But what I liked the most of all the art that we saw at the Hermitage was the neoclassical statue collection. I feel so stupid now, because I didn’t note the names of the sculptors of these marble pieces, but I was just so taken with them. It’s not like I’ve never seen marble statues before. And I don’t think these were so extremely special, as far as marble statues at world-class art museums goes I mean, since they were shown in a staircase, as if there just because the curators didn’t know where else to put them.  I don’t know, maybe I just haven’t really looked before.

But here. Photographs are poor illustrations, they can’t show the space that these statues fill. But just. Try to imagine it. How the light falls on the skin. The creases of the fabric. The serenity of that pose, like having just woken up from a beautiful dream.

And the warmth that radiated from this hard stone. So much life, captured moments of perfection.

The heat of marble. I was speechless. I’ve discovered a new love.

The Hermitage is the set of buildings that Catherine the Great founded and let build during the second half of the 18th century to house her growing collection of art. Today, it’s one of the world’s largest art museums, filled with pieces ranging from sculptures from ancient Siberia to French impressionists. It is an impressive building, both inside and out.

There is simply not enough time to cover the entire collection in a day, and we didn’t even have that at our disposal. So we focused on the rooms dedicated to showcasing interior design for the czar family through the ages.

It was insane, the degree of luxury in these chambers. The gold! Jade! Silk! On floors, walls and ceilings!

Even the actual floors were amazing. On the upper floors, all wood, and most of the time laid out in these incredibly intricate patterns. Mind, this is not painted. It is different types of wood, cut out and put together to create this pattern in color and texture. Mind-blowing. People really should pay more attention to their ceilings and floors.

We did also see plenty of art. Paintings, statues, tapestries. Plenty of naked women and horses being eaten by dogs. You get full after a couple of hours, though. You can only watch that much oil on canvas.

In the rather inconspicuous Staff building next to the Winter Palace, where the main art collection is, the Hermitage has placed the late 19th and 20th century portion of its collection. Monet, Degas, Matisse, Van Gogh.

The Wassily Kandinsky room was my favorite among the modern exhibitions. I like the way he uses color, especially in this painting. All soft and pastels.

Most of all, the newly renovated Staff building was very modern in itself. Quite interesting – but also, very hard to find your way in. Just so incredibly big and empty.

One of the most fascinating buildings that we saw in Saint Petersburg was the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. Just the name is extreme. It was finished in 1907, and the name comes from actual spilled blood. In 1881 tsar Alexander II was severely wounded on this spot and died, and the church was built in his memory. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more pompous commemoration monument for anyone. It didn’t get to stay a church for long, though. The revolution came, and since it’s been a little bit of everything. Now, it’s a museum of mosaics.

And the mosaics. Honestly. They were insane. The gold and Mediterranean blue and earth red. Seriously breathtaking.

The mosaics told the story of Jesus. Just right of the altar was this pillar of Mary being blessed (impregnated) by God. And it just got me thinking. Being chosen like that. Of course, the Christian literature and other art forms don’t lack explorations into Mary’s chosenness, especially the Catholic tradition is full of appreciation of Mary. But it’s all based on her purity. She was chosen, because she was pure. To carry a child, that wasn’t hers, and who would have to die way before his time. When that golden light from heaven touched her, it turned her from a person into a vessel. She must have felt so abandoned, so lonely. Stripped of value in and of herself.

Among all that extravagant gold in the Church of the Spilled Blood, I felt a sudden pang of melancholia.

Saint Petersburg is huge. In its architecture, but also with its people. Almost five million live in Saint Petersburg.

You don’t feel it while walking around in the inner city, though. There is so much empty space.

At Gostinyj Dvor, one of Saint Petersburg’s oldest malls, in use in different shapes since the early 18th century. Almost no people.

The newly renovated staff building of the Hermitage, where the 20th century part of the art collection is shown. Very modern, with appallingly poor signage and very few visitors. As if they didn’t know how to find their way from the dazzling main museum building, the Winter Palace.

A side street from Nevsky Prospekt.

I was quite disappointed, actually. I had expected Saint Petersburg to be this hub of culture, both high and popular, and then the street art that we encountered was so uninspired and lacking.

I guess we might not have been in the right places, though. Just a comparison, we basically only walked around in areas that translated to Stockholm might be Gamla Stan, Norrmalm and Östermalm. You rarely find anything cool there, either. So, I guess I’ll just have to go back, and get away from the posh streets.

