My Russian Adventure, St Petersburg

Nevsky Prospekt

Strolling St. Petersburg's main thoroughfare.

Click on any image for an enlarged view.

Part two:

On our last afternoon in St. Petersburg, Nino and I were strolling down a side street off of Nevsky Prospect when I spotted a familiar sign over a doorway. It was fashioned out of a billiards rack with the billiard balls glued in place. A pool hall! Great, let's see what a pool hall in St. Petersburg looks like!

The building was a classic Petersburg building, intricate designs around the windows, a little worn to look at up close, but still with great character and a cozy look that invites you inside. Up a beautiful and large flight of stairs was a restaurant, pretty nice and appropriately over priced for Russian standards. Up the stairs further was the pool room. There were about six tables with a bar in another room off to the side, a good place to while away a little time.

Nino and I played a game; I had started teaching her to shoot pool back in Moscow and she was picking up on it quickly. A young man came over and started to chat with us. He worked there, sort of ran the pool hall for the owner of the restaurant and bar, from what I could gather. He asked me if I wanted to play a game, I guess realizing that Nino was not great competition for me. This was fine with her, as she was just as happy to sit down with a glass of wine and watch the pedestrians and sights out of one of the large windows.

Knowing full well that anybody who worked in a pool hall is going to be no slouch at this game, I prepared myself for a stiff trouncing. However, I was shooting pretty good and he was taking it easy and just having fun. Then I made a bank shot that didn't look like it had much of a chance at first, and his eyebrows raised a bit. He took the rest of the game a bit more seriously, but it was too late. I knocked in my last two and then the eight ball, and it was USA - 1, Russia - 0.

He asked me, with Nino interpreting, if I wanted to play another game and just joking I said, "Well, I usually only play for vodka." Shouldn't have opened my big mouth, because he found this highly amusing and insisted we play for a glass of vodka. He had some bad breaks this game, and I was set up very nicely, so I cruised to an easy win, while he struggled with some very badly placed balls.

One more game and I was up three to zero, and thanks to the betting arrangements, I was now rather tipsy. He took full advantage of this fact and came blistering from behind to win three straight, very decisive, victories to tie it up at three apiece. We left the score there, as we were meeting Galina for dinner, and he had made his point quite clearly. I was really no match for him, but had a few lucky breaks in the earlier games. We shook hands and he wished me a pleasant stay my last few hours in St. Petersburg, and we said goodbye.

After the two glasses of vodka I had won, walking down the street presented a new perspective. Six games of pool had left a strange tick in my psyche. Every time I blinked my eyes, I heard the sound of billiard balls colliding. I kept expecting each car I saw rolling down the street to bump into another one, and send it skidding down into the water, as if knocking it into a giant pool table pocket. Everything had molded into billiards, "That bus over there could hit that Lada into the Volkswagon for a beautiful combination. Or maybe just go straight on into the trolley car for an easier, straight-on shot." I needed some food.

We met Galina and went to a Mexican restaurant around the corner from the pool hall. It was a noisy place and looked like fun, but I passed on the margaritas. Some chips going down the old gullet soaked up some of the vodka and I started feeling better. Waiters and waitresses didn't turn into human billiard balls, but instead became the wonderful bringers of food I always love them to be.

Across a few tables were a group of Russian men participating in a drinking custom I had never seen before. They each had a shot glass of vodka (this I had seen plenty of in Russia). But before drinking them all together they shouted something in Russian and pounded the glasses on the table three times in unison.

I tried it with my glass of water a couple of times, but something was definately missing from the experience. Regardless, we were having fun.

While waiting for the food to arrive, and hearing Nino and Galina chattering away in Russian, my mind drifted off and surveyed the many amazing things I had seen in Petersburg. Palace Square, its huge expanse in every direction as I stood at its center next to the Alexander Column. I traced the distance with my eyes from the archway to the Winter Palace, and watched young people sitting around a circle talking like young people do all over the world.

In the states, they'd probably be sitting at a shopping mall, or a convenience store parking lot. But here in Petersburg they are on one of the most historic sites in history, between two of the world's great architectural achievements, and probably talking about the latest music. One of the amazing things to me about Russia is how citizens go about their daily business, constantly surrounded by some of the most amazing pieces of history and culture.

I'm sure when you spend your whole life around these things they become part of scenery, like a park bench or an old tree. But to someone from a place like Atlanta, these things are difficult to even comprehend, and impossible to pass by without an overwhelming sense of significance and amazement.

