It’s Tony Awards Weekend! Thoughts and Hopes and Prayers and Stuffby Randi / June 8, 2018
Warsaw is one of the most surprising cities I’ve ever visited. Usually, I am a tough critic when traveling (especially if I don’t have a bathroom or a nice bed). But I became a fan of Warsaw almost instantly and jumped right into exploration and appreciation of this important city. It’s a city of contrasts: it feels hospitable and welcoming yet still retains an air of eastern European coolness. The desire to progress and rise above its history is palpable, amid seemingly innumerable monuments to the past. You feel almost overwhelmed by all the history surrounding you, yet every building is almost brand-new. There’s a lot to understand when visiting Warsaw, and it’s a rewarding undertaking. Even though I had zero expectations (or maybe because of that), Warsaw quickly became one of my favorite places.
Cloudy and cool – appropriate weather for the walking tour of mournful history
We arrived on the overnight train from Kyiv very early in the morning, so our room at Dream Hostel Warsaw wasn’t going to be ready for hours. Oh and because of its location in the city center (200 meters from the Royal Castle), our car wasn’t able to get on its actual street so we had to walk a little to it in our exhausted stupor. With these two tiny obstacles beginning our trip, you can guess how pissed off I was, so that tells you a little bit about how great this city is that I was able to overcome my pissiness to such an extent. The Dream Hostel, aside from letting their other customers check out so late (i.e. not at 7am when I wanted them out), was a great place to stay. It was clean and simple and modern, with a really comfortable bed, at least in our private en suite (we are adults we do not fork with hostel dorms anymore). The location was perfect too, right in the Old Town, so I recommend it if you’re going and looking for a budget-friendly place that isn’t a straight up hole filled with loud drunk yoots. (There are yoots though; it is a hostel.)
Right outside the hostel was an outdoor exhibit on Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish-Lithuanian military leader who became a hero both in Poland and in the USA. He fought in the American Revolution as a colonel of the Continental Army. He also was an architect and he designed and oversaw the construction of military fortifications such as those at West Point. When he returned to Poland after straight killing it in America, he was made the very model of a modern Major General in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Army, then was Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, leading the 1794 Kosciuszko Uprising. Don’t make me type that name again. The K-dawg Uprising was against Russia, as most uprisings should be, but he was captured. Luckily, he was pardoned after a few years and thought, get me the hell out of here, I’ma go see my homies in America. And so he moved not only to the USA but to Philadelphia! Pop POP!
Proof of this dude’s opposite trajectory to mine
The Dream Hostel staff directed our attention to what is my #1 activity tip for Warsaw – the free city walking tour, from freewalkingtour.com. Free walking tours are my favorite thing to find in any city, as they are always incredibly informative and entertaining. But Warsaw’s (actually called the Free WALKATIVE Tour because they’re adorable I guess) were my favorite ever. That’s right, we took two – the general history/Old Town one (very good) and one specifically about the war and the ghetto and everything, which was extra long (2 1/2 hours I think). This latter one was spectacular, I think because our incredible guide packed so much important history into our tour and treated all of its history, good and tragic, with reverence and consideration, so it felt properly serious. And soul-crushing. Most of Warsaw’s prominent history is grim, so you have to be really ready to dive in.
We met at Zygmunt’s Column in the Old Town, one of the most famous landmarks of Warsaw that I didn’t happen to take a picture of for some reason, I think because I was cold. It’s named after King Sigismund III Vasa, the 16th century king who moved Poland’s capital from Krakow to Warsaw. I like to say his name with an aye-aye-aye in the middle.
This lady above was our guide in the Old Town for the first tour, and then for the World War history tour (the big long most important one) we had a young man take over. Both were very good (but the boy was my favorite) and both told us that they were newly engaged (not to each other), because every single guide in every single free walking tour we’ve ever taken, across the globe, has told us that they were newly engaged (I think as a ploy to get more tips, but like, no harm no foul, get that paper.)
This lady above was our guide in the Old Town for the first tour, and then for the World War history tour (the big long most important one) we had a young man take over. Both were very good (but the boy was my favorite) and both told us that they were newly engaged (not to each other), because every single guide in every single free walking tour we’ve ever taken, across the globe, has told us that they were newly engaged (I think as a ploy to get more tips, but like, no harm no foul, get that paper.)
My favorite tour guide ever! He said Warsaw so cute
But let’s start with the not-so-terrible history in the Historic Center of Warsaw. Like the above pictures, where you can see famous sayings and famous people (or characters (yes that’s Donkey from Shrek)) in various languages – including Esperanto, the language made up in the 19th century to be an international language (instead of forcing everyone to learn English). It’s not super weird to speak Esperanto here because its creator, the Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist Zamenhof (hey that’s like me I want to invent a language but not touch people’s eyes) was from Warsaw.
