My holidays began this week and I am in Russia. But even though I am on vacation and away from campus, I have still had to attend to more than ten e-mails per day dealing with school matters, mainly on aspects of finalising enrolments for the new 1st Year students, but also on aspects of the auditorium planning and funding, re-negotiating selection procedures for students from certain countries, and some staffing issues. School principals are never completely on holiday it seems. Fortunately I had excellent internet access while in Moscow, although it has kept dropping out here in St Petersburg where I am staying at the moment. Tomorrow morning we (I am travelling with Di and Andrew) return to Moscow for most of the coming week, so hopefully the connections will be a little more reliable once again.
There are many more differences between Moscow and St Petersburgh than the internet connections, of course. In many ways, St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) is the more pleasant city for visitors, being more European and outwardly focussed, having a lighter and more consistent architectural ensemble, having much cleaner air and probably having more “sights” for the visitor. And yet for me, both cities have had a deep attraction since I first visited them twenty years ago, in 1987, during Soviet times. Since then, prices have risen dramatically, the amount of advertising has increased by a factor of at least a thousand-fold, the cuisine has improved (the McDonalds tastes just like it does everywhere else), and things seem to work better generally - it’s definitely NOT “Hong Kong efficiency”, but everything sort of stumbles along.
A blog is not really the place for a full travel diary, but there are some experiences that I would like to share to give you some idea of how a (or, at least this) school principal spends his holidays while travelling.
Most of our sightseeing in Moscow is yet to come (as I mentioned above, we return there tomorrow - I can’t begin to tell you how much I am looking forward to another flight in an old Soviet airliner; I love them!!! - aviation freaks can see the two gorgeous planes we have had for our internal Russian flights by scrolling to the bottom of THIS LINK and enlarging the images by clicking on them).
We arrived in Moscow last Wednesday, and spent our first afternoon in the heart of the city, Red Square. With the Kremlin walls on one side, the GUM Department Store on the other, and the crazy mutli-coloured domes of St Basil’s Cathedral at the far end, we knew we were definitely in Russia!
When the visited the All-Russia Exhibition of National Economic Achievements (also known as VDNKh) the next morning, we could have been back in Soviet times. Originally built in the 1960s to showcase the miracles of communism, the park is a beautiful expanse of fountains, rest areas and pavilions, almost all of which unapologetically still bear the images of smiling peasants, happy workers, stars, hammers and sickles of their communist-era builders. The display of Soviet airliners and a Vostok rocket must make some Russians at least a little nostalgic for the former glories of Soviet superpower status.
A very different slant on Russia’s communist past was experienced during our second visit on Thursday, which was to Statue Park, or as it is unofficially known, the Cemetery of Fallen Statues. In this small park, tens of Soviet-era statues are displayed, including most of the Soviet-era leaders (Lenin, Stalin, Andropov, Brezhnev, but interestingly, the statues I recall seeing when I visited four years ago of Krushchev and Gorbachev seems to be gone). A particularly emotive ensemble showed a granite statue of Stalin, his nose smashed, surrounded by low statues of people cowering in fear, backed by a concrete wall of stone faces behind barbed wire, to the right of which was a jack-booted statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the KGB.
It is not hard to see why St Petersburgh would have a lighter tone than this! We arrived in St Petersburgh on Friday, which was 22nd June, the longest day of the year. On the day we arrived, we watched the sun set at 11:25 pm - we didn’t wait to see sunrise the next morning at 4:35 am! Needless to say, there was a bright glow in the sky all night.
Our first evening walk took us along Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main street, past the former Winter Palace (now the Hermitage art gallery) across the bridge over the Neva River and to the famous spit on Vasilevsky Island, marked by the two bright red flame-lit lighthouses. Several bridal parties were there for photos, and several hundred high school students seemed to be celebrating their graduations - all under bright sunlight at after 10 pm at night! With the fountains blowing water in directions in the Neva River, forming rainbows in the late sunlight, and with the golden spires of the Peter and Paul fortress shimmering across the water, it was a stunning experience.
The next day (Saturday), we took in some of St Petersburgh’s culture. We visited St Isaac’s Cathedral, which has a marvellous Baroque interior decorated with icons and frescoes, as well as great views from the colonnade around the dome. And then the rest of the day was spent on an artistic high, visiting the Hermitage art gallery. What a sensational collection of art, housed in one of the world’s great buildings! I wished I had a week to take it all in, but we did manage to see our special favourites such as the French impressionists, the Dutch masters, and even originals by Leonardo da Vinci. The visit has made me eager to view my DVD of “Russian Ark” as soon as I can after I return home. An expected highlight was seeing two little Russian (of course) bear cubs in the park beside the Hermitage - the photo here is especially for my little bear-loving daughter, Liesl.
After a visit to the Hermitage, almost anything else would be an anti-climax. Not so in St Petersburgh. We began this morning with a visit to the Peter and Paul Fortress, situated on an island in the Neva River. The golden spires looked resplendent in the clear sunshine under the bright blue skies, and although the baroque interior was a work of art in itself, its intricate goldwork and iconic focus were a bit of a turnoff for Di. Maybe it was her back worrying her again; Di has really been suffering with back problems on this trip, reducing her enjoyment of the experiences to a large extent.
After the Peter and Paul Fortress, we caught the Metro and a bus to Peterhof, another of the czar’s former palaces to the south-west of St Petersburgh. Unfortunately the Grand Palace in Peterhof was closed because of a band concert, but the lavish grounds were open, reminiscent of Versailles but even grander in concept and scale. A particular highlight was the cascading stairway, shown here - I know it is somewhat clichéd to say that the photos do not do justice to the reality, but in this case it is true. You have to come and see it for yourself!
When I set down what we have done in the five days we have been in Russia, it sounds like quite a bit, but in fact, our feeling is that we are resting well and taking things quite slowly; we must because of Di’s back problems. Tomorrow, we return to Moscow, and during the next few days, we hope to explore the Kremlin and some of the beautiful towns outside Moscow in what is known as the Golden Ring.
Footnote: Because we are unlikely to have good access to the internet after we leave Moscow, I hope to upload my next blog before we leave Moscow, which is on 30th June.