Saint Petersburg: [speechless]
June 9th, 2009 ~ Travel bloggingIt’s a terrible thing to find that you’ve used up all the superlatives you can think of, just when you need them most.
Saint Petersburg was always the biggest attraction of this cruise for me. Judging from the fact that the cruise stops there for two full days, it obviously is for a lot of people. But I had started to worry about the stories of tourists being harassed there. Saint Petersburg is the only city we’ve ever cruised to that doesn’t allow tourists to wander around without a guide. That level of supervision had me concerned, and I wondered if the city would be all Soviet and scary or something.
When we first approached it in the morning, it started to look like it just might.
Oh
my
goodness.
I knew that St. Petersburg was founded in the early 1700’s by czar/madman/genius/control freak Peter the Great, who occasionally built the city with his own two hands when the mere mortals around him were proving to be too flawed. And I knew that Peter the Great had gotten a European education and was determined to make Russia more like Europe. But I didn’t add up those two facts and figure out that he was going to try to out-do Versailles, Venice, Rome, Paris and Disneyland.
Sorry, not Disneyland. Disneyland couldn’t pull off real Baroque. They’d be embarrassed to try, and they’d go broke. Nope, when it comes to building a summer palace — just a summer palace, mind you – with a back yard like THIS, you need real royalty who like to spend real money and have absolutely no fear of looking excessive.
But I do have a fear of excess. In my case, I mean I’m afraid I’ll exceed the bandwidth of WordPress if I try to upload all the photos I would need. So I’m going to go spare and settle for my favorite pictures and some anecdotes for now. Later on, I should have a link to a slideshow that might get closer to it. But I think I’m saying a person just has to use their imagination. It was really staggering.
One of the things that helped make St. Petersburg so wonderful for us is that we had booked ourselves into a small group of eight people, and we had an exceptionally great tour company. It was DenRus — link HERE – and for two days, we were taken about in a comfy van by an absolutely fearless driver, Sergei, and a guide who was a walking Wikipedia — Mikhail. All of my trepidation about being treated poorly vanished two minutes into Mikhail’s introduction. He was knowledgeable, friendly and incredibly open about what it felt like to grow up in Soviet Russia.
Besides all the splendor of St. Petersburg, he made sure we drove through the other parts of the city where most people actually live. These are the old collective apartment buildings of Stalin’s and Kruschev’s era … and they’re horrible. Most big urban cities in America have some low-income housing left — The Projects, usually called — but they represent a small subset of the housing. The Soviet housing is still almost all there is for people to live in, and so “The Projects” stretch on and on in a depressing ocean. (I didn’t take pictures.)
When we drove through one commercial district, Mikhail pointed out that the collective apartments weren’t as bad-looking. These dated back to Stalin’s time and Stalin knew that Westerners would need to be shown something that illustrated how excellent Communism was. So he built the facades of the buildings well, and people told reporters how good things were. “I knew a woman who lived here then,” Mikhail said. “She told me she never told the reporters what went on inside these buildings, because it was too sad.”
If there hadn’t been any palaces and museums, I still would’ve been in heaven just to be around so many gorgeous Orthodox cathedrals. We American Orthodox are so used to being the best kept secret in Christendom, but what a delight to be overrepresented for once. We saw the enormous St. Isaac’s (built by Peter the Great for his patron saint) and the glittering cathedral at the summer palace (left). But Tatyana was right — the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood (right) topped them all. Built on the site where Czar Alexander II was mortally wounded by anarchists, it was a feast for the eyes inside and out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Orthodox mosaics as beautiful as those ones. And unlike all the ancient ones that have great gaping holes in them, these ones were floor to ceiling and covered every inch.
On a smaller but more charming scale, I was surprised by a schoolgirl when our group was bumping along through the expansive gardens in Peterhof. Of course I had noticed that there were German accents around me and Russian and French and all sorts of other languages. And one group of schoolchildren on a field trip had apparently noticed our accents as well. At least, that’s what I think happened. When I was navigating my way through the people, a girl of about 10 came around in front of me, turned suddenly and said “Hello!” with her eyes wide open. “Hi!” I answered, trying to match her enthusiasm. But she left without any further dialogue. It only occurred to me later that she had been wanting to use her English word on us. It worked!
As we drove the half hour from downtown Petersburg to Pushkin to see Catherine’s palace, Mikhail talked a little of why Russians don’t smile more. “I have American friends who come here and think that people don’t like them, because they frown and don’t answer when they say ‘hello.’ But it’s not that we’re not friendly. There are still a lot of people who remember how it used to be in the Soviet Union. If you talked to Americans and smiled with them, your neighbors would wonder what you talked about. And they would talk to the KGB and they’d come and talk to you. So you stayed out of trouble if you looked angry. It showed that you disliked capitalism.”