We also saw Marie Curie’s house. I guess I always assumed she and everyone else with second-syllable-accented names was French, but she was Polish, born in Warsaw (as Maria), and that above is the house she grew up in. Our guide taught us so much that I didn’t know about Marie’s incredible life. I knew she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win two, and the only person to win in two different fields of science (she real smart). I did not know that she was part of an actual Curie Family Legacy – there are 5 Nobel Prizes now in her family. Her descendants are under hella pressure. The first element she discovered was named polonium after her home country. I mean it’s so obvious but I never realized it; I think I assumed it was after her favorite Hamlet character. (Uh, I think I remember Hamlet accurately.) And everyone knows she died from radiation exposure during her research in radioactivity but I didn’t know she got extra radiation from developing mobile x-ray units for field hospitals during World War I. Her extraordinary achievements could have been thwarted by the simple fact that she could not enroll in any institute of higher learning in Poland because she was a woman. She and her sister studied in Paris, after years of planning and earning enough money to do so. While Marie saved money and worked, she continued to teach herself. She also fell in love with a man who couldn’t marry her because she was poor, and although she was heartbroken, it was sort of for the best because if she did, she may have never gone to Paris or achieved what she has. Plus people said that the man who rejected her always regretted it, so she got hers.
I also loved this story of Maly Przeglad, the newspaper written and edited by children, for children. Janusz Korczak made such a publication possible, when for 13 years in the early 20th century he ran and distributed the paper, making 50,000 copies of it every week. Meaning Little Review, Maly Przeglad was a supplement to the Nasz Przeglad, the largest Polish-language Jewish daily newspaper. Janusz said he developed this newspaper because, “There are children who have many great ideas, remarks, and observations, but don’t write, because they lack courage or just don’t feel like it. Our newspaper will encourage them to write. Encourage and embolden them.” I love this man.
Above is a picture of the clocktower at the Royal Castle, in Castle Square (apt) at the entrance to the Old Town. It was formerly the official residence of Polish monarchs, from the 16th century, as well as the seat of the King and Parliament. It was also the site of the writing of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the second-oldest codified national constitution in the world after the USA’s (although I bet more respected). However, you may recall when I said in the beginning that everything in Warsaw is new. That includes this castle and everything else in the Old Town, which was destroyed by the Nazis during World War II. Here is a picture of the same site during the devastation, and one from beforehand, which was used later in the rebuilding process.
In 1939, following the invasion of Poland, Nazis burned and looted the Castle. But it would be almost completely destroyed a few years later, along with the rest of Warsaw, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the subsequent Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After WWII, more than 80% of the city would be demolished and almost all of Warsaw’s 300,000 Jewish residents (making it the largest Jewish city in Europe) would be dead.
Metal map of Warsaw
So I guess we’ve reached that point where we have to talk about it all. As I said, Warsaw was the biggest Jewish city in Europe pre-war, with around 300,000 Jews. Before WWII, Jews were thriving in Warsaw, with the majority living in the city center and commercial districts. Many left Warsaw during the depression, which was worse in Poland than the rest of Europe, but even so the population remained high. When the Siege of Warsaw occurred in 1939, German planes bombed Warsaw, killing tens of thousands of people and destroying 10% of the city. After this, the number of Jews in Warsaw actually increased, because there were so many refugees fleeing from the Polish-German front. Soon after the Siege ended, Hitler established the General Government in Poland and the Jewish Council in Warsaw, which would let the Nazis start carrying out their atrocities against the Polish people. First was Jewish forced labor, to clean up after the bombings. Then all the bank accounts of Polish Jews were blocked, followed by the required display of Jewish star on all Jewish shops. Then came the required armbands, and then the ban from public transit, and then the prohibition on communal prayer.
A section of the Mur Getta, or Ghetto Wall
In the fall of 1940, the Nazis, now running Poland, established the Warsaw Ghetto, which would become the largest Ghetto in Europe. They ordered construction of the Ghetto walls around the predominantly Jewish area. Non-Jews (referred to as ‘ethnic Poles’, but like Jews still can be that, asswipes) were removed from this area while Jews from the suburbs were brought into it. The walls, closing the inhabitants off from the outside world, were 3 meters high, with barbed wire on top, and anyone trying to escape was shot. More than 400,000 (some reports say 450,000) Jews were imprisoned in the ghetto, which was only a little over one square mile. People were packed into rooms, with little if any food, prohibited from freely traveling in their own city. There were typhus epidemics in the dirty, close quarters. There was starvation – the rations started at 180 calories per person per day and decreased with time. The vast majority of food in the Ghetto was smuggled in.
