St. Petersburg, the city of the tsars, is known as the “Venice of the North.”  It is built on islands at the mouth of the Neva River and has many waterways, probably similar to the Mississippi River delta, except habitable instead of swampy.  We had to go through customs to enter Russia because it is not part of the European Union.  The tour director of the ship promised a free drink to anyone who could make a Russian customs officer laugh.  She didn’t have to buy any drinks, although some of the officers (mostly the women) were “pleasant.”  I even got a smile with teeth showing from one of them.  Mostly, they try to look scary and they bring the word gulag to mind.

The first thing I noticed about St. Petersburg was how shabby it is.  There are many magnificent buildings–all from the 19th century–but there is apparently little or no money available for maintenance.  Rust, peeling paint, and missing window panes are visible on many buildings.  Where bricks are missing, some plaster-type substance is smoothed over the damage, but not necessarily painted to match the façade.  Even some of the monuments and tourist attractions (palaces, museums, etc.) are shabby on the outside, no matter how opulent the restoration has been on the inside.  I won’t even get into the buildings constructed in the 20th century under communism.  I’m not sure they would pass a safety inspection in the U.S. and I would have been hesitant to enter any of them.  Outside of the city, however, the houses and buildings looked much better.  Some were even mini McMansions (an oxymoron, I know).

In Russia, you need a visa ($200 each) to explore on your own.  With a certified tour guide, you don’t, so we opted for the two-day excursion offered by the ship.  We had the same tour guide (a Russian from St. Petersburg) both days and noticed that no matter what we saw and no matter how shabby it looked, there was something about it that made it the biggest, the best, and the most wonderful in the world.  She was obviously–and rightly–very proud of her home town and her country, but it reminded me of my GED students who made a habit of being aggressive because they lacked self-confidence.

Tour any attraction in St. Petersburg and you’ll find that you’re sharing the space with an incredible number of other people.  Occupancy limits are apparently not a big issue.  In some of the venues, we needed to put  “booties” on over our shoes to protect the beautiful inlaid wood floors (future picture coming).  There was an employee sitting in every room to make sure the line of visitors kept moving.  If the line stopped or slowed down too much, the tour guide got notice to move things along.

That doesn’t begin to describe the experience of passing through the palace, museum, or other venue.  There are so many people, that the line just fits between the ropes and it’s more like being herded through than walking through the rooms.  Don’t try to set up a photo–that’s moving too slowly.  Just snap and keep moving.  When we were in the Hermitage, one of the most famous museums in the world, there were so many people, it was difficult to even change places.  It’s possible that we only made it through the building because the entire mass of people moved as one.  It was impossible to get a good look at the displays.

We had another travel adventure in Catherine’s Palace.  (She’s the one who became Catherine the Great and the palace was her summer home.)  As we were putting on our booties, our guide moved ahead.  When we raised our heads from looking at our shoes, we couldn’t find her or the lollipop-like sign she carried above her head to identify her in the crowd.  We frantically looked around the room, didn’t see her or any recognizable group members, so forced our way through the human mass into the next room, thinking she had moved on.  We still couldn’t find her, so we approached one of the museum employees (few of whom had any knowledge of English) and gestured our problem to her.  She let us cross the forbidden floor area to check in the next room.

We still didn’t see our guide, but saw another group from our ship behind us.  Trying to reach that group was impossible, so we followed a group from an unidentified (to us) country in the ever-moving line through the entire palace.  When we went out the single exit, we sat down and waited until we saw the group from our ship emerge.  We knew the bus and the ship wouldn’t leave without us, but we were eager to see someone familiar.  The other group adopted us and their guide called our guide to tell her we were safe and would meet her at lunch, since all our groups were going to the same restaurant.  “Comfortable” is not a word we would use to describe how we felt between losing our group in the huge crowd, not understanding the language of the country, and being adopted by the other group, but as Shakespeare said, “All’s well that ends well.”

I have more to describe and beautiful pictures of Russia to post, but with the slow internet, this overview is going to have to suffice for now.