Four days in St. Petersburg

After a few days in Moscow, we took the high-speed train to St. Petersburg.  [Note:  Click here to see the Moscow photos.]  St. Petersburg was the capital of Russia from the early 1700's until the communist revolution in 1918.  Peter the Great and Catherine the Great both wanted Russia to be more like Europe, and they directed the architecture of the city accordingly.  The buildings in the old part of town are typically six stories high, and look like they could be from Vienna or Paris.  St. Petersburg is built on both sides of the huge Neva River so it could serve as a naval base, and has quite a few canals.

One morning, we took a long, windy, rainy walk across the Neva to the Peter and Paul Fortress, which contains the church where the Romanovs are entombed.  The Romanovs were designated as the "Royal family" of Tsars after a violent period of confusion over succession. This sort of fake royal family provided a series of Tsars until the revolution, when the entire family was murdered to ensure that there would be no successor.  Below, a picture apropos of nothing, except it's a chandelier in the aforementioned church and it looks cool. :)

For most people, Saint Petersburg's top attraction is The Hermitage, a huge palace, and one of the largest  museums on Earth.  It has numerous works of art by Van Gogh, Raphael, Leonardo di Vinci, Picasso, Matisse, Magritte, Rousseau, Gauguin, Rembrandt, and Monet, to name only a few.  There's a huge room full of nothing but irresistibly beautiful Rembrandts.  One morning I went out to take a look around and found a big military band practicing on the plaza in front of the Hermitage .

Some of the paintings in the Hermitage were kept as reparations from Germany for the loss of over 20 million Russian lives during WWII.  Twenty million lives is a number so far beyond the American experience as to be incomprehensible to us.  In WWII, America lost about 500,000 lives, so Russia lost about 40 times as many people as America.  Some of the paintings' labels specifically say they were in a German museum until the late 1940's.

Even if there were no art in the building, the interior of the Hermitage itself is spectacular, in a baroque, over-the-top way.  Here's a photo of one of the more ornate rooms.

Once, Catherine traveled to Italy and saw the halls of the Vatican.  She liked them so much she came home and ordered a complete copy of one of the most beautiful halls of the Vatican.  This must have taken hundreds of artisans years to complete.

While in St. Petersburg, we also went out to Catherine the Great's Palace.  The history of the palace is more interesting than the palace itself.  Catherine had lots of lovers here, and its huge size, priceless art, and absurd amounts of gilt decoration were used to impress visiting dignitaries.  During WWII, St. Petersburg was under seige by the Nazis for 900 days, during which time some of those twenty million mentioned earlier died fighting, or starved, or froze.  During the siege, the palace was outside the front line, so was badly damaged.  Fortunately, the curators anticipated this and moved many of art works away, or even buried some in secret locations nearby, leading to legends about forgotten priceless works of art buried in the area.  Some works were stolen by the Nazis, and never recovered.  One piece taken from a famous room in Catherine's palace was found on sale in Germany in 1997 (see link).

The fate of valuable art in war

Art from Catherine's Palace Returned by Germany

A couple of photos from St. Isaac's church, a short walk from the Hermitage.  The top of the dome rises over 300 feet.  In other words, it's huge and imposing.  It was preserved as a museum during the communist era.

They had some beautiful mosaics taken down and sitting where we could walk right up to them.

One of the most exotic, impressive, and beautiful places we visited was the Church of the Spilled Blood.

The entire interior is covered in brilliant mosaics.  Mosaics in all directions.  A skin of mosaics.  Just stunning, and very reminiscent of St. Mark's in Venice. To see the similarities for yourself, take a look at my post on St. Mark's.  The resemblance is not at all coincidental, as both churches are of Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine architectural style, despite the fact that St. Mark's is a Catholic church.

As I kept repeating in my Saint Mark's Cathedral post, there is NO PAINT in these photos - only stone (and gold leaf)!

