st. petersburg, russia.
09/11/08
What to say about MATHAR RAHSSIA!
This entry is two days late so it might be kinda er, not as detailed as it should be but whatever 
So, today the cruise docked into St. Petersburg at like 6:30am, which is when our excursion was set for. It’s funny because the cruise gets there basically right about the scheduled time people are supposed to leave for excursions. It’s kinda weird (but not funny, I guess… wrong word).
We had a two day thing in St. Petersburg planned, and it began at Peterhof Palace (pronounced more like Peter-golf). Our guide’s name was Ksenia, which is pronounced Xenia, basically. Evidently it’s the name of a flower?
Her English was good and she was obviously well-educated. She did have a Russian accent (aka HOTNESS) but her choice of wording was extremely strange. It was technically proficient but utilized words that simply aren’t utilized much in daily language. Here are some quotes:
KSENIA, ON TRAFFIC:
“Traffic can be quite intensive.”
KSENIA, ON GUIDELINES:
“The rules of the museum are very firm.”
KSENIA, ON JAMES & NANCY’S DAD PHOTOGRAPHING THINGS WHILE DRIVING:
“You will fall down. It is not possible to stand while we are driving.”
After my initial fascination with her use of language, though, I got over it and stopped documenting it unfortunately. Haha. But it was most entertaining.
Our tour guide!
Moving on.
Peterhof Palace was the former Winter Palace of Peter the Great, one of Russia’s earliest rulers. Peter the Great was assassinated by his wife, basically… she was Catherine the Great. D: Guess that sucks for him, falling in love with her at first sight and making her his queen and all. Ultimately… OWNED.
Peterhof Palace, on the outside.
As for the Palace, though… it was extraordinarily beautiful. Particularly because it was the first real taste of St. Petersburg. The Palace ran the gamut of different architectural styles, including Classical, Baroque, and… some others I unfortunately forgot. It was picture-taking heaven and hell at the same time. It was gorgeous, but photographing things in that Palace was EXTREMELY difficult.
WHY?
A few reasons.
1) FLASH. It was not allowed basically anywhere (not like I use flash anyway, because the built-in flash on the D40 blows chunks), so the only way to get a photo is to put it on long exposure.
2) LIGHTING. A lot of the places were both incandescent light (aka regular light bulbs) and sunlight, which at times caused a conflict with coloring on my camera since I shoot *everything* manually. The problem with that is because my camera has two built-in settings… one for incandescent and one for sunlight. There is not one for in-between, although I can probably customize one if I really knew how to (which I don’t). It simply makes coloring very difficult.
3) SYMMETRY. Most of the architecture in St. Petersburg relies heavily on symmetry. Both sides are generally equal… which makes lining things up extremely difficult. Generally I used a bottom rule or something to line it up, and then stood in the middle of room, but eyeballing those thing is not always very easy at all.
Shoe coverings they made us wear… don’t want to scuff up the palace!!!
Inside Peterhof.
Peterhof Palace. BOOBIE!!!!
Ahh… good ol’ room of goldenness ^__^
Basically, for every interior photo that I took in St. Petersburg, I essentially had to take it like… a minimum of five times… to be able to get a clear shot out. Generally one of these five (or two) would turn out okay after keeping composition and lighting in mind… but it was a headache. I think it was worth it, though, because I think I got a lot of really good shots out.
I like this ^__^
This method of putting photos was apparently popular at the time.
THAT BEING SAID. I’ve been noticing this of myself and possibly other people, but cameras and technology are evil, godammit. I mean, they’re great. I like them. I enjoy them. But I do think that they hamper my ability to really LOOK. I’m so busy thinking about getting a good shot – especially when not alone and on a tour type thing, where life is all rushed – that I’m not getting the whole picture. I’m getting details extremely intricately, but not everything… which is unfortunate. What can you do though.
Back to Peterhof Palace… the Palace was located on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, past suburban housing units intermixed with many, many parks. Their parks and land are generally marshy, so that digging things like Metro in St. Petersburg is a highly difficult and slow process. The ground is practically like quicksand, so great care must be taken to dig so that it doesn’t collapse in on itself. They basically have to dig deep, past the marshland and into the solid ground. Not an easy task. So although traffic is abysmal (or in Ksenia’s words, intensive), the Metro is not of a humongous help primarily because it only spans a limited space. Same with busses. So driving and traffic are ridiculous. More about that later.
