a walk to show a newly built, all timber Orthodox church and a lake.

Sunday, 27^th of May, was the City Day. It is believed that Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg on that day, 315 years ago. Newspapers announced a wide range of festivities from a gala concert on Palace Square to an ice-cream festival and fireworks. I was most curious to see elephants that were expected to walk along Nevsky Avenue. The avenue was closed to traffic, crowds were everywhere. My nephew and I watched a spectacular marching band go past us, but the promised elephants did not appear. Maybe, we waited for them in a wrong place.

 

The last but not least event of my one week in St. Petersburg was an organized on a short notice school reunion of my graduation year of 1973. It was by pure chance that I happened to be in town for this reunion. Forty five years is an awfully long time. We were teenagers and now many of us are grandparents. Hard to recognize your schoolmate if we did not see each other all these years!

My nephew came at the end of the reunion party with my backpack and drove me to the airport from where I took a night flight to Varna, Bulgaria.