St Petersburg's parks are dead this time of year. The soil is brown and slushy, the trees are bare, and everything seems drab and dirty.
Yet a small, quiet corner of the city is very much alive: a blaze of color in dazzling reds, vibrant blues, luscious greens and radiant yellows. The sight of so much color at St Petersburg's Botanical Gardens is breathtaking. It's how you'd imagine a walk through the Garden of Eden. Read full story
PERFORMING ARTS
Chamber ballet stuck in the groove. (Photo) A new ballet theater -- the Chamber Ballet -- has recently opened
in the city center. Located next to the Mariinsky Theatre, the ballet theater should have everything going for it.
About town Junk food devotees of St Petersburg need despair no longer when they get a craving for greasy fast food in the middle of the night.
GETTING AROUND
Wanderer in the Imperium. (Cartoon by Victor Bogorad) "In many states there exist icy territories, lands that for the greater part of the year are frozen over, dead," writes Ryszard Kapuscinski, musing about Siberia. "And yet it doesn't occur to anyone to frighten children with: `Wash your hands or they'll send you to Canada!'"
MUSEUMS & GALLERIES
War booty shown in Moscow. (Photo) Art lovers caught up in the excitement of the Hermitage's current display of German war booty can feast their eyes on other previously hidden treasures in Moscow.
Struggle against modernism St Petersburg artists have launched a new Museum of Fine Arts to "revive" classical arts.
MUSIC
Mike Memorial A dozen of local rock acts will come together next Tuesday to commemorate one of the most respected Russian rockers.
Relax. (Photo) Pop music blasting from loudspeakers, a dynamic DJ announces the latest hits from a sporty BMW plonked in the middle of an enormous darkened hall -- if this sight doesn't offend your feelings then park your own BMW in the pay parking lot outside St Petersburg's newest
nightclub.