G A N G S T A.
Outside of there there were some street vendors with really good-looking nesting dolls, but my parents and their friends didn’t buy any because they were looking for a good deal or something. That turned out to be a gigantic mistake, because although the street vendors were cheap and junk, they had the best goods. By far. Best looking, best quantity, best quality, best price. Keep that in mind if you ever head to St. Petersburg, I guess. As for me, no souvenirs so far except for a pack of 16 postcards that cost $3.50 USD… and a propaganda Communist-ish magnet that cost $2.50 USD. Souvenirs are generally worthless. Souvenir is also a very strangely spelled word. Try it out for yourself.
The nice dolls outside the Palace that my parents were hesitant to purchase, but later regretted!
Anyway, Peterhof was beautiful and beautiful and beautiful. And that’s about it. It also has a humongo backyard with fountains and such.
The Peterhof Gardens.
The thing about St. Petersburg is that EVERYTHING is beautiful and stylized. Practically everything is old or molded to look like it’s old. They do not spare a godamn dime in making things look beautiful via intricate buildings or humongous parks (of which there are many, many… it’s actually quite impressive) or gigantic statues and monuments. They have an extensive number of monuments dedicated to former leaders and heroes. It’s almost ridiculous. Honestly, I have never been anywhere like St. Petersburg, which seems so proud in its past and present and wears its wars and murder on its sleeve… proudly? I’m not sure if it’s proudly, but it doesn’t seem that they are denying it much.
Seriously, though… the parks. They’re insanely huge and prevalent.
After Peterhof Palace, we went to Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was assassinated. My parents don’t know who Rasputin is, which is a little strange because practically American knows who he is… I think. D: There was this scary wax figure of Rasputin. They killed him all sneakily. Not that I remember details about this, but he was basically lured into the Palace under false pretenses (dinner or something) and then murdered via poison? in the cellar of the Palace. The Palace was recently redesigned and I pretty much found it unimpressive after Peterhof. I must say, though, it is probably self-inflicted, but being in the underground area was very um… strange feeling. Pressure, almost.
Pressure room!!!!
More fanciful things.
I like this ^__~
Theatre.
DOGWOMAN!!!
Then came lunch. Lunch was at this random little tourist trap with table after table full of tourists. I must say… having my parents with two other Asian couples together is a bit embarrassing. @__@ I must say… white parents are much easier to get on with…
TOURIST FARM!!
There was a band there called the Bis Quintet. It was fairly entertaining. There was a giant triangular bass, which I have discovered I !think! is called a contrabass. It’s pretty much just like a regular bass, but with a deeper sound and bigger. Pretty cool, I must say. Other instruments included drums, an accordion, and… crap, I forget.
ZE BAND.
Can’t say I was too impressed by lunch, though. Lunch was like this:
- Two mini pancakes, one with sour cream on top and one with fish eggs on top.
- Potato and leek? soup.
- Chicken, carrots, and rice with basically what seemed like Cream of Mushroom.
- Berry tart.
- Coffee.
Frankly, it was pretty gross. In our table was a nice couple from Florida and these two rich-ish white ladies who were slightly scary and totally loved to spend money. They were ranting on about how Helsinki was boring and Stockholm was a lot better because there was better shopping there… and how they hadn’t seen any shops really in St. Petersburg. Zzzz.
After that was some shopping time at “The Red October,” which was a souvenir shop owned by the State… and by the State I mean the MAN.
Ksenia imparted some information about St. Petersburg on us that was fairly interesting. I don’t remember all but for starters, their population is about 4.5 million. Buying houses is fairly expensive (about 500 feet for $130,000), so most people rent from the State. But renting from the State doesn’t ensure that you get adequate space, and it’s extremely expensive. I think it’s about $1,000 a month minimum for a two bedroom? But if you OWN an apartment, you still have to pay a monthly fee to the state of about $50 for a one bedroom and $100 for a two bedroom or something. That fee is for maintenance and upkeep, or something…
Housing is a giant problem in St. Petersburg, though, and I think that contributes to the traffic problem immensely. People HAVE to live on the outskirts and commute to the city for work.
