It’s a good thing Steve decided to post this in segments as it would be very difficult to provide a broad commentary of the entire trip in one pass. To begin, I’ll begin by telling you all something you don’t know. As many of you know, Steve is the founder, master of ceremonies, and ring-leader of our small corner of the blog world and as such, eats, lives and breathes the WBF each day. The reason that Steve is submitting his first post about a week after returning has less to do with jet lag as it does a medical crisis. Steve was hospitalized twice for a kidney stone last week and suffered a fair amount of intense abdominal pain and some nephrotic side effects before it finally passed. Between the Flomax and the narcotics for pain, it’s a wonder he was coherent at all last week. But thankfully all is well now. Hence, his somewhat belated post of the trip. Second I appreciate his comments about my capabilities as a tour planner, but assure you I am not quite the master of everything as Steve suggests because if I were, I would have picked the lotto number many times over by now. Not a day goes by that I am not acutely aware of how much I don’t know and try as I might, I’ll never get there. Not unlike our hobby I would say. The trick as many of us know is to "enjoy the ride" ("Hell in a Bucket" by John Barlow. Yes, I’m an original Deadhead).
A couple of quick comments. The magnificent sunset you see in posts #34 and #35 is the light hitting the Hermitage Museum from the restaurant where we had dinner as we celebrated the Scarlet Sails event. Sunset was at 10:30 at night and the fireworks did not occur until it was dark enough which was at 1 am. (Sunrise was 3 am so not a lot of time in the dark in that part of the world in mid-summer.) The pic of Steve and Cathy is a gem. Amazing iPhone camera.
Now, about St. Petersburg. It is well known that this city is the cultural capital of Russia and that’s the reason I wanted to visit it. It was not disappointing. The unbelievable rich history is mainly that of one family, the Romanov family, until of course, the great Bolshevik revolution of 1917. From one unreal palace and church to the next, all I kept thinking was “it’s good to be the king!” However, the king/queen liabilities were equally impressive. To begin, I lost count of how many czar and czarinas had to figure out which one of their descendants planned on taking them out, so a main vocational hazard was trying to take them out before they took you out. Didn’t exactly make for warm and fuzzy family picnics in many cases.
Thought number 2: It was important to keep reminding myself how many people died so that unbelievable wealth and power could basically in the hands of one family for hundreds of years. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would have been toast before they ever got rolling, until of course, the revolution on 1917. Only then would they have felt perfectly at home.
That brings me to modern day St. Petersburg. We all learned in 10th grade history that the most efficient form of government is an enlightened dictatorship. Putin doesn’t disappoint in that regard. St. Petersburg is a beautiful city that is continually restored at no spared expense and it shows. The streets are so clean you can eat off them. The subway is amazing, clean, modern and honestly, there is no subways system in the US I am aware of that is its equal. At the bottom of every escalator to the platforms is a manned guard house, and there are 3-5 police at the top of every station. Not one iota of graffiti anywhere. The streets are in credibly safe for walking any time of day and night. The reasons are obvious. People who wrote graffiti or commit crimes probably get sent to Siberia with little due process. Putin runs a tight ship and since St. Petersburg is his home town, it shows very well. Flowers are everywhere despite 60 days of sunshine a year. The night of the Scarlet Sails, 3M people come to the city to line the waterfront to see the Scarlet Sails ship, with 500,000 in St. Petersburg square (post #14) for a rock concert that goes basically until 3 am. (Like Times Square on NY Eve in NYC only bigger.) We walked by the stage that day during a sound check. The PA was as good as anywhere in the world. Had to be 100+ dB of clean, wide bandwidth (for rock) music. Didn’t understand a single word that was sung, as Cyrillic is not my specialty. Coming home from our dinner at 3 am, we passed thousands of kids 16-25 who were well behaved, with no evidence of drunkenness or drugs. It was scary as it was like Ozzie and Harriet land from the 1950’s.
Will continue the commentary as Steve posts more pics.
Marty