I did find a few not completely crappy paintings, though.

Kirke, Hanna and I spent most of our time in Saint Petersburg walking around on the wide, windy streets.

 

I don’t know how many times we walked up and down Nevsky Prospekt, the main street of Saint Petersburg. Our hotel was basically at one end of it, and the Hermitage was at the other. And it’s lined with palaces and 19th century malls and stores and churches, beautiful all of them, bridges over pretty canals. But you get full, after a while, walking around in this city. Things eventually stop surprising you. The extravagance of it all. Every single house facade decorated as if it was a palace. Statues on the roofs, and all the pretty colors.

It is beautiful, it truly is, but it is also hard. Almost no trees, anywhere, except in the few little parks – and these parks. Completely flat, with trees growing in rows. Nothing organic about it. I started getting so tired – and I rarely get tired walking around cities, I spent a whole month walking around the big cities of central and eastern Europe two years ago, and I didn’t get tired until the very end. But here. It’s so hard and dusty, with all that stone and I miss uneven shapes and growing things.

Walking around here, it became so obvious that Russia was an enormous country. Huge, but also incredibly unequal. (It still is, of course, but not in the same way as in the 18th century, when St Petersburg was founded.) Only a very large, very unequal country can muster up such a large number of wealthy people, and make them spend all that money on extravagant architecture in one city. Conditions were more or less the same in most other European capitals, they just didn’t have the same enormous mass of land to gather up all that wealth from. As a consequence, the extent of imperial show-off architecture hasn’t grown as extensive as here. It’s fascinating, and kind of frightening.

I liked Saint Petersburg. But a weekend was enough. I can only handle the hardness for so long. I’d love to go back some other time, though. For a couple of days. See the rest of the Hermitage. Cross the Neva. Go to a ballet. Saint Petersburg is like a rich cake. Decadent and all-consuming, and best in small, controllable doses.

A bit more than a week ago, I went to Saint Petersburg for the weekend with my two oldest friends. It was intense.

I’m in this thesis bubble right now, where the ups and downs of the thesis work rules my life. I sleep, eat, think only what and when the thesis allows. On the night before going to Russia, I couldn’t stop thinking about my thesis discussion and therefore I did not sleep more than four hours. In the morning, I first had a meeting with my supervisor, and then another West Africa meeting, incredibly inspiring both of them, requiring a cup of coffee each. Then, rushing to the airport, making calls about student magazine articles and summer plans on the bus. I was moving as if in a high-speed haze, and had we run into any trouble, I’m not sure if I would have understood what was going on. My brain just wouldn’t stop. Luckily, our entrance into Russia was smooth as a baby’s butt and in the taxi stereo they played Swedish House Mafia while we drove through the modernist suburbs into the imperial city center. Volvo ads, H&M, Burger King and McDonald’s lining the streets. Almost as if we hadn’t left the safety of Sweden at all.

Hanna had booked us a luxury room at an Art Nouveau boutique hotel called Vera. Beautiful room with Klimt paintings on the wall, friendly, English speaking staff and (as it turned out next morning) a proper, decent breakfast. Jackpot.

I could have collapsed on the bed right there and then. The coffee and adrenaline from the morning had turned into shaking hands and a headache. But, we were in Saint Petersburg for crying out loud! No time for sleeping in the middle of the day!

The pretty hotel stairwell.

I think Hanna and Kirke were in some kind of disconnected transit mood too, because we couldn’t stop laughing on the bus into town. A young man, just about to get off the bus, turned around and tripped on his own feet, almost falling out through the door while saying “You are sexy!”. Poor thing, what was meant to be flirty, turned into such an embarrassing slapstick sequence, and we exploded out laughing again. I pity the Saint Petersburg evening commuters.

The hotel receptionist had recommended a Georgian restaurant for us, and along the short walk from the bus stop to the restaurant, we walked past several spaced up bars and shops. Or what do you say about this:

The entrance to a club. You would not find those kinds of creepy creatures welcoming anyone into a Swedish club, I can tell you that. And the facades of the buildings! God, crazy stuff. The view from the taxi might have been rather bland, but here in the middle of things. Incredible. We were obviously not in Sweden anymore.

We had a really nice and unexpectedly delicious multiple course dinner at the Georgian restaurant, where the only disappointment was the waitresses poor photography skills. Right then, there was no place I’d rather be, and no other people I’d rather be there with. Our first evening in Saint Petersburg.