St. Petersburg, Russia -- The Hermitage

I shipped one box of winter clothes and papers to China.  Put everything else in PDF form.  Gave away and donated a bunch of clothes and am moving to China with one big and one small backpack!

Travel companion?  The one and only DD.  My backpack on the left, hers on the right.

We landed in St. Petersburg at 145AM and we were up and ready to go for a 9AM tour of the city and an 1140AM appointment at the famed Hermitage museum.

Being that Russian is a language NEITHER of us speak nor read (Cyrillic) we decided to travel Russia in a semi-private fashion.  I had a touring company book our train and hotel tickets and provide local guides.  Here is our St. Petersburg guide, Elena.

If you ever wanted to know the address of the Hermitage......it's housed in The Winter Palace of Peter I (aka Peter the Great).

 

DD and I entering on the grand entrance to the Hermitage.

This sepulchre is made ENTIRELY of Silver.  It was built for Alexander Nevitsky, who defended the city and is now, essentially, the patron saint of the City of St. Petersburg.

To give you an idea of how grand The Winter Palace is.....take a look at this doorknob.

The two-headed eagle is the symbol of the Romanov family, which ruled Russia up until the Revolution of 1917.  The two heads of the eagle represent the two parts of the Roman Empire (after the breakup) because the Romanov called themselved "Tsars", which is derived from the word Caesar. 

Now, a little Russian History lesson (mostly for me to write it down...it also impressed Elena that I was able to get it figured out so quickly).  This is Peter the Great (who had St. Petersburg built in 1703 in 9 years).  He ruled from 1682 to 1725.

This is his second wife, a Lithuanian peasant woman, who because Catherine I.  She ruled from 1725 to 1727.

After 3 of her siblings ruled for 14 years, Catherine and Peter's daughter, Elizabeth ruled from 1741 to 1762.  She is the ruler who built The Winter Palace.

Remember Elizabeth's mother, the peasant?  That made Catherine half-peasant, and therefore nobility was not allowed to marry her.  She produced no heirs so she found a relative, Peter III of Germany to come back and be Tsar of Russia.  He lasted 6 months.

However, Peter III was already married to a German, who grew to LOVE Russia and was Catherine II, aka Catherine the Great.  She ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796.

Ok, now down to 1917.  The last Tsar was killed in 1917 in the February Revolution.  A provisional government was set up, but the October Revolution brought Lenin's group to power and it was in this room in the Winter Palace that the provisional government was disbanded...and socialism was the political system of Russia for next 8 decades.

This clock marks the time that the provisional government of Russia ended.

The throne of the Tsar/Tsarina of Russia

This room in The Hermitage/Winter Palace, I loved.  It shows the portrait of most every general that was involved in the Battle of 1812 that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.  It's so....orderly, and neat.

 

Now, onto some art.  This is The Hermitage's only Michaelangelo.  A crouching figure.

The story behind this is that a dolphin and boy were best of friends. One day, the flipper of the dolphin injured the boy while they were swimming.  The dolphin carried the boy back to land, where they both died together.

I love the purple marble, porphyry.  But this is my new favorite material, malachite.  Throughout the Hermitage, you find columns of items made of this beautiful green colored marble.

Those of you know who have been following the blog for years know that I LOVE the sculptor Antonio Canova.  Turns out, I knew that this one piece was here, The Hermitage has a SLEW of original Canova's  I was in heaven.

Our guide Elena was pretty amused at my gushing and excitement about Canova.

Psyche and Cupid

Here's DD explaining to us, the myth of Orpheus.

This isn't a Canova, but I just like the iconography, Pan and Satyr.

Inside the courtyard of the Winter Palace/Hermitage.

The Hermitage is actually three (5 buildings in total) separate named palaces.  The green on the left is The Winter Palace.  The light green in the Middle is the Smaller Hermitage Buildling, and the yellow building on the right is the Hermitage Museum building.

The Hermitage Museum Building was the only one to actually be built for the purposes of being a museum.

Tradition states that newlyweds come and touch the foot of one of the twelve Hercules for strength in their marriage.  Here it is in action!

Bucharest -- The People's Palace

The big attraction in Bucharest is "The People's Palace", which was started in 1984 by Ceausescu.  It is the 2nd largest building in the world.  After the 1989 December Revolution, when Ceausescu was killed, the people of Romania finished the palace.

This is the Northern side.

Everything in the palace was taken from within the borders of Romania.  And during the construction of the palace, sacrifices were made by all people in the country.

So, we're taking a side trip here to visit with Cornelia, Tracy's former housekeeper.  This is a woman in her mid-40's who lived in the 1980's when the palace was being built.  She relayed to us stories of having to go with half the monthly rations of food during the construction of the palace.  It was all in the name of the glory of Romania.

Tracy and Cornelia's mother.  I include this picture to remind myself how lucky I am.  Cornelia's life is "blocked".  She is unemployed and has no job prospects.  She lives in the apartment in which she was born and grew up and is unmarried and has to take care of her 81 year old mother.  I need to be grateful for the choices I have and the freedom I have to do what I can and want.

Back to the palace....this is the largest ballroom in the palace.  It takes 15 people working together to roll out the carpets.

Me posing on a marble staircase.

I had.....

....to do it!

Ceausescu had the area on which the palace sits as well as the surrounding areas razed.  He made the entrance look like the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

This was Cornelia's first visit to the palace for which she and her fellow countryman sacrificed.

Bucharest 2012

Much of Bucharest looks exactly like what you expect, Soviet block buildings that are rundown.  However, there are still areas, that were not razed.  This is what pre-communist Bucharest looked like.  It lives up to its moniker of "Paris of the East"

Throughout the country, we saw banners and posters about a referendum.  Turns out that on July 29th, 2012, the Prime Minister has called a referendum on the president Basescu.  Everytime I met a Romanian I asked them how they were going to vote.  The responses were all over the place.  However, the most logical thing to do was to vote yes in impeaching the current president (even though most feel he's done a satisfactory job, getting Romania into the EU being one thing) but since he will be term-limited next year anyway, it seems most efficient to get a new president in now.

So, my final comment on Romania is that the country is STILL working through it's post-Ceausescu history.  Unlike East Germany, which pretty much as had closure on its Communist/Stasi past, Romania is still figuring it all out.  There is not yet the ability to close the book on that part of their history, to analyze it.  People are still affected by it.