Posted by On August 31st, 2006 I woke up on a small, creaky cot in a grimy, mosquito-infested hostel deep in the heart of St. Petersburg, Russia. I was feeling underfed, unrested, and a little hungover, and I seemed to be fostering the beginnings of a cold, likely brought on by sleep-deprivation induced by those pesky mosquitoes. Frankly, I was hardly in any condition to begin one of the more entertaining days of this long-feeling life of mine, but you can’t really plan for this stuff.
Or can you?
Sure, I had planned to tack a train-ride to St. Petersburg onto the end of my trans-Scandinavian solo bicycle romp but I hadn’t expected Russia’s Imperial capital to be so grand, so fun, and so alcohol-drenched. I mean you could buy a bottle of hard liquor in a car dealership. Furthermore, I woke up with the bulk of this day fully planned out but I had little idea that the ensuing hours would be so genuinely eye-popping and so much damn fun. The alcohol was, of course, a given.
I showered a thick swath of bug repellent from my well-bitten body (St. Petersburg was built on a huge marsh so it’s a breeding ground) and cobbled together a meagre breakfast from the truncated complimentary offerings in the hostel’s common room, one that consisted mostly of bad coffee and good conversation with fellow backpackers. Feeling somewhat humanoid I headed out into the hustling streets and found a bus going to the Winter Palace.
The Winter Palace is a staggeringly elaborate complex of buildings at the end the city’s expansive main drag (Nevsky Prospekt), and it is home to one the world’s greatest art collections. It is undisputedly the world’s largest collection by square footage, and even then only a tiny bit of their three million pieces of art are on display at any one time. I’m telling you the collection is huge, filling five remarkable (and physically connected) buildings. And the buildings that comprise the palace are themselves astounding enough to draw gapers from around the world.
Navigating the 1,057 rooms(!) reveals a stunning and overwhelming history of artistic creation. There is the ancient Egyptian collection, an entire wing of Greco-Roman pieces, two full rooms (forty-two works!) by Picasso, there’s the Rembrandt hall (including Danea, which was attacked in 1985 by a maniac who doused it with sulphuric acid and slashed the piece twice with a knife), three rooms dedicated to Matisse, several works by Van Gogh, Kandinski, Da Vinci, and Monet; it just goes on and on and on. The place is an overload to the senses, especially when you consider that the very walls and floors and ceilings that surround these historic works are also worthy of constant attention. A single day is by far insufficient for a visit. I will forever remember my visit to the Hermitage as a lifetime highlight.
About halfway through my tour I ran into an American George Clooney-lookalike that I had hung out with at the hostel the previous night. He had just arrived at the museum and had immediately gotten lost. I led him back to the beginning of the collection and we wandered the halls together until the place closed. I was thrilled to have an excuse to walk through those rooms a second time.
Afterwards we spent about three hours making our way back to the hostel – which was about a twenty minute walk – taking in a thousand sights along the way. I’m telling you, St. Petersburg is a huge, fascinating, busy city. At my insistence we stopped at the impressive Stroganoff Castle and had dinner in their courtyard. However unlikely, I suppose it’s possible that I’ll someday have better beef stroganoff but I doubt very much that I’ll ever enjoy the dish as much as I did there, savouring every bite made right in the very building where the dish was first created. Man, I enjoyed that meal; it was so good I can’t even tell you (though I guess I just did). What a day!
When we finally got back to the hostel I was beyond exhausted and planned on doing a whole bunch of nothing before turning in early. But me and Clooney ran into our drinking buddy from the night before who told us with a raised eyebrow that he was on his way out to a bar to see some live music. Succumbing to my better judgement I bit the bullet and joined them, thank goodness.
If I thought my day of culture and entertainment was done, sharing a table at a basement bar called Fish Fabrique with a group of hard-drinking young Russians while a band called Stanislavsky rocked the casbah proved me very, very wrong. But that, of course, is another story.
(For a detailed peek inside the Winter Palace [and a deep dive into Russian history] I highly recommend a movie called Russian Ark. It’s a remarkable film that snakes its way through the Winter Palace in a single, continuous, ninety-six minute shot. I’m talking about a dramatic, scripted film with lead actors and a cast of more than a thousand extras. The scenes takes place in dozens of different rooms throughout the Palace, and it was shot by simply hitting “record” on one camera and having it cleverly and creatively follow the action for an hour-and-a-half before pressing “stop”. Apparently they had to try it twice because one of the actors flubbed a line during the first attempt.
It’s a really, really cool flick.)
Todd Man Out 