Bob:

The Russian guide who had talked to us about the history of St. Petersburg had mentioned that our ship would be the very first one to use a newly-constructed cruise ship terminal. He suggested there might be some kind of celebration for the event, and that turned out to be correct. As we edged into St. Petersburg we saw a new long, low building at the end of a huge spit of raw earth. Beside the new terminal was a scaffolding that turned out to be erected just for the opening celebration, which had already started as our ship was docking. A crowd of people watched us approach, but as we were still edging in they suddenly streamed back through the terminal and into the area enclosed by the scaffolding that included a stage with two huge TV screens at either side.

First, we saw acrobats running around in a large caged wheel like a gigantic squirrel cage suspended from an even larger construction crane while a choreographed fire, laser, and music show was performed. Then came some fairly short speeches by a couple of dignitaries, including one lady who we assumed was the mayor of St. Petersburg. Finally, a large team of acrobats formed designs while suspended 100 feet in the air from that construction crane while accompanied by Russian music and a lot of fireworks. It was really quite a show, and from the decks of the ship we had a very good view.

Monika:

Bob:

But then it was time to catch our tour to the Hermitage and its famous art collection. The streets of St. Petersburg featured block after block of huge apartment or condominium towers, some of which were quite utilitarian in appearance but others of which were architecturally interesting and pleasant. Glenda said that she had asked her tour guide about whether these were privately owned or state owned, and the guide had said they were all now privately owned. Although Glenda was skeptical of that claim, one thing I saw made me credit it. Scattered outside of the back walls of most of the older buildings, I saw heat-exchanger units that implied either a heat pump or an air-conditioner. The random pattern of installation implied to me that those units were installed by residents rather than by the government, and the fact that those units would require a sizable investment meant that the residents owned those properties because no one in their right mind is going to make a large capital improvement to someone else's rental property!

As we drove along the streets I saw a mixture of trucks, cars, and busses. Some busses were electric, obtaining their energy from a network of overhead electric wires just like in Chicago in the old days. Many of the cars were old Ladas, I think, but I also saw new Toyota Camrys, Mercedes, Opels, and many other common European brands. I only saw one motorscooter and one motorcycle and absolutely no bicycles, however. I would guess that the harsh climate (9 months of winter, say?) of St. Petersburg militates against two-wheel transportation in general. But the climate is pleasant enough in the summera and how I would have loved to borrow or rent a motorcycle and drive it around Russia!

Our route crossed some canals before finally reaching the historical heart of the city. We crossed the Neva River near the St. Peter and Paul Fortress, a very large, impressive fort that had defended the city from the Swedish army during its construction under Peter The Great three hundred years back and ultimately helped the Russians defeat the Swedes and gain control of the Baltic Sea. Although cool and windy, it was a clear, sunny day and we had great views of the river as it emptied into the Baltic Sea. The very pretty riverfront scene included tugboats, a high-speed hydrofoil passenger ferry, and low-slung tour or excursion boats. One side of the Hermitage, as it turned out, faced the river and our bus let us out there.

Monika:

Bob:

Nicolai, our guide, shepherded us into the Hermitage and we spent the next 2 hours rambling through the absolutely huge complex. The Hermitage is so big, over 1,000 rooms I was told, that seeing art there felt very much like trying to drink water from a fire hose! We only had time to see the "highlights", of course, but we were pretty stretched to even do that in two hours.

The variety of architecture, art, sculpture, and other precious objects in the Hermitage almost defies description, but I will try to take each aspect. First, the architecture varied from the Baroque cream and gilt to a neo-classical motif in many other rooms to other styles I was not familiar with. Many of the display halls were absolutely huge and they all seemed to have a theme of some kind, but the themes of the rooms we visited didn't seem to be connected in any obvious order, or maybe I just didn't see the overall plan if there was one.

But certainly part of the architecture was the beautiful ceilings and floors that we found in all the rooms that I had time to look up and down (yes, we were going so fast I didn't always have time to do that and scan the artwork on the walls, too!). Besides fancy plasterwork, the ceilings often had large, colorful murals painted on them. The floors were sometimes intricately inlaid patterns of wood, where I wondered that we were even allowed to walk across them, and in one room we saw complete reproductions of the mosaic floor murals of Pompeii, as well as mosaics table tops and wall hangings so finely executed that they looked like paintings.

Monika:

Bob:

The sculptures, typically of the classical Greek or Roman type, were just everywhere. Mostly we saw single statues but sometimes they were arranged in a tableaux of some kind. Usually the sculptures were executed in marble in a normal fashion, but sometimes they were in either solid gold or covered with gilt. Huge vases or urns, some of an oriental style but others made of different kinds of veined rock polished to a mirror surface also decorated the interiors of many rooms.

We also saw assorted other treasures like ancient bronzes from Greek and Roman times, beautiful antique Venetian glass, reliquary boxes, and other things too numerous to mention.

