Day 3 – Peterhof, Russia

Another day spent listening to Y. (I think I called him V., yesterday – that’s another guy) go on and on and on and on about their great underground planning! Actually I learned a lot about the way they do things the way they do.

The first hour of the day I think I heard S’s story of the pickpocketing ten different times as we had to tell everyone the story; first N., then she translates for S., then Y., then A., then V.. It was kind of interesting hearing S’s version in detail, which differs slightly from mine. He’s a bit more of hero and I’m more of a bystander, which of course I was, but his perspective is somewhat different. Eventually S asks them to keep his airline tickets, passports and wallet in the office since there’s no safe in the room, but I’m brave with my zippered pocket travel pants and hang onto mine. S says this is a bit like “closing the barn door after the horse has fled” and we proceed to hear every equivalent Russian idiom about crows, and cows and God knows what else!

Then they bring out our “Official Program” – all typed up and signed and stamped (typical Russian bureaucracy), with what we’re dong every day and evening all laid out. So while it covers what we’ll talk about each day, we spend most of the time discussing the evening programs. Tonight it’s a trip to Peterhof, the personal residence of Peter the Great – kind of like his Versailles, I presume – and Wednesday night it’s the barge trip, but now there’s informal dinner on Thursday evening instead of the Hermitage, and I think there going to take me to the Hermitage on Friday evening after S leaves – or maybe Saturday I don’t understand, or really care at this point in time. But a long discussion ensues and N says how someone she was translating for recently went to Peterhof only to discover that they turn the fountains off at 5 PM. Well, V says that these fountains are the eight wonder of the world, and we can’t miss them so we should leave earlier this afternoon and we can always work later on Wednesday since the barge doesn’t leave until 8 PM. We reluctantly agree, but we kind of get the suspicion that they’re really trying NOT to tell us EVERYTHING. Oh, and Friday day will be spent drafting our “document” and they want me to come up with a title – like I know what in the world they’re looking for! Maybe I can just provide them with this journal and they’ll translate it and call it the “official response of the Americans/Brits to our proposed working scheme” and sign it and stamp it and make it all official. Who knows?

So we do talk about their work plan for an hour or so. When lunch time came, we tried to get Y to go with us, but he is constantly unsure of how to act around Westerners. At the end of yesterday’s meeting, he said his brain was like a lemon and we had squeezed it dry! But it wasn’t as bad as he feared – I think he must have thought that we’d come in and rip him up, but for the most part we just tried to make him explain his logic and reasoning. So today, he’s not quite our buddy, but he’s a little more relaxed – not as much fumbling for numbers (yesterday morning when he tried to make copies of three pages of tables for both S and I, he tried to get the different pages into three stacks, including the originals, and he must have arranged the pages in every combination possible before finally saying that there had been a mistake in the copying and he’d correct it while we were at lunch – poor guy).

So he’s VERY reluctant to join us for lunch, but Nfinally insists. We decide to try another place and there’s a too nice looking restaurant just next door we go in to. We sit and Ntakes a cell phone call, so we order our drinks alone (I order Coke light – “no Coke, Pesi” dialogue ensues and it’s like I’m stuck in a bad SNL skit with a fake Russian accent). I don’t understand the prices in the menus, but they don’t seem too unreasonable. When N gets back, she says that the prices are in “standard units” and that the multiplier today is 6, so all the prices have to be multiplied by this number! I say “I sure hope they take credit cards” since yesterday at lunch she acted so surprised that they did at the other place. She says that she’s sure they do, for these prices, but she’ll check and sure enough they only take cash – rubles, dollars or Euros. Well between S and I, I’m pretty sure we can’t come close to covering it, so we decide to leave (as does another group that’s at the door when we leave – and there’s nobody else in this huge restaurant – a good way to keep from having to work but a stupid way to run a business.

We then go to a little cafeteria kind of place, where the menu’s on the wall (in Russian -- very short translations in English under them) and we have to order at a counter and then take a tray of some of our stuff back to the table with a little plastic number and they’ll bring out the entries – not too unfamiliar. But it’s crowded and confusing and we’re taking forever and the line’s getting long and restless behind us, so I ask N what French beef is, and all I understand from her response is eggplant. Hmmm, she doesn’t understand my confusion so I just order it, with some rice – no soup or salad like everyone else. As it turns out, it’s like a slightly breaded beef cutlet but the top breading consists of maybe cheese, peppers and eggplant? I don’t know but it wasn’t too bad.