Wild Parties over My Head, Literally

Our upstairs neighbors have a very excitable 15 year-old boy with a lot of friends.  And his parents leave him at home alone all weekend every once in a while.  That's when the blaring, all-night parties happen.  Last night is a good example.  They were playing all the most popular tunes (e.g., Happy) so loud it echoed throughout the entire block.  They had their windows open, and they were dancing and screaming at the top of their lungs.  This started around 8:30.  At various points, I considered going upstairs and yelling at them, since the sound comes through their floor and into our living room at that volume.  I had to turn up the sound on my own TV so it wouldn't be drowned out.

A few times during the evening, at 10:00, 11:00, and 12:00, I opened up our balcony doors and listened to the sounds of the people coming out of the open windows directly over my head.  That's when I noticed the people in the building across the street opening up their windows, looking over at the apartment above me.  It was so loud, it was annoying the people across the street with their windows closed!  Some of them were shaking their heads.  One couple even looked at me and shrugged their shoulders and smiled.  The loud partying continued until 2AM.  I could still hear people talking and walking around up there at 8 in the morning.

All this brings up questions about French culture.  In the US, I expect at least one neighbor would call the cops, and they would come and tell the party animals to keep it down.  Disturbing the peace, and all that.  Why doesn't that happen here?  Is it because neighbors know the police won't care?  It is because they don't have a law about disturbing the peace?

Or, is it something deeper?  Could it be that there is a taboo among the French when it comes to snitching, to turning one's neighbor in to the authorities, even when you have to put up with a nuisance instead?   Maybe this is part of the explanation for the affluent young people smoking pot in public in daylight.  Do they feel secure that no one would report them?  Maybe it's inconceivable to them that someone would do something like that.

France vs. Honduras: 2014 World Cup in the 15th Arrondissment

I took a walk around the neighborhood tonight, to see what was up at the bars, brasseries, etc. for the France vs. Honduras World Cup (Coupe du Monde) game.  First, I passed by three bars with decent crowds - Au Dernier Metro, Les Prolongations, and Au Moka.  Each was open to the sidewalks, with one or two TVs inside, and the cafe chairs that usually face out were turned around to look into the bar.  All those were on Grenelle street, in the shadow of the train tracks of Metro Line 6.  Then I headed on down to La Motte Piquet, where I found Cafe Primerose pretty full, but the big surprise was the Haagen Daazs.  Yes, the Haagen Daazs shop had a huge crowd filling the sidewalk.  There were paying customers at tables turned backwards to face the TV, but a lot of other hangers-on standing behind them, such as myself.  The TV was actually set up outside there, so it was much easier to see than in the other places.

I settled in at the back of the crowd, next to a young couple using a parked car to lean back against.  I was right next to them, as that was the only angle I could see the TV from.  They were chatting in French and random strangers walking down the sidewalk were forced to squeeze through the back of the crowd to get by, some making comments on the score (0-0) as they passed.  The crowd was in a good mood, despite the lack of alcohol.

When France was awarded a penalty kick on a red flag, the crowd got really keyed up, and they all started a chant that must be what you do when you're actually at a soccer/football stadium.  One obnoxious guy actually started blasting one of those deafening aerosol can stadium horns.  I always thought that was a tacky American thing, now I don't know who got it from who.  When the team scored, the crowd jumped up, and airhorn guy blasted his horn, and some passing drivers joined in honking.

Soon after that, I walked home, but one other interesting thing happened first.  The girl of the couple I was leaning against the car with pulled a hand-rolled cigarette out of her purse and lit it up.  It didn't take long to become obvious that it was not a cigarette!  This is not the first time I've seen people toking up in public in daylight in this neighborhood. Just the other day, Jennifer and I walked past three affluent-looking high schoolers, two girls and a guy, hanging out on a park bench in the Champ de Mars, when one of the girls breathed out a giant cloud of thick white pot smoke practically in our faces.  I don't get what's going on exactly.  I mean why the people don't care that they are being seen by strangers or fear cops catching them.  It certainly isn't legal here.  I need to ask some French friends their opinion.