Marking the boundaries of the Ghetto area today
From the Ghetto, Jews were deported to concentration camps for either forced labor or extermination. More than 250,000 Jews were sent from the Ghetto to Treblinka in the summer of 1942 for extermination. Most of the remaining Jews in the Ghetto died from shootings, gassing, illness, and starvation. By the end of 1942, the Jews in the Ghetto realized that the deportations meant death, and that the transport for ‘resettlement’ was really leading Jews to mass killings. They decided to resist by smuggling in weapons. In January 1943, the Nazis entered the Ghetto to round up more Jews for transport, but they met resistance from some armed Jews. Still, 600 Jews were shot and 5,000 were removed (of the planned 8,000). But now the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was starting, the largest revolt by Jews in WWII. Adults and children were ready to fight, although with their limited supplies and arms against the German forces, they knew at this point it was more a fight for honor rather than survival.
This is called the Kotwica, the emblem of the Polish Underground State and the Home Army (which we talk about below). It was the symbol for Polish struggle to regain independence. The symbol comes from the initials P and W, from the phrase “Pomscimy Wawer” – We Shall Avenge Wawer. Wawer was a massacre in 1939, one of the first large-scale massacres of Polish civilians by German troops.
The resistance organizations, the ZZW and ZOB, gained control of the Ghetto and executed Nazi collaborators and traitors, like the Jewish Police officers. The head of the Jewish Ghetto Police committed suicide. By Passover, the police and SS forces entered the Ghetto to complete deportations, but the Jewish fighters held them back. The SS officers started burning down houses block by block to force a surrender, but the fighting continued for almost a month.
While this fighting occurred inside the walls, outside the walls the Germans were attacked at various points by Polish resistance groups. However, the numbers of fighters in and outside the Ghetto kept falling, and eventually there was no organized defense left, just survivors who hid in the sewers and dugouts referred to as bunkers.
The Nazis searched out these hiding places and would smoke or flood the inhabitants out, or just use explosives on the area. One of these dugouts was the infamous Mila 18, with approximately 300 people inside, including smugglers and ZOB commanding officers. The smugglers surrendered to the Nazis, but the ZOB command refused to move. The Nazis threw tear gas down into the bunker, and a few people managed to escape uncaught, but the rest committed mass suicide by ingesting cyanide instead of surrendering to the Nazis.
While this fighting occurred inside the walls, outside the walls the Germans were attacked at various points by Polish resistance groups. However, the numbers of fighters in and outside the Ghetto kept falling, and eventually there was no organized defense left, just survivors who hid in the sewers and dugouts referred to as bunkers.
The Nazis searched out these hiding places and would smoke or flood the inhabitants out, or just use explosives on the area. One of these dugouts was the infamous Mila 18, with approximately 300 people inside, including smugglers and ZOB commanding officers. The smugglers surrendered to the Nazis, but the ZOB command refused to move. The Nazis threw tear gas down into the bunker, and a few people managed to escape uncaught, but the rest committed mass suicide by ingesting cyanide instead of surrendering to the Nazis.
The site of Mila 18. It felt too strange to take a picture, so instead of deciding whether it was appropriate or not I took a half-picture.
The Uprising ended on May 16, 1943, when the Nazis demolished the Great Synagogue of Warsaw in a symbolic fuck you to humanity, although I am surprised it wasn’t demolished at the start of things. 13,000 Jews died in the Uprising, and most of the remaining 50,000 (remember we started with 450,000) were captured and sent to camps, mainly Treblinka.
At this point in the tour, an (white female (always) (dammit)) American woman asked the tour guide “Why didn’t the Jews just fight back when this all started??” All the decent people gave her side eye and the guide explained that the events didn’t just jump from zero to murder in a day. The oppressors, like all oppressors, started small, with sacrifices you couldn’t really risk everything fighting against when it seemed like something you could live with. Then the oppressors would add something else to the mix, and the same question is asked of you: is this the breaking point, or will it be okay? Most people think things will be okay for them, that things couldn’t get too out of hand in modern society. But soon you’re faced with a pile of small atrocities stacked on top of each other and the stack leads to complete injustice and horror, and by that point it’s too late to do much. We visited Warsaw many months ago, and even then I was shocked that the lady didn’t realize that the same thing was happening in the USA. I wonder if she can see today how ignorant she sounded, or if she realizes that we’ve reached the point she was talking about, when people should be fighting back. Every day, the leaders of American chip away at the rights of citizens and innocent people, and they degrade our institutions so much that our checks and balances are now a joke, a joke that for the most part they are in control of. But aside from trying to fight back civilly (in the courts, with fundraising, with calling offices), no one is rioting in the streets or risking their lives to fight it. We excuse it day by day as something we can live with, something that we will change when decent people are back in power. But look at what the incremental nature of these injustices has led to. There are literally babies being snatched from their families and locked up in cages. And we are not rioting in the streets for them. Is this the point when we should be? If we don’t, will it be too late to fight against what happens next? I am scared of what will happen next as I’m sure all decent people who aren’t morally bankrupt are, but I’m also scared of what’s happening now and what’s already happened. We’re supposed to study history in order to learn from it and not repeat the mistakes of the past, but that’s hard to do when people who want to repeat history are in charge.