On a similar note, when we drove through a little rural countryside, Mikhail told us about the Soviet attempts to encourage agriculture. “There were state farms and collectivist farms,” he said. “The state farms were 100% funded by the government, and the collectivist farms were 90% funded by the government. They were both supposed to be owned ‘by the people,’ but neither one of the types of farms worked. Nobody cared to work or improve them. Because they had a saying: ‘When something is owned by the people, it’s actually not owned by anybody.’
I really, REALLY wanted Mikhail to record that, so that I could play it on a continuous soundtrack at many locations in the blue states. Probably wouldn’t work, but worth a try.
The last stop we had was the Peter and Paul Cathedral, where all the czars are buried, including the Romanovs. It was, of course, a gorgeous cathedral. But Mikhail had a surprise for us, and I don’t know how he managed it. At one point, a man in a cassock signaled our group, and we were shown into a smaller chapel. There was a small men’s choir of maybe eight singers. Standing in an alcove that served as a natural amplifier, they sang a short hymn for us.
The SOUND …. Like I said, I’m out of superlatives. It would sound forced at this point if I tried to say how the bass part seemed to reverberate through the stone walls, how the high parts just soared, and how every note was in flawless, perfect pitch so that 2-second chords bypassed your ears entirely and went straight to your heart.
Our group knew that I was “Orthodox Girl,” and so a couple of them asked me afterward what I thought. So did Mikhail. But I was glad that in all the cases, something came up that prevented me from answering. Honestly, what could I have said? That I could’ve stood there and cried and cried?
You go searching for real beauty all your life, really. But that’s not to say you have the slightest idea what you’ll do when you find it.
That was St. Petersburg.
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June 9th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Oh my goodness, Grace. What a wonderful experience. I teared up reading about it.
Thanks be to God.
June 9th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Mimi, honest to goodness, you win the all-time award for Fastest Commenter! I hadn’t even finished fixing typos before you read this! I should hand out a prize.
Anyway, many thanks, as always for the kind words. I left this one for quite a while because I didn’t know where to start.
June 9th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Oh…my. Now you’ve made me want to travel. I hate travelling.
June 9th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Heh. You must have just hit submit when I got to the “T” section of my Blog Reader.
I can see how it would be hard to get this post written, but Im so glad you did - not only as I traveled along with you, but also because now you have this record of your thoughts about the city.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:07 am
My out-laws went last year and they said it was out of this world. I so want to go ! I want to see St Xenia’s shrine !!
June 10th, 2009 at 7:39 am
s-p:
Believe me, I understand. The truth is that Greg is the one booting me out of my cocoon. And I have to admit, it’s a good thing to do. But part of me is always just counting steps back to my own bed and my own teapot.
Still … it’s good to see big stuff.
June 11th, 2009 at 5:22 am
Ah, this sounds so beautiful. Now would be a good time for us to go.
We had the opportunity to go to St. Petersburg in the 70’s when we were in Finland, but we just couldn’t make everything work (visas, clearances, etc.). I am so glad now that I didn’t go then. I doubt I could have REALLY appreciated it before I became Orthodox.
What a special treat to hear the choir. I know the feeling of something wonderful and unexpected. Once in Paderborn, Germany, the woman who was obviously a caretaker/security person, opened the gates to the altar area (sort of a wrought iron iconostas) in a chapel - (not the high altar) and let me walk up to the medieval triptich to see it more clearly - and then, much to my amazement, she urged me to open and close it so I could see all sides.
I will never forget that day!
June 11th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Anam Cara:
This definitely would be a better time to see it than the 70’s. From what I heard, restoration work has been really ramped up since Putin came into power. He figured out, rightly enough, that the city could be a major tourist destination. And so some of the gorgeous rooms of the Hermitage and other must-see places had only been fixed up in the last 5 years, though I never would’ve known.
I don’t know how an individual goes about getting all the necessary visas and whatnot. They certainly seem kind of extreme that way. But it sounds like something you could manage. If you do go, I’d be interested to know what changes you see.
One more thing — we were still getting there early in the tourist season, and our guide had figured out how to dodge most of the mob scenes. But it probably becomes a real zoo at the big attractions from now till fall.
The anecdote with the triptych is awesome. I can see how something like that is a lifelong memory. What an amazing gift to give to someone.
June 11th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Elizabeth:
I was really wanting to go see some things touching on St. Xenia, too. But I got cold feet, since I was traveling with a mostly non-Orthodox group. I didn’t know if they’d think it was just weird or what, and we were somewhat constrained for time.
I would love to go back with an Orthodox group and focus on that. I think it would be a whole different journey.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:10 am
A young woman from our church spent a semester in Russia. At the end of her stay, she made a trip to see St. Xenia. Her story of getting there is pretty amazing in itself. Too long to recount here.
