PETROPAVLOVSK FORTRESS
Peter the Great's first construction project in St. Petersburg was the
Petropavlovsk Fortress (Peter and Paul Fortress) founded in 1703, which served as his
first administrative headquarters. The citadel is across the Neva
River and can be seen from the Winter Palace. We took the metro for a
short trip to the fortress before visiting the Zoological Museum that
Robin wanted to see on his last day in St. Petersburg.
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| Petropavlovsk Fortress -Winter Palace on the left |
ZOOLOGICAL MUSEUM
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| woolly mammoth skeleton |
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| mammoth skeleton with complete tusks |
The
Zoological Museum has a unique exhibit, a complete woolly mammoth.
Some 44,000-years old, the male mammoth was killed by falling off a
cliff and preserved in permafrost in northeastern Russia. It is
believed to be the only stuffed mammoth in existence.
The mammoth is displayed in the position it was found in situ
when it was dug up. The Zoological Museum has a large display of all
kinds of skeletal displays and stuffed animals. It was fascinating
and a lot of fun to see.
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| stuffed baby mammoth found intact in permafrost |
 |
| diorama of two tigers |
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| diorama of an eagles nest |
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| evolution |
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| wolf family diorama |
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| bros. |
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| leopard diorama |
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| 44,000-year-old stuffed woolly mammoth found intact in permafrost |
THE
GOOD SAMARITAN
We had our own experience of unexpected help from a total stranger as in the biblical allegory. One day, we took
the right bus (#27) in the wrong direction. A young man sitting next
to me overheard us wondering if the bus would get to our stop at the Mariinsky Theater. It turned out he understood English and advised us to get off the bus, cross the Nevsky
Prospect, and take another #27 bus in the opposite direction. He said although we could get to Mariinsky either way, it would be much shorter than going the long way around. He talked to
the ticket lady and she very obligingly gave us our money back to get off the bus and
take another one. The guy was very friendly and got off the bus with
us to show us the way to the bus stop. I skeptically asked him if this was his
stop. He smiled and said no, but the next one was his stop and close enough to walk to. We were naturally overwhelmed with gratitude and chatted and got acquainted while
walking and waiting for our bus. It was a very nice experience with our own Good Samaritan and I silently wished him well as he receded down Nevsky into the dusky distance.
FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY
The Idiot
 |
| warm cozy room in the "Idiot" |
 |
antique typewriter with
Cyrillic alphabet |
As it was Robin's last day, we decided to
have a farewell dinner at a restaurant near the apartment that we had
grown fond of called “Idiot” after a character, Prince Mishkin,
in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot. The restaurant is in
the basement of the building and is decorated with memorabilia and antiques imparting a warm and cozy 19th Century atmosphere.
Crime and Punishment
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| Dostoevsky's tomb |
 |
Dostoevsky's apartment at the time he wrote
Crime and Punishment |
Fyodor
Dostoevsky is one of my favorite writers. One day we found his
gravesite in a cemetery dedicated to writers, artists and musicians.
It just so happened that our St. Petersburg apartment was practically
around the corner from the neighborhood Dostoevsky lived in when he
wrote his best known novel Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky's
apartment building and the police station where his main character,
Raskolnikov, turned himself in for murdering an old pawnbroker woman
can still be seen.
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| the police station today - OMOH Riot Police headquarters |
CATS
There
is an interesting story associated with cats in St. Petersburg.
During the siege of Leningrad (a.k.a. St. Petersburg) by Germany in World War II rats
were overrunning everything and eating up what little stores there
were in the besieged city. The city government managed to sneak in
several truckloads of cats to control the rats. The strategy was
successful and, consequently, cats are highly revered in St.
Petersburg. I had heard that there were small statues of cats here
and there in innocuous places around the city. We found two of the them outside
of the second stories of two buildings off Nevsky Prospect.
A LITTLE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
 |
| Chinese tour group in the Kremlin, Moscow |
If you've been
following international trends you might be aware of the increasingly
close ties between Russia and China. Having studied History at the university, this trend interests me and I wanted to see first hand what was happening in these two countries. They are members of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO)
a political, economic, and security organisation,
BRICS (the acronym for an association of five major emerging national
economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). They are
cooperating on China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Russia's
Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), building economic, political and
military ties across the vast Eurasian continent. In other words, they are part of a global trend of changing power dynamics. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in unipolar Western dominance until the September 11, 2001 attack. With the West preoccupied by the ill-conceived and mismanaged "War on Terror", Russia and China quietly developed into major powers, strong enough to compete for change to a more multilateral balance of global power. This, it seems to me, is the root cause of the global tensions and turmoil we have been experiencing since 9/11.
 |
| Chinese tour groups headed for a Chinese restaurant |
I
began to notice the large number of Chinese tour groups in Red Square
and the Kremlin in Moscow. They were everywhere and highly visible,
even more so in St. Petersburg. For example, there was a Chinese restaurant just
around the corner from our apartment. Every day there were several tour buses of Chinese tourists coming to the restaurant and
milling around outside either going in or coming out. These
ubiquitous large and highly visible groups of Chinese tourists in Russia are an indication of the growing strength of this China/Russia alliance.
This
post concludes my impressions, thoughts and photos of our trip to
Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia in September 2017.
We had our own experience of unexpected help from a total stranger as in the biblical allegory. One day, we took
the right bus (#27) in the wrong direction. A young man sitting next
to me overheard us wondering if the bus would get to our stop at the Mariinsky Theater. It turned out he understood English and advised us to get off the bus, cross the Nevsky
Prospect, and take another #27 bus in the opposite direction. He said although we could get to Mariinsky either way, it would be much shorter than going the long way around. He talked to
the ticket lady and she very obligingly gave us our money back to get off the bus and
take another one. The guy was very friendly and got off the bus with
us to show us the way to the bus stop. I skeptically asked him if this was his
stop. He smiled and said no, but the next one was his stop and close enough to walk to. We were naturally overwhelmed with gratitude and chatted and got acquainted while
walking and waiting for our bus. It was a very nice experience with our own Good Samaritan and I silently wished him well as he receded down Nevsky into the dusky distance. 
There
is an interesting story associated with cats in St. Petersburg.
During the siege of Leningrad (a.k.a. St. Petersburg) by Germany in World War II rats
were overrunning everything and eating up what little stores there
were in the besieged city. The city government managed to sneak in
several truckloads of cats to control the rats. The strategy was
successful and, consequently, cats are highly revered in St.
Petersburg. I had heard that there were small statues of cats here
and there in innocuous places around the city. We found two of the them outside
of the second stories of two buildings off Nevsky Prospect.
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