Warsaw’s Palace of Justice today (the courts)
Ok let’s get back to Warsaw’s history before we all get back to crying, donating, crying, screaming, and not knowing what else to do. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 happened over a year before the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the general revolt in the ‘main’ part of the city. The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was part of a nationwide plan from the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army (the dominant Polish resistance movement), to liberate Warsaw from the Nazis. The fighting lasted more than two months, with no outside help, to be the largest military effort by any European resistance in WWII. The timing of the Uprising coincided with the retreat of German forces from Poland head of the Soviet advance, but when the Soviets approached the city, they halted temporarily and ignored Polish radio contact instead of charging into the city. Also, there was a Soviet base a few minutes away from the city, but they never provided air support. All of this led to allegations that Stalin halted his forces on purpose to let the resistance fail and be crushed.
Churchill pleaded with Stalin and FDR to help the Polish allies, but they refused. Without obtaining Soviet air clearance, Churchill sent more than 200 supply drops in the Warsaw Airlift. Finally America did a thing and sent one mass airdrop after getting Soviet air clearance. However, it was too little too late, and the Soviet halt gave the Germans the ability to regroup and defeat the resistance. So just another lesson from history that you cannot trust the Russians. In fact, Stalin found the Home Army’s resistance so ‘inconvenient’ to his plans that their name was censored in the post-war period and he twisted the facts through propaganda in the Soviet-controlled People’s Republic of Poland.
Monument to the fighters of the Warsaw Uprising
Approximately 16,000 Polish resistance fighters were killed in the Uprising, and between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died mainly from mass executions. In the city, about 25% of Warsaw was destroyed, but after the Poles surrendered, Germans razed the vast majority of the remainder of the city as a final lesson.
Monument to the Heroes of Warsaw, also known as the Warsaw Nike for obvious reasons
Pomnik Bohaterow Getta, the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Right outside the Jewish Museum.
Monument at the Ghetto walls
After the war, Polish citizens led a five-year reconstruction campaign to restore the Old Town of Warsaw, a restoration so meticulous that the entire new centre is a UNESCO World Heritage site. They used old paintings and photographs to ensure that the reconstruction got much of the city’s rich architectural heritage correct, and its thanks to that campaign that Warsaw looks as historic as it does.
Today, Warsaw’s historic center is gorgeous, filled with lovely colors and important buildings, belying a history that left it completely destroyed.
The Warsaw Mermaid is an important symbol of the city, featured on its coat of arms. There are several legends about the mermaid, and the official City legend says that she decided to stay in Warsaw after coming upon the riverbank near the Old Town. Fishermen noticed that there was something making waves, tangling their nets, and releasing their fish (yas queen). The fishermen were going to trap the mermaid, but then she started singing and they fell in love, as you do. But a rich merchant (always bad) trapped the mermaid and imprisoned her. She cried, and when the fishermen heard her cried they rescued her. In return, the mermaid has been armed with a sword and a shield so she is ready to help protect the city and its lovely residents. Other versions of this story say that the Warsaw Mermaid is the sister of the Copenhagen Mermaid (the Little Mermaid). Could be true considering the Copenhagen/Little one had all those sisters. This statute stands in the Old Town Square.
So yes, when you go to Warsaw you have to take this walking tour and learn about the history. You can’t just go and enjoy the insane vegan food (next post) and not pay your respects to its past. It’s so important to learn and remember what happened here, and with any luck learn from it.
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Nukus, Uzbekistan: I Finally Find Pretzels (And Also Interesting Art)
After our time in Khiva, we decided to stop in the tiny town of Nukus, Uzbekistan for one purpose: to see its art museum. Now, you might be wondering what kind of art a museum in the middle of nowhere might have to bring a person so out of their way. A rare Picasso? A beautiful Monet? (I know only the most famous artmakers apparently.) You crazy if you thought that; this is the middle of nowhere Uzbekistan. No, the Nukus Museum of Art houses the second largest collection of Russian avant-garde art in the world. I know it doesn’t sound great, but it’s a very cool thing and I’ll tell you why.