The church is WAY out - it was a long train ride and then a long walk. She was there for an evening service (had planned to go during the day, but hadn’t counted on how long the travel time was). She got lost while walking and a woman helped her find her way, encouraging her even with the language problem (Anna is far from fluent) - took her to the church, pushed her through the crowd to her grave and then… vanished!
Anna brought us back oil from St. Xenia.
My husband is not Orthodox, but when he had some medical problems that had us in the Emergency Room on Palm Sunday last year, my priest encouraged me to annoint him with some of St. Xenia’s oil. We said an akathist every night before bed. And all the tests came back fine!
If I go, that is a must do for me. In fact, she might be the main reason I would go.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Grace, I would love to take you to see St. Xenia sometime. Her shrine is buried within a huge cemetary… and I love cemetaries! It’s not easy to get to, so you’ll have to take me along to find it. mua-hahahaha!
BTW, Peter the Great used his brain more than hands in building the city. In fact, they say he did it on the back/lives of MILLIONS of serfs/slaves. Many died especially in the building of St. Isaac’s, from the chemicals (mercury?) used in the guilding of the dome.
Speaking of St. Isaac’s, before I was Orthodox, I loved it. Not so much now, seeing the westernized/Italianate icons and architecture turns me off a bit. Also, it was never used as a church! You’re right about the Church of Christ the Savior, aka “The Church on the Spilt Blood.” I saw the interior of that one for the first time last summer - amazing to see all those icons in mosaics rather than the usual frescoes (which are awesome in their own right)! Hard to photograph though - so shiny…
One last note - put Moscow on your next itinerary. That’s the home of “Holy Russia,” as opposed to westernized, Peterized, modernized St Petersburg. Of course, now much of Moscow looks like NYC, but there’s lots of good old stuff left. More later, your fave tour guide (oops, #2, Mikhail’s got me beat - he’s the real thing!), Lyne
June 13th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
I have just finished reading three Robert Alexander books, all of which take place in Russia, and this post made everything come alive for me. Visiting Russia must be such a thrilling experience for you. Thanks for sharing it with us!
June 14th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Lyne:
Oooo, sounds like an offer to me, and in front of witnesses, too! I would love to go back! I’ll have to hold that thought till 2010 at least, of course, what with (sigh) reality and all. But I am fully capable of holding the thought for that long. :-)
June 14th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Michelle:
This is one of those cases when sharing the experience was partly selfish. I really wanted to get it into some words, even if they only half-captured it, before it faded.
And now I’m going to have to look up Robert Alexander, so there you go.
June 16th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
St. Isaac’s Cathedral was a “working” church from the day it was built.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Thanks so much for taking us along on the tour of St. Peterburg. I hope you do put together a slide show; these pictures are beautiful and stir up my appetite…imagine Orthodox being over-represented! Thanking God you are home and looking forward to a detailed description of the personal concert.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Wow!!!
June 18th, 2009 at 11:10 am
The chills I got reading this entry won’t go away. Neither will the mist in my eyes. You reminded me how all-encompassing the orthodox faith is and how important it is that we use our senses in worship. The Prots are missing a lot. If I could pack a bag right now, I know where’d I go. I’d go find Mikhail and make him drag me all around the city! Once again, Grace, thanks for sharing your descriptive talents with us.
June 20th, 2009 at 7:13 am
C. Sue:
We remember seeing the Orthodox cathedral in Sitka with you guys and all the cruiser-tourists, most of whom, I assume, were either Protestant or non-religious (just my guess, because that seems like what I mostly encounter). These Orthodox churches come as quite a surprise to them. And ditto in spades for the Russian ones. What I wish I could turn around and say to all of them is ‘And there ARE churches and cathedrals like this in America, probably not that far from where you live.”
Interesting trivia to recount: My anecdotal evidence is that the thing that Protestants and Catholics are most surprised/amazed at when they see these churches — the fact that there aren’t any chairs. The thing that a devout Jew in our group was most surprised/amazed at — the piety of the worshippers.
Maybe that’s not that surprising. Prots and Catholics feel like they’re in competition with us, and maybe they are. So admitting that there is something going on in an Orthodox church that they really need may be a little too hard to do.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:37 am
Thanks for the story about your trip. The photos really shine and wet my appetite to see this beautiful city in person.
June 24th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Okay, now that I’ve read this AND seen your gorgeous pictures, I almost feel like I went myself - thank you so much for my armchair adventure! Miss you guys!
:) WENDY
June 24th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Wendy:
Armchair adventure: I like it! Definitely the cheaper option. :-)
Honest to goodness, the pictures don’t do it all justice. I’d almost label it a place an Orthodox person just has to get to one way or another. Any of the tourists could appreciate all the beautiful museums and palaces. But for us guys, those cathedrals just make you think you’re in heaven.