Travel Journal: St. Petersburg 2018

The timeline / story version is here (in Russian). The introduction page for all my journal pages is here.

Victory Day

The start of May in Russia has two holidays. Due to the timing of my travel, I missed the first one, but saw the second.

1 May is International Workers' Day. It is socialist holiday officially observed in most countries and a major day for strikes worldwide. The event it commemorates occurred in Chicago in the USA, but the US government refused to move Labor Day to 1 May.

9 May is Victory Day in Russia, celebrating victory over the Nazis. The same event is 8 May in the west due to the time zone difference, although rarely celebrated. In Russia, it is a major holiday, and has been becoming more popular over time.

My first days in St. Petersburg, I see the main road under repair and these banners across the main road. The road was opened to pedestrians before being opened to cars, causing it to be a pedestrian road for a couple non-holiday days.

In the morning, to start the events, was a military parade. I don't have pictures because I didn't get a good view. The main parade was in Moscow, and here is the coverage. Here is the history.

For the Immortal Regiment, the parade in the afternoon, I do have a lot of pictures. The parade started at 2pm and lasted for a couple of hours.

Immortal Regiment  --   Saint Petersburg                             "We won because we were together!"    

This parade is a modern conception. The ribbon they use is St. Georges Ribbon. I like it because it produces a concept and sense of unity both between many peoples and through history, without denying the legitimacy of any of it. Moscow (RT, Sputnik) had a record breaking turnout for the event, and there were even events internationally (RBTH, RT).

Concerts: There was one at noon as pictured here. I think there was another at 6pm, but I was already home. There is a standard set of Victory Day songs, one of which I remember the other students singing along with 2 weeks later.

Fireworks: I didn't go because I had dinner around 8pm and the display was at 10pm. Here are videos from Moscow.

Noch Museyev

I believe the Night of Museums started in western Europe. It currently takes place in cities across Europe and Russia. It is one night a year in May, starting Saturday evening and ending Sunday morning. This year it was 19-20 May. In St. Petersburg at least, it started 6 PM and ended 6 AM. During this period, the museums stayed open all night and had special presentations. The subway stayed open all night (and it goes under the rivers). There were special buses as the opening of the bridges would mess up the typical bus routes. 

I saw three museums: 

  -- Museum-Apartment Alliluyevykh close to where I was staying -- Here they had performers showing aspects of the lives of people who lived in the apartment around the time of the revolution. While I didn't understand everything, I found it entertaining. 

  -- Museum of 20 Years after the War on Vasilyevsky Island -- This was full of objects which would have been possessed by ordinary people from 1945-1965. There was a room designed as a typical apartment room during this time period. They also had displays set up on how people over social media had modified images of old artwork, which I did not find so interesting.

  -- Russia: My History Park near Park Pobedi -- This was a large museum full of technological interactive exhibits instead of artifacts. On this night, outside the museum were performers as well.


I got home after 1 AM. I had thought about going to see the bridges rise, but was very tired by the time I got back. As can be seen from this image from Park Pobedi, it does get dark in St. Petersburg in May. 

City Day

For St. Petersburg, the official anniversary for the founding of the city is 27 May. This year, 27 May was a Sunday, and the celebrations were on Saturday and Sunday. I left on 26 May, so only was able to see some of the Saturday celebrations. The banners appeared in the city before the event, again along Nevsky ave.

For Saturday morning and afternoon, there was a parade of old vehicles, which looked like they were just driving in the street with the other vehicles, and an ice cream festival in a park near the center of the city. Ice cream is sold everywhere in the Russian cities typically, but at the festival there were many ice cream sellers together, artists and merchants, popcorn and hot dogs, and concerts.

Activities

On 12 May, I went on a boat tour. Because of the holiday on Wednesday, we had classes on Saturday. After classes, we went out on the boat tour. I think during this, I realized how much I like to be on the water, even if it was difficult to see the buildings from the boat.

On 15 May, I went to Peterhof to give a seminar talk about my research at Saint Petersburg State University. While many of the departments are in the main city, the basic science and math departments were moved to a Peterhof campus in the 70s. There is an actual campus there, with grass and trees. There is a train stop nearby, in an area which doesn't appear inhabited. On the other side of the tracks from the campus is a protected forest which contains the biology department.

From what I have been told, there are people from departments in the city living in the dorms in Peterhof. They have to travel rather far to get back to the city every day.