So once upon a time there was this man Igor Savitsky (“accordion genius, plays weddings at 7-years-old” anyone?), who was a Russian painter and archaeologist. Igor visited the Karakalpakstan region of Uzbekistan (where Nukus is located) in 1950, and somehow was like hey this place rocks/is dust I’m gonna stay. He moved to Nukus and started collecting all kinds of crap. After he amassed quite a collection of jewelry and artifacts and carpets and such, he convinced the place that they needed a museum to house all of it. They were like why don’t you keep all your crap in your attic like normal people and he was like just trust me on this and they were like I guess man. So the authorities established a museum and made Igor the curator, and once he had that sweet sweet position locked down, he started focusing on collecting the art of Central Asian artists and those whose work had been banned in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Igor specifically directed his efforts at finding these artists and displaying them in his museum in order to give them the representation and acclaim they never got to enjoy because Stalin was such a buzzkill at art too. Because the museum houses such politically important work, and so much of it (only St. Petersburg has a larger collection of Russian avant-garde), the Nukus Museum of Art – actually called “The State Art Museum of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, named after I.V. Savitsky” (yes the ‘named after’ is part of the full legit name omg) (and then also like is it named after him or not because it looks like the real name is The State Art Museum of the R of K right and if it was actually named after him it would be The Savitsky Museum am I right like you can’t just say ‘named after’ if it’s not actually named after??? how do words work) – has become a must-see attraction for tourists in Uzbekistan. And that is why we went.
the view from our car
To get there from Khiva, though, there’s not really good transit. We had to hire another car and driver through Sultan at Avantour tour company. He told us that the ride would take about 4-5 hours. So on our last morning in Khiva, we woke up at 6am, planning to leave about 7am, arrive in Nukus by noon, have lunch, and then have a few hours in the museum before our train that evening. Ahem. We left at 7am and got there at 9:45. JFC I could have slept for two more hours. JFC even more, we had to WAIT for the museum to open! Man alive. I guess it’s better than being in a car for longer but like come on guys get your facts straight. He didn’t even speed.
Our driver dropped us at the Nukus train station, where we stored our bags. The people looked at us like wtf are you guys doing here there is not a train until tonight (one train town) and we were like hayyy please don’t steal our stuffff. They didn’t give a receipt or anything for the bags but they said (without using words) ‘we’ll know this was yours, nerdy white people’. Then we went to the museum and it was pretty interesting. I thought it would be more political art, like on its face, but it was more regular art but by people who challenged authority. Or maybe it was challenging authority for its time, but nowadays we are used to much more blatant opposition and much more in-your-face offense so I couldn’t tell that these works were crossing a line since we are so far past where that line was 50 years ago. The line is a dot to you.
Pictures weren’t allowed in the museum and I don’t break worthwhile rules, so if you want to see some of the works on display you’ll have to go to Uzbekistan HA HA ARE YOU? There were guard ladies who were supes annoying, following us around the whole time. I didn’t notice if they followed others too but it was really uncomfortable. Maybe they chose us because we were the youngest and yoots usually cause trouble? There were lots of other visitors to the museum (a surprising fact, considering I thought we were the only people in the whole town) but they were all older and mostly in big tour groups. Anyway it was a pretty good museum, but oh my god we were so tired. This trip was catching up with us and we were getting a little delirious. We were still able to appreciate all the interesting art, but I was just laughing the entire time (not appropriate) as I do when I’m overtired.
The museum is actually in two buildings (second largest collection n the world and all that) and you have to check your bags, even wee purses, which is kind of lame. So much art!
After all the art, we walked around trying to find food. This was hard because Nukus is a tiny little desert town and there was not much happening. We passed a few important-looking buildings but no one was around for us to ask what they were, and I tried googling but to no avail. I’ll share the pictures of said buildings with you so you can also wonder forever what they are (or be better than I am at googling).
And yes I did try googling ‘jaslar awqami’ but it’s not helpful. you go look at all the stuff that comes up. I hope it just means public pool because awqami sounds like aqua-me. and also it would be hilarious if this super official nicest building for hundos of miles was just a pool with a capital p that rhymes with g that stands for go like let’s gooooo
Finally we found a place that sold non-fast food that was open. This very random Uzbek restaurant with a separate small Korean food menu (?) was called Sheraton but was unrelated to the hotel chain. It was full of those older tourists we saw earlier, I guess because it was ostensibly the only decent restaurant open. I was so excited to see that the menu had a variety of vegetable dishes! Also, one was translated as Pine Forest, which was the name of my camp, so that seemed like a good sign.
Unfortunately, most of the salads were dairy-based and/or covered in mayo, but I found one that seemed safe for vegans, translating roughly as garlic and greens. I was so excited to get what I expected was a plate of garlicky sauteed greens. I hadn’t had greens cooked like that in so long! I was so pumped.
My phone notes from this travel day literally just say ‘this country is complete bullshit’
Alas.
It was literally a plate of raw garlic, raw UNCUT spring onions, and lots of herbs. Oh and plus green bell pepper, the one vegetable I hate. COME ON UNIVERSE. I guess it was a companion piece to one of the Korean stews or something but like y’all should have SAID SOMETHING.
