St. Petersburg, Russia: Day Four, Part One

Armenian Church

With no clock, it’s hard to know what time it is.  Which has no real importance except to know when to get started doing things.  Nothing seems to open here before 10:00, so when I find the breakfast room packed, I go back to my room and read... then make a second attempt after a chapter of Bérézina.

Fabergé Museum

       I have the menu down now.  Don’t bother with the “scrambled” eggs - they’re really a flan - but get some crêpes and watermelon, some ham and cheese slices and juice - tea’s for later.
       Then it’s off!  Lots to see on my last full day here!

First a stop in the Armenian Church on Nevskiprospekt.  It’s blue and white outside, rather plain inside.  And the two priests are just about to say Mass.  I remember my scarf, although belatedly. Besides me, there are only two men in the church.  One just sits; the other stands and crosses himself relentlessly.  An ex-priest?
       The chanting is a nice way to start a day, but my list is long.  So off along Nevskiprospekt to the next canal.

Bay Tree

       And here is where I define a New Rule of Travel, as it would have spared me almost an hour and a mile:   From now on, I shall note times down 10:00 and not just 10, and addresses shall all be given a hashtag, as in #21.  That way I would have known that the Fabergé Museum is at Number 21 on this street, not Number 10, which is the time it opens. Lucky for me the second lady I stop knows where it is and has some notions of English.  So I cross back over the canal and walk all the way back almost to Nevskiprospekt.  Like I said, an hour lost and a mile walked, for nothing.
       The museum, a bargain at under $10, was once a noble’s mansion and is as ornate as befits Fabergé’s eggs.  I follow my regular routine: cloakroom (never tips), audioguide, and a new twist:  disposable paper “scuffies” over the shoes to protect the wood parquet floors.
       I take my time in the first room, as each of the eight cases holds at least one egg.
       The very first one is a pale almost-not-pink with a huge green snaked wrapped around it, made for the Duchess of Marlborough when she visited St. Petersburg.  No jewels, but intricate gilt.  The next is white with a Maltese cross, and as it was the unfortunate last tsar’s gift to his mother in 1915, it has a small portrait of the ill-fated tsar.
       The egg that’s perhaps the most intricate is called The Bay Tree, again a gift from the Tsar Nicholas II to his mother in 1911; all those little leaves are made of jade from Siberia, and it has a tiny bird that pops out of the top.  I wish I could have seen it working.  Some of the other clock-eggs also have a bird with real feathers in the top that sounds out the hours.
       One terribly ornate egg has multiple portraits of the tsar, his family and scenes from the court and is also from 1911. Yet another is decorated with pearls to look like lily of the valley.  There’s a Coronation Egg that opens up to reveal a model coach, complete down to the smallest detail.  Another plain white egg opens to reveal a pure gold yolk, and inside of that is a little chicken (which perhaps answers the question “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?”)
       Following this formal room are two others with more Fabergé’s creations.  There’s a pansy in a clear vase that looks like it has water, but it’s really rock crystal.  Jewels are everywhere:  agate, rubies, pearls...  And all so delicate.
       And then there’s a final room filled with icons.  All of this from the artistry of Fabergé’s studios.
       In one of the rooms, I have an “exchange” with a lady even older than I.  She points at one of the bejeweled objects and says something to me in Russian.  Something appreciative of the craftsmanship, surely?  I nod and smile, pointing at something else that’s equally amazing.  She seems not to have noticed I don’t speak her language... or care.  At the next case, we do it again, me starting this time, with a gesture.  She babbles again, and then points to my hand, at my mother’s ring with its diamonds, and smiles approvingly.
       In the Fabergé Museum, it’s not only the jewels that are amazing, but indeed the jewelry box they’re displayed in.  Such wealth, such baroque décor!  It’s worth the visit, if only for that. And there are many more mansions like this one in St. Petersburg, every bit as lavish as the tsar’s own Hermitage.

St. Petersburg, Russia: Day Three, Part Two

My friend Kate’s 1990 Soviet Union guidebook tells me that the building across the vast Palace Square was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Today it’s the Impressionist part of the Hermitage, which is where I’m headed.

