Dancing the night away never feelt so good as at last week's Charity Masqueerade Ball.
In a charity masquerade ball held last weekend at the city's Anchikov palace, St Petersburg foreign community raised $22,000 to help the first hospice in the city, three times more than last year.
It was a ball that left its 300 participants equally satisfied following the masqueraders' lottery. Jim Gillief from the British Consulate won a trip for two to Paris, courtesy of British Airways, while Christian Courbois from West Post won a trip from Delta Airlines to visit New York. Courtesy of Finnair, a trip for two to New York was won by Bart Denny of Atlantic Investments. While another foreign expat won a British Airways' trip to London.
One determined punter (who shall remain nameless) purchased a massive 26 tickets for the raffle. Said punter did win a prize.
A lightning visit from Nina Ricci ex- pert de maquillage Herve Bonneau last week left the city reeling. In a mere 48 hours, the Parisian cosmetics honcho had struck at the foundation of an entire philosophy of make-up specially adapted for long winters under the weak light of a northern sky.
Gone is the "plaster it on regardless" approach, replaced by an emphasis on blending and dramatic coloring....in theory, that is. While those with money to spend (and spare) might have been persuaded by the miraculous makeovers effected in Nina Ricci's glittering Liteiny Prospect premises -- which transformed one humble translator into a veritable society beauty -- the outside world seems unfazed enough not to start fiddling with their eyebrows.
Whilst shop assistants at Ricci continued to claim that their cosmetics were the only ones worth owning, run of the mill shops continued their roaring trade in Constance Carrol and Metro matrons continued to stun commuters with their kaleidoscopic palette. Vive la Revolution? Go home, Herve.
St Petersburg's cinemas took a di version this week from the usual "California Dreaming" fare of Brosnan and beefcake to pay tribute to the city's own rich literary heritage. The municipal cinema department filled movie houses across town, including the Kolisei and the Sever, with the genteel sights and sounds of turn of the century Petersburg, the silver age of Russian ballet, poetry and art.
Among those honored in celluloid were the poets Blok and Akhmatova, the painter Vrubel and composer Prokofiev. Natalya Vladimirova, a worker in the cinema department, said that this second Silver age festival was of a much wider scope than last year's when only poets were honored. Who knows who'll win the laurels in 1997?
Foolhardy seems to be a radical un derstatement in the description of those 30-odd (and we mean odd) wet-suited masochists who actually seemed to derive some enjoyment from scooting round the ice in front of the Pribaltysakya hotel last week.
For those who didn't want to freeze on the sidelines, the Primorskaya bay played host not to ice-skating, but to ice-windsurfing, more specifically the first round of the Russian Open.
Technically safe (or at least safer than in England, where competitions might quickly come to a wet end), the sport nevertheless looked fairly hair-raising. Experienced sailor Andy Edmondson balked at the thought. "Ice boats might go a bit faster, but at least you can sit in them," he said, before retiring inside for a nice cup of tea.
Restaurants in St Petersburg are no toriously changeable, but we might at least expect the corporate millions of Kempinsky and Polo to keep the big hotel eateries staid and simple. Yes and no, would seem to be this week's verdict.
Whilst the Hotelship Peterhof enthusiastically laid on Italian and Russian blinis for the pre-Lent feast and Nevskij Palace started to toe a more orthodox line with their Russian menu re-write, the Grand Hotel Europe not only made no menu alterations for Shrove Tuesday (though their pancakes are divinely diverse all year round) they even managed to maintain an unruffled calm at the advent of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
Mr Kohl, a guest at the hotel during his visit to the city, reportedly ate in the Europe Restaurant with no one but his bodyguards for company, and chose from the same menu as his well-heeled dining companions.