Sigh. What a disappointment. We had hours left before our train, to wander around and see all the sights (no more sights) and buy water for our 3 day train train (we’ll talk about that next post), so we wandered. It was very hot and dry and dusty, and the main road was destroyed with ongoing construction (as we expect everywhere in this country), so it was kind of harrowing to walk down it when like, suddenly there would be no more road and cars were coming. Luckily, there were lots of little convenience stores, and luckily, one had a nice babushka selling all kinds of baked goods in bulk – including hard pretzel sticks! I’d never seen pretzel sticks sold in bulk and I hadn’t seen pretzels in weeks so this was a dance dance dance moment. My pretzel babushka was the one nice person we came across in Nukus. Why is everyone there so mean? Is it because they are so bored and also had a real weird lunch?
So that was our day in Nukus! I know right. The Savitsky (I’m going for it) Museum was pretty cool and I’m glad we got to see such an important museum. But I was a little jealous of those old tourists who got off a big bus, saw the museum, and then got right back on the bus. If you go, make sure you don’t have too much time to spend wandering the town. After our too-much-time, we boarded our longest train in months – two nights from Nukus, Uzbekistan to Volgograd, Russia. It’s a doozy so look out for the next post!
St. Petersburg, Russia: So Much Better Than What “Anastasia” Taught Me
Greetings from Cankt Peterbourg! I wish I could access the Russian keyboard on this little netbook but I can’t/don’t feel like it. We’re having a great time in St. Petersburg, which in English adds the ‘s’ after Peter but in the Russian there’s no ‘s’! Fun! With! Languages! Before this trip, my only exposure to this quite charming city was the song from “Anastasia” that starts: “St. Petersburg is gloomy! St. Petersburg is bleak! My underwear got frozen standing here all week!” But it’s better than that. Well that is a very low bar but St. Petersburg is very nice. Though it has been raining hard a lot which is gloomy, and yes it is cold but like, for the summer, not for the earth, and definitely not cold enough to freeze undies. The city is a very interesting mix of old and new school while still seeming totally European. We are surely easing in slowly to the onslaught of Soviet towns we will be seeing later, because right now it still feels like we’re in Europe.
Well, except for the Cyrillic everywhere! It is so strange and so cool to finally see what we have been preparing for with our Russian classes. We’re doing great, if not at communicating with people (omg SLOW DOWN (oh and maybe could you write it down I’m better at reading kthx)) then at least at reading signs (and menus! Most are in English too! We’re great at that!). They say for all languages you really learn when you are immersed, and I can see how true that would be for Russian, now that we actually are surrounded by it and its alphabet. We’re definitely getting stronger with reading Cyrillic quickly and I have high hopes that that will lead to comprehension. Maybe by the time we get to Siberia we will actually be able to handle the fact that no one will speak English! I dream big.
When we got off the train on Saturday at Finylandskiy Vauxhall (named after the country we had just left? That’s confusing!), we walked around the station to find the giant Lenin statue, commemorating the big speech he gave when he arrived in St. Petey’s in 1917 during the Revolution. We start our sightseeing immediately, even when we have 90-pound backpacks on (and I’m frontpacking too ughhh I have too much stuff but I don’t know what I can get rid of! I really did just bring the bare minimum but we’re going to every season!). We walked the half hour or so to our hostel, The Travellers’ Palace, and it was hot so that was pretty rough because like I said, 90 pounds. I will either break or be super strong by the end of this. The receptionist at the hostel is very friendly and helpful, and even though we can hear every footstep people take at all hours of the night and they sound like gorillas stomping around and even though someone stole my bananas and apples from the fridge (they were labelled!) (and I KNOW bananas in the fridge is weird but I was keeping everything together in the labelled bag (so f-ing ironic!)), we like the hostel fine. The shower is legit the strongest I can remember taking in my entire life, like it was intended for an elephant and I wish I could take it with me. The rooms here are named after famous Russian literary characters, like Onegin and Catherine. It was quite the good omen when we were put in Karenina, considering Anna K is my favorite book (once you pretend that that final section about Levin finding Jesus by talking to peasants (“Life is often so unpleasant / You would know this, as a peasant!”) doesn’t exist)! There’s a little light-up train on my bedside table and everything, haha so morbid. And across the hall is the room called Bolkonsky, like the prince’s family in War & Peace! So it’s like the universe wants me to keep singing “The Great Comet” at every moment of this trip!
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Nevsky Prospekt
Horse Wash!
Once we dropped our stuff, it was already late afternoon, so the best use of our time was to stroll the Nevsky Prospekt, the main boulevard running through the city that everyone spells with a K even in English so I’m rolling with it. It houses all the big stores, lots of restaurants, a good number of statues and monuments, and lots and lots of people. Walking along it is a great first thing to do in St. Petey’s because you can get a sense of the city’s layout and feel, while seeing both important historical markers and fun Russian chain stores (like the Russian version of Sephora whose Russian name is pronounced like Rive Gauche lol that and Sushi Wok, where the ‘sushi’ is in Cyrillic but the ‘wok’ is in our/Latin characters, crack me up every time. There are also horse statues along the various canals which we liked because it reminds us of our flat in London (those who have been over and have seen what we call the Horse Wash will know why!).
