AROUND TOWN AND OUT OF ORDER

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Below are comments written on Thursday, August 30 before I was able to post photos... More photos are to follow this posting. 
I left the apartment and took the metro back to SS Peter Paul fortress to see the Commandant's House. It has a nice collection about the history of SPB, from an area inhabited by the native folk through the time the Rus from Kiev took over. Those princes brought in mercenaries from the North, incorporating Viking ways. They lived in "sod buster" type houses: dug into the ground with short wood structures and roofs of mud. Room after room traces the history of the city, which in many ways traces the history of the empire. 

There were nice displays of shipbuilding, glass, porcelain, iron... Petersburg became an industrial and financial hub in the mid 1800s and great entrepreneurs created great wealth. There was a touching quote from Anna Akhmatova about how the citizens left their city for their dachas on August 1, 1914 and never returned to Petersburg, because WW I broke out and upon their return the place was called Petrograd due to the anit-German hysteria.

I visited the Engineer's House, which contains the history of Russian rocketry and subsequent space exploration.

I don't understand much about this science, but regardless of the language, these were some very smart, innovative people. The idea of sending up rockets and circling the globe goes way back to the late 1800s in Russia. Of course, Americans know about Yuri Gagarin being the first man to orbit earth, but I did not know that the Russians landed vehicles on Mars as early as 1965! 

Seeing all the scientific stuff there, I decided to spend the afternoon on Vasilevsky Island, the home of St. Petersburg State Unversity and to see the academy of science... The feel over there is much different than Petrogradsky or the mainland; it has a real "university vibe" going on, and it felt nice. The weather was even sunnier and warmer there. 

I contemplated visiting the Menchikov Palace, but it was already 4:00 p.m. and I just wanted to walk and cover as much ground as possible. I stopped for a beer and thought about the itinerary Alexi and I might do before heading back to the metro to go home.

At the metro, I encountered something I have not seen yet here in Russia: a huge line spilling out of the subway station, down the stairs, onto the plaza and up the street. Just to get into the metro station! I was a sardine on a slow-moving conveyor belt. I was so glad to get home to our little can!