V joins us at lunch – he likes to eat at the cafeteria since he can get in and out and back to work in 20 minutes – and I forgot that’s he’s a big smoker. Actually ALL the Russians seem to be, but he’s the only one that lights up after lunch. I’ll have to remember that when he comes to St. Louis!

We talk work for another hour or so after lunch, and kind of wrap up the planning with Y, who seems relieved to be done! Then it’s off to Peterhof! It’s a good hour drive in terrible St. Petersburg traffic before we finally get somewhat out of town. It was kind of nice – big gilded gold cupolas on the roof on either end, a two or three story long French looking building that lays behind the formal upper gardens. S drops us off and we agree he’ll pick us up at the Hermitage and we’ll take a “fast boat” (hydrofoil it turns out) back to town, so we leave our stuff in his car. We pay 300 rubles each for Sand I but Russian citizens get in for 100 and enter behind the palace. We walk down and N tells us that the Lower Gardens are where the fountains are, and we eventually look down at them along a clearing in the trees, there’s a cascading waterfall, and big fountains, all gold statures spitting water and such, and a long reflecting pool that stretches about a quarter mile out to the sea. Quite nice actually, but a bit gaudy! N asks if we want to go into the palace, but I prefer the gardens, and S aggress when he sees the long quay to get into the palace! We’re going to get on the boat (the last one is at 6) at the end of the reflecting pool, and it’s now 4 so I suggest we take a look at the Upper Gardens first, then wind our way through the lower one and wind up at the boat dock. We eventually make our way to the other end of the palace, where we can go to the upper gardens, and N has a long conversation with the tough looking Russian lady who takes the tickets. N turns to tell us in English that while the Upper Gardens are free, we cannot leave the Lower Gardens and return without paying the admission again! We’re both aghast at how stupid THIS is, when suddenly the Russian woman tells N, never mind, she’ll let us back in. I figured we’d have to bribe her, and I still don’t trust her, but the only place there are concessions with water are outside these gates and I’m so thirsty I could die – I’m more interested in getting water than I am in seeing the Upper Gardens since it’s quite warm, especially in the sun.

We leave, get our overpriced water (N, who also said she was dying for water, just about doesn’t let me buy her a water since it’s so outrageously priced (about double what I paid in the store the other day) but when I insist on buying it anyway, she then asks if she can have an ice cream!

We walk around the Upper Gardens – they’re okay but way too formal and not really that exciting. I do take a few pics, but that’s about it. Pruned trees and hedges all in rows, some formal flower gardens, pools and fountains/statures, arbors with shade, and all lined up from the formal front gates to the palace.

We then make our way back through the nice Russian lady’s gate into the Lower Gardens again, and we didn’t have to bribe her!

We go down and see more fountains, and formal buildings and stuff. It’s all wooded, and as you go farther from the main cascades in the center of the palace to each end and the sea, they get a bit less formal and it’s more like an arboretum, with fountains and pools placed about. There’s some kid’s playing in a mushroom shaped fountain that rains down on them. Another looks like a fir tree with water spurting out, and around it are all these cobblestone size rocks. N says that when you step on certain rocks, it causes jets of water to squirt up and get everyone wet, and we watch kids (and adults) get soaked playing this game. I’m convince that there’s actually no rocks that turn on the fountains that it’s more random, but who knows.

There’s like small greenhouses filled with singing birds, but you have to pay extra to get in them and we pass on that. We make our way to the seawall, and all the kids are wading out in the water, splashing and swimming. You can just barely see the buildings of St. Petersburg across the gulf. It’s quite pleasant in the shade. We’re next to some other building – must be like a restaurant or something. We wonder around again to see the other side, but by the time we get back to the main cascade and the reflecting pool, it’s right at 5 and they turn off the fountains just as we get there. Still pretty though. So we sit and talk for a while and then make our way to the boar dock. It’s quite confusing, with about 6 or 8 different booths where you can buy tickets, and huge lines of folks all waiting to board, and even though it’s not even 5:30 yet we get in one of the long lines in the hot sun. N insists we’re in the wrong line, but she told us dock no. 3 right after she bought the tickets, but then she tries to get us to stand in line for dock no. 4. I try to tell her she’s wrong, but of course I don’t know if she is or not, I only know what she told us since I can’t find any number on the ticket. She’s sure we’re in the wrong line so she has to go and check at the booth again and sure enough we’re supposed to be at Dock No. 3.