Singersss
On the Nevksy Prospekt is the famous Singers sewing machine factory, or the building that used to be that and now is a giant bookstore in the most beautiful building along the boulevard. Inside, they had a snack section that had vegan bars (similar to Lara Bars)! Marked and everything! Come on obviously I love books and bookstores but we can’t buy books on this trip (or anything) but we need snacks. We also saw this monument to Catherine the Great (with her laavaaahs).
you can call me kitty kat
So many canals all over the place, so they call StP the Venice of the North and it’s hard to get a handle on streets
The other hugely famous building along the Nevsky Prospekt is the giant department store Gostiny Dvor. Although we are so determined not to add anything to our packs right at the beginning of the summer, we have a necessity exception – and we needed umbrellas so we bought umbrellas there yesterday (after we got drenched in a downpour, naturally). Upstairs at the Gostiny Dvor, the long, curving walkways are nearly empty and provide great views of the Prospekt. What most people don’t find, however, is the INSANE CELEBRITY FIGURE AND ANIMAL SCULPTURE GARDEN around a far bend that no one goes to. OH MY GOD, look, it’s Hagrid and the Harry Potter kids STANDING BEHIND PUTIN! No big deal! Don’t mind the peasants with sickles! OR THE DINOSAUR! Why this isn’t the #1 thing to do in St. Petersburg I will never understand. As it is, it’s pretty much hidden and NO ONE was there or even nearby so I think I discovered some kind of magical walkway.
you’re a wizard vladdy
Ruby Sparks was a very good movie
As for serious things, the Kazan Cathedral is along the Prospekt, a Russian Orthodox church dedicated not to Elia or even Zoe but to Our Lady of Kazan, which I know is very helpful. It’s not a very nice looking Cathedral, kind of the most Soviet and drab-looking thing we’ve seen yet, but it could just be that it is severely outshone by the gorgeous cathedral across the way from it, The Church of Spilled Blood. I know, I know, it doesn’t exactly sound like the most beautiful spot in all St. Petersburg, but it is! It’s real name is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood which yes doesn’t really help my case. So it’s built around the spot where Alexander II was mortally wounded and inside there’s a little stone area and canopy marking the exact spot where he was hit by grenades and suffered the injuries that killed him a little later (he actually died in the Hermitage) you know what why don’t I just show you:
no use crying over spilled oooohhhh nm
come at me laser jesus
See it really is soo beautiful even though it’s so dire. But all churches are built around and commemorating dire circumstances. This church, which we went in yesterday, is one of the most incredible churches I’ve ever seen, definitely in my top five. I know I said in a recent Spain post that ugh churches, who can tell them apart after St Peter’s, but this was a great one. I was blown away by how beautiful it was inside and outside. Usually they’re whatever on the inside, full of paintings of oldies and crucifixen, but this one is decorated in 100% MOSAIC. Every painting and image you see is made up of tiny tiles (that is what mosaic means!). See that lady getting lasered from the heavens by a laser-happy Jesus? ALL TILES. How incredible is this?
what happens if the glue stops working rain of tiles |
This canopy covers the actual spot where Alexander II was hit by the grenade/s. They built the church around it. |
this is the most beautiful lavish door to jesus I’ve ever seen
THE HERMITAGE
erma gerd, the hermiterge
On Sunday, we woke up early (lol not) and went to The Hermitage, the endless museum inside the Winter Palace. We read about how crowded it is, especially in the summer, and how the lines for tickets can stretch to a kilometer long. Because of this, we were tempted to buy tickets online, but they cost $18 online and only 700 rubles in person so we decided to risk it. And it’s a good thing we did, because there was no line. We bought tickets at one of several kiosks in the courtyard and went right in. On a Sunday! In the summer! We were so pleased with ourselves and got a little too cocky about it because after about an hour and half the Chinese cruise ship groups arrived ahhhh! It was wall to wall and they really like to push so it got a little rough. But it was still great. The Hermitage has millions of pieces of art, so you really need a plan to make sure you see what you wanna see. The state rooms of the palace and the Russian art are the most important. The Italian and French art is great, of course, but we’ve seen that literally every weekend at museums in London. That sounds very ridiculous of me but when you live in a museumy city like London, it’s important to see stuff that’s different from what you see all the time and feel okay about skipping the same same stuff. So in the Hermitage, we focused on the palace parts, the preserved rooms and furniture and sculptures and stuff, over paintings that have nothing to do with Russian history. And the palace rooms, hoo boy are they amazing. We both love malachite and cobalt shiz and this palace was full of both. It was all so stunning. I especially loved this gazebo.
i wish luke and lorelai got married on this one
We were both obsessed with the library, which was so Belle. And I loved the Peacock Clock, which I didn’t know at first even was a clock. I mean the tiny mushroom thing at the bottom has a clock on it so it’s not like the whole amazing gold artwork is a clock, it’s literally just the smallest piece of it that is a clock, but still, pretty cool. I got in fights with Chinese men who were trying to push me aside when I was taking this picture.