       That’s where the Shchukin Collection is.  (Or at least where it should be.  Because guess what.  Much of it is on loan abroad.  In... Paris!)

Vuillard, Children in a Room, 1909

       In 1909, Shchukin opened his home on Sundays for public viewings, introducing French avant-garde painting to the Moscovites.  After the 1917 Revolution, the government appropriated his collection (decree of the Council of People's Commissars, signed Lenin, November 8, 1918) while Shchukin escaped to Paris, where he died in 1936. His mansion in Moscow became the State Museum of New Western Art.  In 1948 the State Museum of New Western Art was closed down by a decree signed by Stalin due to its allegedly bourgeois, cosmopolitan and wrongly oriented artworks.  The two collections were randomly divided between the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Monet, Grand Quai Le Havre, 1874

       As it turns out, the museum has done me a service by loaning so many of its Impressionist works, because it’s getting late and I’ve been in various parts of the Hermitage all day, literally.  (It’s now 4:30 pm.)  Besides, I can see the rest of the collection when I get back to Paris.  But I still spend a good hour there.  Then it’s off to an early dinner at the Literary Café - Pushkin just around the corner.

When I get there, the gentleman in the “lobby” asks me if I want to have a drink or something to eat.  As I haven’t had anything since breakfast, the answer is a resounding “something to eat”.  He asks me “Upstairs or downstairs?”
       As I’ve never been here before, I lean in and ask him quietly, “Which is nicer?”
       He smiles and whispers back “Upstairs”.
       So upstairs we go.
       The décor is Belle Epoque, all velvet and quiet with hushed conversations.  There are a surprising number of people here already, but they’re busy having tea.  The waiter gives me a menu and while I’m looking at it he serves me a little mise en bouche in puff pastry with an artfully-dribbled sauce.  For my early dinner, I opt for something light:  a cold plate with two kinds of fish - a white fish and a smoked salmon with a bit of caviar, washed down by a glass of white wine.  Then the waiter comes back and tempts me with their special dessert:   vanilla ice cream with a cream puff on top, all decorated with a sprig of mint, some caramel sauce and a powdering of confectioner’s sugar.  A work of art to make a French restaurant proud.

My stomach at last content, I head back to the hotel just a few short blocks away.  A hot shower, a bit of a read in my “firm” bed and I feel myself slipping off to dream about all the fantastic art I’ve seen all day.  The Hermitage, my reason for coming so far, has not disappointed.

St. Petersburg, Russia: Day Three, Part One

Winter Palace (Hermitage Museum, on right), Alexander Column, and the Admiralty (left) on Palace Square

If it’s Friday, it’s the Hermitage.  That’s the plan.
       As I head out at 10, I tell Olga at the front desk that “if I’m not back by 7, call the police because I’ll be lost somewhere in the Hermitage”.  She laughs.  I’m serious.  It’s huge.
       I make a deal with the Weather Gods:  no rain until I get into the museum.  And it works!
       I don’t know how many buildings the Hermitage has, but I see five of them before the day is over.  I think there’s only one more:  the theater.
       I get there a bit before 10:30, and do as the instructions on my online ticket say:  “Please approach the Internet Ticket Booth”.  (I shouldn’t laugh; I couldn’t write that in Russian.)  Very hospitably, they let us in, and our coats are not the first in the coat check.  I try to rent an audioguide, but they’re already all taken.  It’ll be just me, my eyes, and possibly signage in Cyrillic and English!

Chapel

The Royal Apartments come first, at the top of the majestic stairs.  At first, the rooms are almost empty of people, but soon enough groups arrive, crowding us more with their noise than their space, given the size of the rooms.  As I look around at all the majesty, an English guide spots my shoes (again a dead give-away) and gives me a tip.  He points to a place people aren’t going:  the Chapel, which is off to one side.  It’s all white and gold, with the parquet floors so resolutely waxed that they reflect the splendor of the room almost like a mirror.