What was it truly like when Peter the Great was overseeing the construction of St. Petersburg? That question hung in the air around me like ever present sun of the White Nights. Imagine the incredible mass of workers, struggling day and night to build these enduring structures, and palaces, the stone bridges spanning the canals, even the streets we walked along.

These poor wretches didn't have diesel powered tractors, no cranes like the ones all over Moscow today that are constructing the new high rise apartments. These guys climbed up ladders probably made out of tree limbs, pulled buckets of stones by ropes to the tops of cathedral towers. The buildings are impressive enough on sight, if built by today's modern machinery, but when you think of the relatively primitive methods of contruction of the time, they almost don't look possible.

St. Petersburg is also a city that has endured incredible strife. The seige during World War II alone being enough to make you marvel at its very survival. In one museum I saw sketches of people pulling buckets of water from the river, while the Nazis fired cannons and guns outside their city. Imagine the destruction that would have taken place if Leningrad had fallen to the Germans. What would have happened to St. Petersburg? The loss could have been one of the greatest of all time.

But instead, here I sat in a Mexican restaurant with friends, watching a bunch of guys slam shot glasses of vokda, while all of Russia struggles with market reforms and massive transformations. One draws great hope for its future knowing even just a glimpse of what it has survived in the past.

After dinner we had plenty of time to kill before the train headed back south, returning us to Moscow, so we strolled the streets of St. Petersburg one last time.

The sky was overcast, threatening rain, but never fulfilling the promise. The mood this created was a bit somber, mostly perhaps because I was leaving the city. Nino and Galina had walked on ahead of me; I guessed my pace had slowed a bit, and I took the time alone to soak in my last few impressions of St. Petersburg. I watched them stroll along talking and realized that my trip was going by me rather quickly, and in just a few days I'd be heading back to the states.

I confessed to myself that I had still not figured out who and what Russia really is. But the realization I was coming to was that this was not a question that could be easily answered on a three week stay, or maybe even at all. The complexities of modern day Russia are deep and even contradictory. And now everywhere you look you see the images and influences of two seemingly different worlds sliding together, like two tectonic plates of the earth colliding.

We walked past the building you see in the photograph to the left. It's classical style drew us closer and we were obliged to walk all the way around it, studying each side and face. Many detailed features caused us to stop and examine the intricate artwork and skill that brought this building to fruition.

As does any trip to a place quite different than your home, I began to think more about America and its peculiarities. Naturally, the conveniences of the states compared with conditions in Russia spring first to mind, but these are trivial compared with the larger issues. America is a country moving much more in a single direction than Russia. Of course, we have an intense debate between conservatives and moderates about issues that a few short weeks ago seemed monumental to me, but here, from the distance of Russia, these issues appeared as exercises in micromanagement.

The world was beginning to feel like a much smaller place to me, a predictable and often repeated result of travel. I was also discovering more and more similarities between the people of our two countries, again no surprise. I had gotten off a plane just a few weeks before and felt like I had landed on another planet. Now I was moving around cities I could only imagine a short time ago and feeling quite at home, if occasionally somewhat confused.

At the station we said goodbye to Galina, she had been a wonderful host, and boarded the train back to Moscow. We had pushed our departure back a day, just to spend more time in St. Petersburg, and had even considered changing our arrangements again to stay longer. But in the end, we decided it was time to head back to Moscow. I was truly sorry to be leaving this beautiful city.

Petersburg had truly taken me by surprise. I had heard small bits of information about the city, but my knowledge was very sparse indeed. I was wholly unprepared for what was to come. By the time I left I had become pretty familiar with the major thoroughfares, had learned quite a bit about its construction and its history. And now, on the train heading south, I was wondering when I'd be back to see this magical place again. Maybe next time I should experience St. Petersburg in the winter? The palaces and gardens in the snow would be something to see. Palace Square covered in a blanket of snow! I'll have to see what my schedule looks like for next year.

I watched the city disappear from our train car window past the outer limits of the city where, once again, the huge Soviet apartment buildings reclaimed the landscape. But their encroachment has been halted by history and fate. I saw them standing in the tall, uncut grass and disrepair. Their monolithic structures will remain outside the real St. Petersburg.

Peter's dream, realized by the great architects, designers and artists of Europe, has survived through so much in its short history, it is almost impossible to imagine anything that could vanquish this elegant and enduring city. Among the cities of the world it is truly a treasure to be cherished. "See you again someday, Beautiful St. Petersburg!"