Venturing through the lofty halls of the Russian National
Library, you could be forgiven for failing to notice a tiny, elderly woman
shuffling around in slippers.
Celia Iosifovich Green is no ordinary grandmother working in the library to
dust off the ancient volumes within its walls or run the staff canteen. As one
of the longest-serving members of staff and among the most highly respected,
Mrs Green occupies a place as valued as some of the medieval manuscripts and
books that surround her.
RESTAURANT REVIEW: Something's fishy at the Marine Club
You are coming out of the Hermitage with mixed feelings of apprehension. With the exception of a negligible fraction, you've failed to see the whole empire of the museum's collections you had dreamed of before coming to St Petersburg. You might not know that just nearby there is a place where you could dine well and forget all the day-long troubles with quite a small amount of money.
Pelmeny au gratin, s'il vous plait. (Photo)
It's no great secret that when it comes to food, French cuisine is considered the best in the world. So it might seem a trifle impertinent for a Russian and an English chef to turn up at one of the top hotels in Paris to introduce the hotel's head chef to some
new ideas. After all, as the saying goes, "you don't teach your grandmother how
to suck eggs!"
MUSEUMS & GALLERIES
A good-looking set of threads. (Photo)
The Russian Museum of Ethnography is hosting a two-week cultural
event which includes an exhibition of Slavic and Central Asian textile arts
followed by an international conference on the same theme.
MUSIC
Slipping the city a mitki. (Photo)
Medieval Chinese verse sung in Russian to the accompaniment of guitar, keyboards, bass and accordion is the unusual cocktail that awaits you at Andrei Vershinin's forthcoming concert this Wednesday. This unlikely combination sprung from St Petersburg's flourishing underground culture in the early 1980s.