MATHAR RASSIA!!!
Guy, standing behind the lady, who looked like Santa Clause, gets sketched in a church.
Which leads me into my next thing, which was our evening excursion to the Catherine Palace.
Catherine Palace.
Not long ago, I watched a documentary on the Catherine Palace and the recreation of its Amber Room. The Catherine Palace was the former Summer Palace (aka, on the water, near the Gulf of Finland?) of Catherine the Great (Peter the Great’s wife who murdered his ass). After she died, her sister took over that Palace and wanted to dedicate a room to all of these beautiful amber pieces Catherine and Peter had obtained from Germany. So she hired some fool to create an amber room. And he created it.
The infamous Amber Room!!!
AGAIN!
During Nazi rule, however, Germans used the Palace as barracks and somehow found a way to remove the amber from the walls using some kind of solvent. The Amber Room was dismantled and stored away somewhere… it has not yet been found. 
In fact, the documentary I watched on the Amber Room was some kind of ghost hunt, going to smaller cities like Dubrovnik (just about my favorite word, by the way) and talking to individuals there who were desperately trying to locate the Amber Room.
A couple years ago, after many years of work, the Russian government finally had reinstalled their recreated version of the former Amber Room… they worked based off of drawings of the room at the time, which is, frankly, pretty ridiculous. I don’t doubt for a moment that the current Amber Room is not at all comparable to the original, but nonetheless, it was a pretty cool site.
Amber, for the unacquainted, is basically fossilized tree sap. It is NOT stone. It comes in different colors ranging from yellow to orange to red to blackish. The whole spectrum of yellow to red amber was represented in the Amber Room, in numerous shades. The majority of the pieces were basically put together like a puzzle that created a 3D wallpaper, with certain other pieces being sculpted and carved… which I imagine was quite a difficult task.
Unfortunately, when we finally got to the Catherine Palace to see the Amber Room — which was the entire point of going on that trip to begin with – we had been waiting in St. Petersburg traffic for TWO AND A HALF HOURS to go 27 kilometers!! That should only take about 45 minutes in no traffic, but that’s just how bad the traffic there was.
Because of that, the entire trip to Catherine’s Palace, and hence, to the Amber Room, was ridiculously rushed and not as enjoyable as it should have been. I had wanted to spend a while in the Amber Room – to study it – but I found that there was so much to look at all I could do was get off a couple of photos and then move on as our tour guide ran down the hall into another room.
The room she ran into turned out to be a banquet hall where they had arranged a champagne toast and some live music and demonstration of dancing. I thought the dancing was pretty awesome – it was to classical music and was um, very jumpy. I don’t know how else to describe it, and unfortunately, I was unable to record it because of lack of batteries (even though I really liked it… my parents, on the other hand, found it extremely boring).
Dancing couple!!!
After that, there was a couple dressed up hoakily as Catherine the Great and her counterpart, and then announced for us to follow them outside, where we were greeted by a live band and Catherine the Great and counterpart headed off in a carriage. Then there was some more dancing by a man and a woman. Somewhat entertaining, but it was cold and dark and I didn’t have the best view…
BAND!
Catherine Palace at nighttime!
Dinner was after that, with more of the same fucking meal. WTF. Is that all Russian people eat??!! I SURE AS FUCK HOPE NOT.
Band playing to us during the meal.
By the time we got back home, it was 12am, and my parents were cranky. Particularly my dad. The way American people celebrate things… with dancing and alcohol drinking… is NOT their bag of chips. Not their bag of chips at all. I swear… the more I hang out with Asian parents, the more I wish I were white. Seriously. Not the scary uber-Christian white, but the cool hippie white. HAHA.
Or hippie Asian parents would be fine too… but they don’t really exist so much.
I am so ready to go home.
***
09/12/08
Early morning in Russia!
Day two of St. Petersburg! It began with a quick drive around one of the city’s main avenues, Nevsky Prospect. Prospect is what they call very large streets. In the case of Nevsky Prospect, it was about 4 lanes wide on each side. Which is crazy! As that’s in the middle of the city and isn’t even a freeway or anything. Almost everything is located on Nevsky Prospect, including many of the cities main churches (all kinds) and lots of shopping.
