FROM PART TWO THROUGH TSARKOE SELO

Written again by my favorite guest blogger, Alexi T.

To continue from yesterday when I got cut off AGAIN on the internet...

After discovering that the Pushkin museum was closed, we made our way over to the Dostoevsky museum. Within the museum there are two main parts: his apartment here in Petersburg (although, as it turns out Dostoevsky did not like staying in one place for too long and he moved every three years, so in terms of how long he was at this particular apartment I'm not sure, what I do know is that this is the apartment he died in) and a hall with photographs and drawings of people and places pertinent to both Petersburg and Dostoevsky. There was also a small art exhibit, which was strange, mainly due to some plaster feet with hardly anything  on them, but I digress.

Dostoevsky's apartment was NICE, and when I say nice, I mean quite spacious. In those times the size of an apartment was not based upon square footage, but what floor   and how many rooms it had. The ideal floor to be on was the second, which Dostoevsky's was, and his apartment had six large rooms. I learned quite a bit about this great author, including how he met his second wife (she was his stenographer), that he liked to roll his own cigarettes and his family came above all else. As soon as he would come home from traveling or doing something he would ask "Where are the children?"

In the other part of the museum where there are pictures pertinent to Dostoevsky and Petersburg, I learned about his time in prison. I honestly did not know he had been jailed, and to learn that he was sent first to be in solitude in the fortress for eight months, then to Siberia to work in a hard labor camp for four years and THEN to be moved down to what is now Kazhakstan all for the wish of an idea to distribute a letter, blew my mind. However, Dostoevsky did not seem to mind his time in Siberia because while he "did not get to know Russia, I did get to know the Russian people, probably better than most". I think his time in Siberia also prompted his thoughts on people in general. Dostoevsky thought that you should not judge a person or his character based upon anything except how he laughs. I think hhis being imprisoned with the likes of thieves and murderers gave him a little game of trying to find out who these people really were deep down, and when he could find a nugget of good inside them he was pleased.

When we were done learning about Dostoevsky we walked around his neighborhood a little bit and walked through a market. Initially, I thought this market was going to be like the Shuks I visited in Israel, but quickly learned they were not like shuks at all. There were only a few shops (one of which was a hunting store with guns and crossbows hanging up everywhere) and the rest was a food market. It smelled fishy...literally.

After visiting "Dostoevsky's hood" we hopped back on the metro and went to Sadovaya where we stopped in to a Coffee House and is where I did all of my blogging from yesterday. The internet connection was terrible and kept cutting in and out, hence my posts being done in two parts.

After we were done resting and blogging we walked around and stopped by St. Nicholas's Cathedral, which is truly beautiful. I feel like I am running out of new words to describe the places I see here, but I just cannot get over the beauty and thought that went into these churches. I also really want to know how long it took to build all of them from start to finish, but that is something I can look up when I get home.

When we were done admiring St. Nicholas's Cathedral, we stopped by a synogogue, which was interesting because it was done in a moorish style. We did not go in, even though it was Yom Kippur.  We then walked by the Yusopov Palace, which is where Rasputin was murdered. Earlier in the day we had been informed that we would not be able to go in to the Rasputin rooms to see where his murderers first attempted to kill him, hence doing a "walk-by". For dinner we went to Tandoor, which is this amazing Indian place close to our hotel. Per usual here, I ate way too much but enjoyed every bite.

This morning after getting a late start, we had a nice little adventure out to Tsarskoye Selo, or Pushkin's City. I say "adventure" because we had to metro to a train station (that part was fine) and then figure out how to buy train tickets to get to this place (there was also a bus involved, but that was later). After waiting in line at one ticket counter, we were told, via a sign the ticketlady held up instead of just telling us, that we had to go up to platform three. So, we went up to platform three, where it was still unclear where we were supposed to buy tickets, if we even needed to before getting on the train. As it turns out, you do, and thankfully we got that part figured out. I would also like to note that when I say "we" in these situation I really mean "my dad" because I might as well be blind, deaf and dumb here.

Anyways, we got our tickets, got on the right train and went on our way. I would also like to point out that this train is quite different from the luxurous Sapsan train we took from Moscow to Petersburg. This train was old, rickety, and only had wooden seats. In many ways I feel like I have been transported in time here,, and not in a "oh, how quaint and lovely" way either.

end of this part, due to google insanity.