Malachite Room

       Rooms lead to more rooms; sometimes you need to double back because there are two strings of them for the same wing of the building.
       I'd been told that the Malachite Room was not to be missed.  Another wonder.  Named for the striking green stone used in its many columns and the fireplace, as well as a gigantic urn, it links the state rooms to the private rooms.  I begin to imagine Tsar Nicholas I and Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna here, which is easy to do because it's still decorated as it was back then:  the chandeliers ablaze, setting the gilt ceiling to shimmering, the intricate inlaid floor, the heavy velvet draperies...


Yet by far the most fascinating object I see in the entire Hermitage is The Peacock Clock, bought - in pieces like an Ikea kit! - by Prince Potemkin.  But before it could be reassembled, Potemkin had died and Catherine the Great had taken over.  The clock has a carillon that marks the quarter hours and chimes out the hours, with its English-made clockwork, attributed to James Cox, hidden inside a big mushroom.  A dragonfly on that mushroom acts as a second hand, rotating at one-second intervals. The owl, peacock and rooster are all automated.  As the sign explains, “The cage surrounded with little bells and containing the owl begins to rotate, the owl moves its head twitching its eyes as it opens and shuts them and raises its paw, and the little bells play a soft tune.  Then the peacock steps in.  It raises its head regally, opens its tail and slowly turns around, stands still for a moment, then quickly turns back and folds its tail.  At last, the cock crows three or four times.”  And then there's the squirrel eating his nut.  The goldwork of it all is so finely crafted that I spend a long time just looking at it all.  Amazing!

     
Aside from the majesty of the place, another thing that’s different from the Russian Museum yesterday is the younger age of the guards. But as the day wears on, they seem to grow older.   All but one that I see are women, and that one man was nattily dressed, as if going to a ball... which I guess is logical, given that this was the tsar’s palace!  Some respond to a nod and a smile; others avert their eyes.
       Unable to find a particular statue, I ask “Michelangelo?” to one guard; she accompanies me to a side room where his statue of a Crouching Boy reigns over the space. A few minutes later, after marveling at Michelangelos's amazing gift for turning stone into flesh, I head back to thank her, and it seems to take her a moment to remember who I am. After all, I’m just one of so many thousands of people who walk past her every day.

     I pretty much see all the exhibits - which takes hours! - including the upper level where there’s almost no one except a few Oriental tourists.  Logical, because this is the Oriental department, which includes a temporary show of exceptional ceramic pieces on loan from the National Museum of Korea.

       As I leave the Hermitage after more than four hours, I see the same audioguide rental woman behind her counter.  Out of sheer curiosity I ask her how long she works and she tells me she’s there all day, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.!

St. Petersburg, Russia: Day Two, Part Two

Kazan Cathedral

I walk along one of the city’s many canals and peek into St. Catherine’s Church, simple but echoing with the singing of Mass.  The chanting priest’s voice, especially the high notes, reverberates against the other lower voice that sounds a bit like a bagpipe drone note.  But there are only a half dozen people, so it’s hard to go unnoticed and I try to slip out without disturbing the service..
       It’s on to Kazan Cathedral.  Totally different from the other two, designed a bit like St. Peter’s in Rome - two curved wings with columns and a central church.  Inside, a long line of faithful wait to get nose-to-nose with the main altar’s icon and tell it their secret, whisper their prayer.  In the back of the church I see others filling out prayer forms, which a priest then disappears with.  Mine would be the lyrics “let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me”... this as Russia and NATO seem on a collision course.
       Curious about the icon, I ask a nun at the souvenir counter if she speaks English.  She goes and gets me a book in English.  That’s the only word she understood, so I buy it... to give to Kate in Paris as payback for her lending me her 1990 Guide Bleu of Leningrad.  But I still want to know about the icon, so I look in the book, point to a photo of the icon and then point to the line of Faithful.  She nods... and then says what may be the few words of English she knows:  "The Virgin of Kazan".  I thank her and move off.
       Moments later, having snuck a photo of The Line of Faithful, I feel a tug at my sleeve.  It’s the sister.  She says “Come” and walks me to a painting she wants me to see.  “All painting,” she says, pointing to the gold trim on the priest’s robe.  She looks very proud of it.  I tell her it’s beautiful, thank her.  Now she points to the line, nudges me toward it with her head, smiles and walks off.
       Again, I think of those lyrics, and post them in my mind next to a split screen of the morning news - Russia in Syria, the U.S. and NATO beefing up Poland and the Baltic states.  Here am I, a child of the duck-and-cover Cold War, being befriended by a Russian.  I tear up... and step out into the cold air.
       Outside in the park, a young woman - an art student - sits on a bench, sketching Kazan.  I sit and watch her for a few minutes but my stomach tells me it’s lunchtime and I head for the huge bookstore across the way - with Café Singer upstairs.