We then took a canal tour on some lame boat. I dunno. I found it all to be very boring. I sat mostly on the upper deck… aka outside… just because being inside isn’t very fun. Even though it was kinda cold…
It was also pretty embarrassing because James’ dad kept taking photos of everyone a million times and getting in everyone’s ways… @__@
Eventually I went inside, and the bridges in St. Petersburg are rather low and the people on the upper deck, including my parents and friends, kept having to duck down. The people on the inside were like hella nervous about it… they kept looking up to the outside. Ha.
After that was the Hermitage, one of the four largest art museums in the world, I believe? Not sure. It was kinda rushed and not particularly exciting for me personally, mostly because I’ve been to a fair amount of art museums in Europe and primarily the collections represented in the Hermitage are from the type I’ve seen a lot of… Dutch, Italian, etc. European. You know. But probably the other problem was the lack of time to really take everything in, so I basically only could pick highlights here and there… :/
Hermitage!
Hermitage!
One of the best things about the Hermitage, though was the floors. They had many of those inlaid wooden floors everywhere, with all types of patterns. None repeated, really. Same thing with the Peterhof Palace the day before, but that was amazing as far as wallpapers went… colorful embroidered silk wallpapers in every room. Never repeated twice. This trip to Russia was an absolute textural heaven… and I do love me some textures.
Beautiful inlaid wooden floors ^__~
MORE!
More Hermitage!
Mosaic floors ^__~
Sorry. I’m obsessed with these floors.
Hermitaginginginginingg.
Then cometh lunch, which was literally the same as the past two meals. WHAT THE FUCK?! I made good convo with the lady to my left, who had been to my left again the previous lunch. She was nice-ish, older lady from Florida. Her husband was from the Czech Republic. They both spoke German, I think.
Tourism lunch!
After lunch, I was approached by this dude who had been staring at me / my camera the entire trip practically. I must say I was slightly weirded out, but then I found out why… his camera had started acting up and he had wanted to know what mine was and if I liked it. I told him I had a D40 and recommended he get my lens, 18mm – 200mm, for everyday use… and that he buy a body alone and then buy a lens, instead of buying the stock lens kit which sucketh balls. I do believe he is going to buy one.
His face got owned!!!
Later on, he was trying to make convo with me again… on one of the occasions, his wife had bought something at a stand and he told her to show it to me so that I could take a photo of it. Which was kinda weird. His wife said, “She doesn’t want to take a picture of this,” and he said, “Sure she does, she likes unusual things…” — a comment which I found extremely strange cause what? I don’t know this guy! I talked to him for like, 60 words! How does he know I like unusual things?!!! Turns out he’s right, though… his wife got this nesting doll with Harry Potter character on it, and I must say, I found it quite interesting. But where does he get the idea that I like strange things?!! That’s what I don’t get.
Reminds me of when I was in a crowded Starbucks with Alex, in the U-District. This was in the past month. There were hella people in the Starbucks, but this guy comes in, walks straight up to me, and gives me a photocopy of this page… he said it was a page of a story book he was writing for his grandkid or something, and that he thought I’d be interested. After giving it to me, he walked out of the Starbucks. Now, why would he do that? I WAS interested, he was right… but what about me gives people that impression? I don’t quite understand. I mean, I look normal, with the exception of my lip piercing… I don’t dress very ostentatious… my hair is normal… what is it?!!! Why do people think they’ve got me all figured out?!!!!
After lunch was one of the most mind blowing things I’ve ever seen, the Church of Spilt Blood. Holy shiznack. This place is insane. From the outside it looks beautiful, but like a fairly typical Russian Orthodox church. The inside is completely mind-bogging. It’s entirely comprised of mosaic images. HOLY SHIT. Amazing colors, amazing imagery, and mosaics everywhere the eyes can see. This church was where Alexander the Great was assassinated, hence, the name.
ONE. OF. THE. COOLEST. PLACES. EVER.
MOSAICS, MOSAICS, EVERYWHERE!
More amazingness.
Amazingness.
AMAZINGNESS.