We can see the hydrofoils pulling up about every 15 minutes and even though they hold about 100 or so, the line hardly moves. Finally, around 6:30 it’s our turn to board and we do. Stuart promptly starts snoring so load he nearly drowns out the engine. There’s a big ruckus behind me, when some English speaking lady sits in a seat where the Russian lady next to me’s 4-year old was sitting, but he’s running around the boat before we take off. The Russian’s are yelling at the English lady, I suppose telling her to move and she’s saying that she’s sick and she is not about to give up her seat to this young kid. The lady next to me, who’s probably the grandmother although she’s my age, is trying to get her daughter who’s sitting next to the English lady to push her out, and they get the boat folks involved, who really don’t want to mess with it and who don’t speak English anyway to try and reason with the English lady, but eventually it all calms down and the young boy just stands in front of his mom, directly behind me, and we finally take off.

I’m kind of in the middle of a row of four seats on one side of the aisle and another four on the other, in the center of the ship so I don’t get a great view. But about all we pass are a half dozen dredges, one tanker and one big cruise ship.

It takes about 30 minutes to get to St. Petersburg, and we kind of pull in the industrial river (Malaya Neve or Little Neva) and not the one that runs by St. Isaac’s and the great statue of St. Peter (Bolshaya Neva or Big Neva) so other than dry docks and some navy supply boats it wasn’t too interesting until we actually get to the Hermitage where the two rivers come together (the Neva splits right here at the Hermitage and the little and big ones are just two arms that flow to the sea) and you can see the Fortress of Peter and Paul across the river and these big columns that are famous and the green Hermitage building itself.

We meet S with the car, go back to the hotel and then out to dinner. We can’t find any restaurant that suits us for some reason – all the ones on Nevetsky Prospect seem a bit “not right” to one of us for some reason or another. Eventually we follow a sign for Quinsanna Restaurant off the main street into a courtyard, but instead of being a nice courtyard like the one we found yesterday near the Swedish consulate, this one has smelly dumpsters and an empty restaurant. We start to leave and S says he has to find a bathroom, so let’s pop into this little pub place, kind of down in a basement off the courtyard. It looks like the kind of place I would never go in, but S seems desperate, so down the four or five steps we go and walk into a smoky bar with a music video playing on a flat screen tv. There’s a couple sitting kind of on a cushion – booth, smoking out of a huge water pipe, another booth with three 18 to 20 year old boys smoking their water pipe and drinking beers, two 16 to 18-year old girls drinking beers and an open booth – that’s it! So we go up to the “bar” – not big enough for two of us to stand next two and order two draft beers. The young Armenian girls giggles and tells us to sit in fair English. I’m sitting there while Stuart goes to the bathroom, and the waitress brings out a new water pipe for the two young girls. It’s two to three feet tall, but only one hose. The waitress starts the fire and gets it going, and she’s blowing smoke in the patron’s faces – and they’re all giggling and laughing! There’s like three large sugar cube sized, glowing embers that they move around up in the bowl and they proceed to get high. Or at least that’s what it appears to happen. Meanwhile the waitress is now completely blitzed! She’s dancing and carrying on with this other waitress – she’s like dancing with this coat pole and what not. It’s quite a scene! S finally comes out and we watch everyone else get stoned as we drink our beers. I guess it’s some kind of hash hish or something – I don’t know. It doesn’t smell like pot, but it sure doesn’t smell like tobacco either. There’s a menu on the table but it’s all in Russian, that lists different kinds of “tobako” – S took it with him to translate later, or maybe can ask N tomorrow. Veerrrrrryyyy interesting!!!!!!!!!!

We finally leave and find a place to eat outside and watch the people walk down Nevsky Prospect. It’s painfully slow – I think the rude waiter we first had quit and the boss had to come out and finish waiting on us. Most other people sat down and leave before they’re ever even waited on.

But we finally eat – I don’t even remember what I had – the smoke from the bar must have affected my memory! And then it’s back home and off to sleep to end Day 3 in St. Petersburg! At least I finally learned that there’s a plug in mosquito killing gizmo in the room which helps this night keep the bugs down, but not entirely.