I met with someone in front of the physics building who took me up to give a talk. The main floor of the building the main floor of the building is rather nice, but the upper floors have not been renovated since the building was built. Nothing felt unsafe, though. There was an elevator; it was a small Soviet-style one.

Parks, Gardens, and Fountains

Tavricheskiy Sad -- This garden had sunbathers in as it was warm and sunny in St. Petersburg this May. Apparently people also fished in and jumped into the pond in the park. I went here on 13 May as I wanted a park with water in which to work. I returned with the group on 17 May.

This park (Park Sergievka) was on the other side of the train station from the Peterhof campus of SPbSU. It is managed by and contains some segment of the biologists of SPbSU. I decided to walk towards the water after I finished at SPbSU on 15 May. I was unable to get all the way to the water as the shore was muddy and full of reeds, and I didn't have good clothes for going through the mud. In this photo, behind me, where I am standing, is a palace. It is at higher elevation than what can be seen. Down the hill, there is the main road which goes along the coastline. The bus stop is towards the right. The water is the Gulf of Finland.

In October, when I went to Lenin Square, the fountains were off. When I returned in May, the fountains were on and very impressive. They also had plants growing in flowerbeds, where they chose the plants so that they make patterns with their colors. There seems to be a lot of this type of artistry in Russia, as it occurs in many of the public parks. 

This garden was in a small park in the middle of the road outside the train museum. Here you can see the effort to create specific patterns with the flowers.

Places

Putin's Palace --

Konstantinovskiy Dvorets is a one of the old palaces, originally owned by a part of the Romanov family, which has been renovated, is owned by the administration of the President of the Russian Federation, and used for official government purposes.

When it is not used for official purposes, it is open to visitors through official tours.

Putin has a number of these residences which officially belong to the State. One of them was across the lake from our hotel / resort near Valday. While trees were blocking the residence from view, the fence was visible.

This is Zhemchuzhnaya Plaza

If I remember correctly, this region was originally built by the Chinese for wealthy Chinese businessmen before the Russian government stopped the claiming of the entire area for their sole use. It appears very modern and nice.

On 17 May, we saw Smolny Cathedral as well as Tavricheskiy Sad. In the cathedral, they had redone one of the bell towers to allow for people to walk up and use it as an overlook. There were a lot of stairs to go up to get to the top, but we did get to see the city easily from there. The cathedral itself was in the process of renovation, with all the idols brought out to the main room as the sides were being redone. One of the bells was in front of the cathedral, and they rung it around the time we left. 

I returned to Peterhof 20 May. We went there by boat, and returned on the electrichka. The boat was fast, but I think I enjoyed it because it was on the water. As we were traveling, we could view several buildings, including the one here which is the new stadium in St. Petersburg.

At Peterhof, it seems that they had planted many flowers for the summer. We also got to see the fountains through which people can run, as it was warm enough to get wet. This one is one of the trick fountains in the park, although now they turn it on at publicized times instead of tricking people through it as Peter the Great did.

This image is from the top of a large mall near Moskovsky Vokzal, named Galeria. One day, after classes, the students decided to go to the restaurant at the top of the mall for drinks. (I got tea made from sea buckthorn berries.)

Transportation in the City

This is the light rail in the city. It is on tracks, but often on the roads. It seems very similar to the buses in status, but seems old and can't stop on the side of the street.

Marshrutka -- typically called fixed route taxi, they are the vans in this picture. Marshrutki are between a bus and a taxi. They are vans or mini buses, and are effectively private buses, but they tend to go faster than buses as they make fewer stops. They are common for suburban routes, and it is not uncommon for them to want to know in advanced where someone will get off.

Electrichka -- This is the name given to the basic suburban electric trains with basic benches for seats. You can get a ticket right before the train and don't need to show ID, but they have fixed the system to prevent the people who avoid paying at all. Russians used to try to get away with that a lot.

The bike rentals are new. They seem to have appeared in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Biking is good when people have no access to cars, but I think the Russian weather has made them not very popular in modern Russia. Renting them probably overcomes the issues of a short biking season and small apartments with little storage.

I have seen the short-term car rentals in Moscow and Novosibirsk as well.

There is a train museum by Baltic station, which I saw on 26 May. They have many of the old trains inside the building, and while they do not let people into the trains, they have catwalks to allow people to observe the trains from above and one train set up to allow people to walk underneath and see the underside of the train. There are then even more trains on display outside.