AMAZINGNESS!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry I’m in love with this place. ~__~
One special thing about the mosaics is that they were apparently made up of only 12? colors or so, but because of the way the sun lit up the place, it looked like more colors were represented at every time. I’m still not 100% convinced of that simply because it looks like there were so many colors, but they wouldn’t lie about that, would they?? I highly highly recommend going to the church… and hell, to St. Petersburg in general. It’s a complete wonderland… with things being restored more and more as time goes on.
On the way to that church, Ksenia was warning us that there were pickpockets around that area. My dad heard this and saw some people on a street corner (2 men and 1 woman, smoking) and concluded that, “Zhe xie da gai dou shi,” which means, “These people probably all are [pickpockets].”
Turns out that we were still many many many city blocks away from the church, and it was a completely ridiculous and unfounded opinion. :/
This guy was so ridiculously cute.
Outside of the church, there were some street vendors. My mom was looking to buy those nesting dolls, so she approached one of the booths. The guy said hello. His display had nesting dolls with 9 pieces inside, but instead of showing all 9, he showed 3 from each. My mom asked how much they were, and he asked which one. She pointed to the middle one in one of the sets of 3, and he said, “You can’t buy that individually. There are 9 pieces.” My mom said, “I know.” He muttered under his breath, “No, you don’t know anything. You don’t know anything here.”
As we were leaving, I was watching him, and there he went, steaming and explaining the situation to his friend in Russia. Chill the fuck out, man. Pretty mind-blowing explosion from him. Lol.
Also as we were leaving the church, James’ dad found a Russian newspaper, written in English. He was reading housing prices and one of the classifieds or whatever listed a house that cost equivalent to $5,000 USD in rent a month. He asked Ksenia about this, and asked if that was really possible (since she had said that people there didn’t make that much money). She said that yes, it was real, and he said something like, “Wow, it’s like compared to New York! That’s so expensive!”
He didn’t mean to compare the cities but the prices. However, Ksenia took it that she was considering St. Petersburg to New York, and became very defensive. She asked him where he was from, and he said around San Francisco. She asked how many people lived in his city. He said, like 1 million? And a lady from San Jose said, “We have 1 million. You have less than that in San Ramon.” So James’ dad said, “Maybe a half a million?”
Ksenia responded by saying that St. Petersburg has 4.5 million people, and that it is beautiful and not comparable to American cities because it is a European city. It was all very strange and awkward hahaha. A whole busload of people listening to her and his miscommunication @__@
But real quick… a short note about the Russian people and some observations. I must say I didn’t meet barely any Russians, but I do have some opinions just based off of things I saw.
For starters, people are extremely good-looking in St. Petersburg. I mean, ridiculously. I don’t know if it was the sheer quantity of people I saw because I was there for so much longer or what, but there were many good-looking young men and women. I’d say at least 1/3 of the young men I saw were good-looking… classically or in my opinion. Even keeping in mind that they were mostly blonde or dirty blonde and I don’t usually even like blondes!!! REALLY. Good-looking. Though. I must say I was consistently surprised by that. They all look kinda the same, though. Well, there were a few parties. All the blondies looked a little similar, though, and a little like Alexander the Great. They were all skinny-faced blondes with sharp noses and very classically nice, sharp features.
What else? People seem to mind their own fucking business there. Tourists aren’t HUGELY prevalent in Russia, I don’t think, because it’s quite hard to get a visa. Yet, as these tourist busses go barreling past, barely anyone looks up. It seems like the younger people pay more attention than the older people – kind of to be expected, I guess – but for the most part, people just keep looking at the ground or straight ahead, not really noticing all that much around them.
They also do seem to be fairly proud of their country. Or at least our tour guide was. She might not be representative, though.
The whole time I was there, I took very slight note of ethnicity, and only saw 2 redheads, 3 or 4 black people, and maybe a dozen Asian-ish people (probably from southern parts of Russia?).
Last stop was another church… one I was not as thrilled by. It was more along the lines of the Vatican in style… not as unique as the previous… but I did get this wonderful image of Jesus Christ, with his disciples… only Jesus is holding what looks like a bowling bowl. KAKAKAKAKKKAKAKAKAKAKKAKA.
JESUS WITH A MOTHAFUCKIN BOWLING BALL SON.
Cruise food, before.
Cruise food, after. He’s a dead man!!!