Monika:

Bob:

But the main focus of the Hermitage is the art. There are areas of the Hermitage, often several rooms in size, devoted to different times and schools of art. We saw the "old masters" section of art including Rembrandt, Ruebens and many paintings from other old Dutch masters, together with more modern paintings by French Impressionists including Van Gogh, Monet, Gaugin. I was extremely happy to see paintings by all of those artists that I had only read about in books before.

We also saw Goya, Valasquez, and other Spanish artists, a statue by Michelangelo, and Italian artists like Leonardo Da Vinci. Goodness gracious what a wonderful experience, but also what frustrating conditions to take photographs! Many paintings were covered by sheets of glass, which I can understand is necessary for preservation, but the reflections off the glass make taking good pictures almost impossible. The other paintings typically had glossy surfaces due to the final coat of varnish over the paint, and that was sufficiently reflective to reflect the light from any nearby window, making for extremely uneven lighting. So I will caution the Gentle Reader that the pictures in this journal are of paintings where the lighting was even and I could orient myself to get a decent shot.

Monika:

Bob:

Those paintings are not the most rare and precious paintings of the Hermitage by a long shot, because we typically were waiting in lines to see those paintings and were packed in with other eager viewers such that I could not choose my camera angle. What really fried my bacon, however, was a group of silly young girls right in front of me who completely ignored the signs against flash photography when they got up front. They not only exposed priceless, one-of-kind antique paintings to the intense light from their electronic flashes, but they also aroused a sleeping dragon of a museum guard who then glared at me and put her arm protectively in front of the painting until I had gone away. I understand the guard's mistake as the girls were right in front of me when the flashes went off, but I was quite irritated at the thoughtless girls.

We continued hustling through room after marvelous room filled with priceless treasures. As we breathlessly trotted after our tour guide, we all felt that we would like to come back and really spend some time to see the treasures in the Hermitage in the calm, slow way they deserve. But how much time would that take? Knowing that we saw only a fraction of the rooms, Monika and I thought several days to a week, while one elderly, cultured man with some kind of accent maintained it would take a month and he might be right.

Monika:

Bob:

After returning to the ship, we had a late lunch and then I napped while Monika rested, because neither of us wanted to be too tired for the evening ballet. We had to be at our assembly point at 7:15, so clearly having a formal dinner in the dining room was out and we grabbed a couple of pieces of pizza and some fruit as a replacement. The bus took us through the twilight to the St. Petersburg Conservatory where we watched an excellent performance of Swan Lake.

Monika:

Bob:

The quality of both the music and the ballet performances was, to our eyes at least, outstanding. It's amazing that the human body can be made to do such things. The lead female dancer in particular could actually embody being a swan and make that illusion seem quite real. I wonder if she was trying to "think swan" or whether the years and years of training made the graceful swan-like movements completely natural to her. The other performer that both Monika and I thought was really, really good was a character playing the role of the court jester. I wasn't even sure if it was a male or female, but whoever it was had a small, compact, muscular gymnast's body and could make the most amazingly long leaps with double leg flips while hanging in mid-air. Those maneuvers and his/her other stage bits made him/her a real scene stealer, but unfortunately the program telling us the names of the main performers didn't even list the name for that character.

Seeing a live performance has some distinct differences with seeing it on TV. Watching live people do things like stand on their tiptoes for excruciatingly long periods of pirouetting and so forth, made me wince in empathic pain. Also I could hear the sound of the footfalls as the people returned to earth after their jumps. The male lead was a totally muscular guy with biceps big enough to toss the ballerina into the air, and when he came down after a (literally) flying leap I distinctly heard the sound of his slipper on the floor. But when the entire 18-member corps de ballet jumped in complete unison, which they did, approximately 1 ton of weight came down on the floor at exactly the same instant and you could distinctly hear the soft "thud" when that happened.

Unlike many operas, Swan Lake has a happy ending, but in this case the director/choreographer had changed things a bit, I think. The evil magician (black swan) is supposed to be defeated while fighting the good prince (in white), after which the spell imprisoning the good swan girls (white swans) is released. We never got to see an actual battle, which I of course was rather looking forward to seeing, but instead the good prince exited stage right and the evil magician swan just danced fast and furious until he fell over dead. He did all that very impressively and gracefully, of course, and I guess the idea was to give him a good solo performance at the end of the show, but I was still hoping for that climactic battle as the curtain come down on the performance.

The curious thing about seeing that excellent ballet is that I was thinking that since it didn't rely on any language at all, only music and movement, it had the potential to communicate across a wide variety of cultures. That ability of movement without language to communicate again reminded of Charlie Chaplin's miming during his silent films. Obviously Chaplinesque comedy is a far more direct form of movement whereas classical ballet emphasizes much the more subtle and graceful type of movements, but if I am correct both types of performance would communicate well across many if not most cultures. I wondered if there was any evidence about that as we were driven back to the ship and fell into bed.

Monika: