Letter from Russia

Monday 30:
We berth in St Petersburg, the highpoint of our voyage, the only city where we stay for two days. As we quickly discover, the city simply overwhelms one. A potted history: The population is 4.5 million people.

MAIN SQUARE - SNATCHED FROM BUS
The city was established in 1703 by Peter the Great on marshy land. He was a great admirer of things European and hoped vainly to institute a system of canals like those of Venice. Many buildings are slipping slowly into the marsh.

Like Copenhagen and Helsinki, it’s a key port embracing dozens of interlinked islands. The climate isn’t great. St Petersburg enjoys only some 60 sunny days a year and we had two of them.

The first day starts out bright and early in the ship’s theatre; we are sorted into groups. Thence to the terminal building where we join the queue of passengers waiting to be processed. Russian immigration officials scrutinise our landing cards and passports. We're through. To the fleet of buses. Ours is number 16.

Awaiting us are Nadya and Julia, our guides, both 30-something, slim and unsmiling. But like Irina and Tatiana the following day they prove to be very good at their jobs and we warm to them. They lead us around like mother hens, waving numbered flags above their heads. The main attractions in St Petersburg are huge and so is the number of their visitors. So it’s very easy to get lost. The guides wear neck-mics and issue their groups with earphones, which helps.

Our immediate destination is Peterhof, the summer palace of the tsars, situated on the bay - about an hour’s drive. After a "comfort stop" at a souvenir shop (all such stops take place at souvenir shops), we arrive. Peterhof is stunning, utterly overwhelming in scale and its sheer glittering gold-leafed, magnificence.

To protect the extensive parquet floors, laid out in exquisite patterns, we are issued with elasticised over-shoes. For over an hour, we follow Julia through the great halls, corridors and reception rooms of the palace. The building was intended to awe the tsar’s visitors and it awes us. No luxury was spared. The palace suffered during three years of Nazi occupation. Of the damage no sign remains. Refurbishment and restoration continue unceasingly.

After lunch, we make our way past the multiple gilded statues and gravity-fed fountains to the far end of the gardens, where a hydrofoil awaits us. We zip back to the city for a visit to the fortified island at the heart of St Petersburg.

Within its walls stands the historic church of St Peter and St Paul, golden domed like all churches. Inside are the tombs in white Carrara marble of the later tsars, including the unfortunate Nicholas II and his family.

We are led into a small chapel to hear a stunning rendition of Russian a capella singing by a small choir intent on raising money for a new stained glass window. The CDs are expensive but we buy one anyhow. Their harmonies are perfect. Their bass singer hits low notes that I last heard from Paul Robeson.

Back at the dock, the immigration officials check us back in just as carefully as they earlier let us through. This is Russia. Elsewhere, a cursory glance at the ship’s ID-key card, issued to all passengers, has sufficed.

Tuesday 31:
We are on an afternoon visit to The Hermitage Museum, the home of St Petersburg’s art collection. Irina and Tatiana prove just as accomplished as their colleagues the previous day. Once again, the visitor is overwhelmed.

The collection was begun in the then Tsars’ Winter Palace by Catherine the Great for her own private purposes. As it grew, so did the need for more space. After the communist revolution, all private collections were nationalised. This great hoard is now housed in five buildings, including the Winter Palace, all interconnected in a vast complex. We follow Tatiana through an endless series of rooms, upstairs and down.

The Hermitage (so called because Catherine, a French-speaker, liked to think of herself as a hermit, alone with her collection) holds three million objects; only 10% of them are on public view. New buildings are planned to exhibit more of them. Once again, the scale and magnificence of the palace leaves one bereft of words.

The highlight of the tour for many visitors is the carefully guarded “gold room”, the storehouse of hundreds of solid gold artifacts, most obtained from burial mounds across a sweep of Europe and Asia. Tatiana translates the detailed account given to us by an elderly expert.

Finally we are whirled through hall after hall of old and recent Masters. Tatiana points out the two or three most important paintings of each artist and gives us a few seconds to take in another score or so. The tour is designed to give one just a taste of what The Hermitage holds. To get to know its contents would take years.

We sail out of St Petersburg on the most beautiful of summer evenings. (Sunset is after 11 pm) Jones and I join hundreds of other passengers on the ship’s extensive decks. The first 90 minutes of our passage is across a shallow, narrow bay, along a channel.

KOTLIN ISLAND

Then we slow down to pass through massive sea-gates beside the island of Kotlin. On both sides of us, great causeways run a total of 25 kilometres to the mainland. This is a huge flood barrier, intended to prevent storm surges from inundating St Petersburg, a city often flooded in the past.