The House of Books, with Café Singer

The House of Books is just that, with books in every nook and cranny. Even in the stairway leading up to Café Singer.  Nestled around a corner, the café has floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on where I just was.  I find a small table with a view of Kazan Cathedral and the bustling Nevskiprospekt below, the Champs-Elysées of St. Petersburg.  A professor-type is seated at the next table, behind a pile of books, oblivious to the world.  I stake out my table with my coat and take a swing by the pastries counter.  When I get back, there’s a menu waiting for me, mercifully with an English translation.
       A charming blonde waitress appears to take my order, in English.  (It’s the tennis shoes; dead give-away).  I order the “pillows” - the dumplings - and an Earl Grey chai, followed by that enticing currant and foxberry tart I just saw.  (“Pillows” and foxberries are both things I learned about last year along the Volga.)
       As I finish, the sun makes a hit-and-miss stab at the cloud cover.  It’s off to the Russian Museum.

Russian Museuim

The line that was just starting at 11:30 has grown to a terrible length.  Luckily the sun is almost out and there’s nothing “like snow” (to quote the desk guy).  Plus I have a book.  The line ends up taking one chapter.
       You enter through the basement, which is one vast coat-check.  Concerned I won’t find my coat ever again, I fold it over my arm and head upstairs.
       On the first floor, there’s Room 18, on the left, so I go to the right and find Room 30-something.  Strange.  But that gives me the advantage of missing the earlier art and I plunge right into the Impressionist period.  All the artists here are Russian, but some spent time in France and it shows.  There are beautiful works by Kuindzhi and Repin, and some by Golovin.  One painting by Sokolov that I like is called “Dairy Woman with Broken Jar”. There the young woman is, forlorn about her mishap, and it seems like the perfect illustration of “crying over spilt milk”.
       Beyond that are folk arts:  wood-carving, lace, patchwork and more.  Everything is written in Russian and English, although the English is sometimes puzzling, sometimes... quaint - for instance “casket” for the small box for needles and other sewing things - but I’m glad to have it so I know what I’m looking at.
       I finish off the extensive first floor, head up a monumental stairway... and discover the first rooms (at least in numbering) are up here.  First icons, whole rooms full of them, some in massive gold frames, others just with gilding.  All shapes and sizes.
       Lastly come hundreds of portraits, which are not my favorites at the best of times, and my feet are starting to tire.  But the rooms!  The décor!  All as befits a noble’s palace.  I settle for gawking at it all, then glide down that majestic staircase and exit into...
       ... Rain.  Luckily I brought my umbrella - be prepared.  What’s falling is indeed “something like snow”, but at least it came after I stood in that long line.
       I head back to my hotel, across the canal, with a look at the Cathedral in the twilight (which comes at 5:30 here this time of the year).  A cup of chai and a cake at the hotel’s café are welcome.
       That same hotel clerk who gave me the weather report directs me to the top floor where, in a hidden corner stands an old computer guests are free to use.  Following his instructions, I make a reservation for tomorrow’s visit to the Hermitage and have it sent to the desk to be printed out.  By the time I sign off and get back downstairs, it’s already arrived.  So it’s off to my room for a hot shower and bed.  As Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day”.  And a full one at that.

P.S.  In the French book I brought with me to read in bed - “Bérézina” - the author retraces Napoleon’s retreat from Russia, hounded by Russian General Kutuzov.  Today at Kazan Cathedral I saw Kutuzov’s grave.  Didn’t even know he existed before today!  Le hasard fait bien les choses, as the French say - Fate lends a hand.