Robin and her friend Pam are taking a cruise on the Baltic Sea. The ship took them to Russia, where they spent two days touring on land. Here's the first of her reports from there.
I am so doggone tired, I hardly know how I'll remember anything. Saturday and Sunday we were in St. Petersburg, touted as the cultural and aesthetic center of mother Russia. I hardly know where to begin. Saturday morning we boarded a bus for the Hermitage, the second largest collection of paintings next to the Louvre, as the cheerful guide told us at least 200 times. It was not the size that stunned us, nor the paintings, nor the fact that Peter the Great had lived in a place this enormous. (No question why these folks revolted their asses off.) No, what stunned us was the fact that the paintings were subjected to the vagaries of the climate with virtually no controls at all. It was about 95 degrees inside, the windows were flung open, the sun beat in on the paintings, the salty humidity poured in like a vapor, and instead of weeping for our sweaty selves (and our physical misery was ACUTE), we wept for the paintings - thinking of how coddled they are in even second and third tier museums at home. How they have stayed in one piece here through centuries of rough treatment is beyond me, and you can bet if it's this hot in the summer, the winters are equally frigid. We were herded through the place much in the same way one is sent through the Vatican Museum. Paintings of dead fowl and slain fawns seem to have been favored by Russian royalty - the secular version, I guess, of St. Agatha getting her breasts ripped off at the Uffizi.
Three dripping wet hours later, we returned to the ship and passed out prior to the evening's entertainment off-ship: "An Evening at the RUSSIAN BALLET!!!"
I got a weird feeling on the bus on the way to the theater, like a light going off in my head. "Wait a minute," I thought, "this is August. This is NO ONE'S official ballet season: Might this be a performance put on merely to pander to me and my shipmates?" The answer was YES! And the results were hysterical. Before I say anything snarky, the prima ballerina of our ballet (Swan Lake, naturally) was extraordinary, and she danced the role of both female leads. In the company's defense, as we were merely sitting in the 90 degree theater, they were dancing in the heat. How, we do not know. But, as it is summer, it was apparent that many of the usual members of the corps were on holiday, and other girls whose only attribute was their body type, were conscripted to perform. We don't know if they had any advance warning or were just pulled in off the street, but the resulting confusion on stage was both nerve wracking and comical. Then there's this other matter of the happy ending. Does the white swan die? No, no, no, not in the tourist version. Pam, a balletophile, said to me, "I can't believe I remembered that ending wrong." I screamed, "This was the wrong ending!" As we approached our bus, we discreetly asked our guide "WTF????" She told us that when Stalin saw the ballet for the first time, he hated the sad ending and made them change it. Now, apparently, ballet companies may choose which ending they will use. Unbelievable, and oh so funny, were it not for the sweat coursing down my body.
Yesterday took us to Catherine the Great's summer palace, and it was beautiful. Again so hot. We had lunch there while some Russian folk singers entertained us, and tried to sell us their musical instruments. Then we were off to Peterhof, the summer palace of Peter the Great. There are beautiful gardens and fountains there which we greatly enjoyed. However, while we were touring the interior of the palace, a great storm came up quickly, and the power went off. After completing the tour in darkness, we left for the bus under great torrents. We were soon as cold as we'd been hot. The traffic was nightmarish getting back to the ship because, we found out later, so many trees had been blown over and into the streets. Fortunately the ship waited for us as we were quite late getting back.
That's the minutia of Russia. Here's (my) big picture. It's depressing. The people are depressed. Oh, I'm sure in some town somewhere you could have big fun tossing down "wodka" shots with a Russian. But in general, the mood is less than jovial. Much is in disrepair. There's not much of a work ethic, and certainly no experience with philanthropy to help keep the theaters and museums in good repair, which they are not. All of the museum workers slept in their chairs with their heads in their hands in each and every room. I'm glad I saw that little slice of Russia, even for the short time I did. Clarified one whole hell of a lot. About the "wodka": Some folks from the ship apparently imbibed while in St. Petersburg, got sick as dogs, prompting the ship's doctor to put a message in the daily newsletter that essentially said: Please do not drink that Russian shit. It's got an alcohol content you never even heard of.
Tomorrow I'll tell you about TODAY, about Estonia - finally out from under Russian dominance in 1991. Oh, it's a very happy story indeed.
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