The Hermitage is important to visit, I think, since it’s such a well-known tourist attraction, but it’s exhausting. It goes on forever, and the bathrooms are very poorly located. We had to backtrack through to the entrance to find one, when we were like in the middle of the top floor. So dumb. It shouldn’t be that hard! But I’m glad we went and saw the great pieces they had. It’s easy to spend hours and hours there, but don’t.
I expect grander thrones 
how beautiful is this fancy witch’s cauldron 
a clock that is also a giant piece of furntiure |
not sure what this was but i liked it it was like a big like thing 
this was called the boudoir but it was just a lot of velvety chairs so nice though |
Even though we were pretty beat after our day at the Hermiterge, we decided to walk to St. Isaac’s Cathedral next (in the pouring rain! no umbrellas yet!) and climb the 260 stairs to the top of the golden dome! For the view! So pretty! The golden dome you see in the picture is very striking in the skyline. The climb wasn’t that bad at all, and it was worth it for the stunning views. Note that the main Cathedral is one ticket and the entrance for the climb to the top of the dome is another separate ticket. It’s worth it though! Again I’m proved wrong because the insides of this church were beautiful too. Russia keeps proving me wrong about church insides! St. Isaac’s was full of malachite columns which were stunning.
the view from the top of Isaac’s
main altar at Isaac’s |
that’s Isaac! no i don’t know |
The cathedral tour of Russia is only just beginning! After we saw the Church of Spilled Blood, we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original citadel of St. Petersburg built by Peter the Great in 1703. It’s a big complex full of various museums, but we skipped the many museums (so many museums!) and went straight to the Peter & Paul Cathedral, the gold spire in the city skyline. This Cathedral houses the tombs of Russian czars from Peter I to Alexander III, and there’s a little room off to the side with the Romanovs, including Anastasia, which I was excited to see and then realized how messed up that is. But speaking of, I still haven’t written about the new Broadway musical so maybe I will do that in honor of seeing her tomb! So morbid I’m sorry. It was a decent show, and a decent church. The fortress was best for its views of the Hermitage and other stately buildings from the other side of the river. Luckily today was the one sunny day in the middle of lots of rain so this view on our walk along the riverfront fortress was lovely.
the Romanovs tombs
After we saw all the things Monday, we took the subway (new subway!) down to the Grand Maket Rossiya, which is a private museum of a scale model of ALL OF RUSSIA. It is AWESOME. It shows everyday life in every part of Russia, from St. Petersburg (included the building we were in, weeeird) and all the monuments we’ve seen so far, to Moscow, to Siberia and the Urals and the Sochi Olympics and farmers everywhere and a movie studio with various funny backlots and people on the beach and lots of trains and lots of construction and just EVERYTHING you could imagine in life, they had it on the model. It was so cool, and so giant and detailed that it took an hour and a half just to walk around it once. One of the coolest parts was that the lights would go down every 13 minutes for 2 minutes, gradually to show the sun setting and then rising. Some of the ‘night’ sections there were thunderstorms which was kind of crazy. My favorite part, of course, was that Vinnie Poo (the Russian Winnie the Pooh who is NOTHING like the Winnie we know) was hidden in one of the forests. I also loved the “Bad Husband” section that showed a man in his underwear on the sidewalk as his wife threw all his clothes out the window. Like. What.
Is that Putin riding a bear?? 
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So yeah so far St Petersburg has been very nice! The weather is ploha, with super heavy rainstorms most days. Yay for anoraks! Drivers here are absolutely insane, like super speeding down the Nevksy and no cops ever stop it. Don’t rent a car here! Traffic is really bad too so we mostly walk everywhere. One thing I’ve noticed is how confusing but nice the pedestrian crossings are. Most have green walking man countdown clocks, and most give you a crossing time of well over 30 seconds, some even 90 seconds! BUT, the confusing part, the red man/don’t walk man gets a countdown too, and sometimes they switch red to green/ stop to go without finishing the clock. Like yesterday we were crossing and green man said we had 30 seconds left but then it changed to red man and cars started going. I don’t know about that! I am tired. We’ve done a lot and we still have some museums we haven’t discussed yet! Today we are thinking of going to Peterhof, like the Versailles of Russia, but again it is super storming and it’s really a good weather type thing. We will see! Last night we saw the World’s Longest Opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, which was, well, long. It wasn’t as long time-wise as the Mastersingers but it was longer soul-wise. It also might be as fun to write about as the Mastersingers was so stay tuned! A little more on St Pete’s to come (and food!), and then we’re off literally on a midnight train to Moscow. Byeeee!
