A Few Goings On in Petersburg

Hello again all! I finally have run dry on computer problems and all is well once again which means I will be trying to catch up completely on my blog in the next couple of days. It is a tall order but I feel bad for being so neglectful. So I will devote this entry to all that I have been doing in Petersburg since I have been back from Moscow. The next entry will be dedicated to my lovely trip to Finland and Estonia. :)

First, Smolny Cathedral. So five friends plus myself chose to go to Smolny Cathedral one afternoon after class because it was a beautiful day, and trust me, those are quite tough to come by around here. The ironic thing is that Smolny Cathedral never served as a religious building, but you can go up to the top of it and get awesome views of the city. I also love that it is pale blue. :)

 The Cathedral itself

One of the views from the top

I also went back to Smolny last weekend, but not to the Cathedral, to Smolny Institute. This is basically where the government of St. Petersburg is located. There I saw where Lenin resided and worked briefly. I also saw the Constitution cut in stone on the wall, various gifts to Russia from diplomats of all countries, including the keys to the city of Daytona Beach and Riga, Latvia, as well as some pretty awesome looking chess sets. The last thing we saw was the hall where they have all there important meetings. It reminded me of something I would see at the United Nations, Russian style. We even got to go up and sit at the big long table, and pretend to be revolutionaries like Lenin.

One can dream of being an influential person in the course of world history

Next, The Political History Museum. This was our weekly excursion some weeks ago. This was the first excursion they offered to us where we had the option of taking a tour either in English or in Russian. Choosing to challenge myself a bit, I chose the Russian tour. I caught a bit of what the tour guide was saying but since I am probably more of a visual learner I probably caught a lot more just from looking at the various posters and exhibits. At the museum was the office where Lenin worked and the balcony that he would go onto to get the people pumped up. I also got to see a lot of the old Soviet propaganda posters, which I think are very cool looking, which was probably what they were going for. They also had a whole bunch of posters with the figureheads of the USSR on them.

 Lenin's Office

Cool Soviet Poster

The following weekend, we went to the Dostoeyevsky apartment museum, which was where he spent the last three years of his life living. There, he wrote his last novel, perhaps you have heard of heard of The Brothers Karamazov? What was also cool was that the previous day I had just finished reading arguably his most famous book Crime and Punishment for my lit class. While I didn't particularly like his style of writing, it was still pretty cool to see his modest (for a very famous man at the time) living quarters. I didn't take any pictures inside though because I would have had to pay and I was feeling particularly cheap that day. I did take a picture of the sign though!

I believe the next excursion we had as a group in Russia was a tour of the Yusopov Palace. Apparently, the Yusopov family was a very wealthy aristocratic family that was super tight with the Tsars. The palace itself was pretty cool. In the basement, they even had their own little performance theatre, and what's more it wasn't even all that little:

The tour was given in Russian so I understood some, but certainly not all of it. This palace is mostly famous for being the place where Rasputin (I really hope you have heard of him, otherwise, please look up his really interesting background) was murdered. The story of his murder is just as mystical as his life was. Felix Yusopov, the primary resident of the palace, took them down to the basement and tried to poison him in his food. However, this didn't work so they took him upstairs and tried to beat him to death, however, he also survived that. They then decided to end his life by shooting him in the head. However, while they were successful in shooting him, it still did not kill him. At last, they threw him in the river, where he did eventually die. The autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was drowning, not poison, or wounds. Just to make sure, they took his body out of the river and burned it. I don't know,  personally think the story is fascinating, but I think Russia as a whole is fascinating.

I went to St. Isaac's Cathedral a few weeks ago. The first time I went there on a beautiful day, in hopes of going to the colonnade and getting a beautiful view of the city (like Smolny, but this is slightly higher, and more centrally located), however the one day it was nice out was the day they were closed. I went back the following week and did go to the top but it wasn't quite as nice of a day. Here is my favorite picture:

On a more insignificant note, I have also been to the movie theatres here twice to see American movies that have been dubbed into Russian. I saw Puss in Boots (Кот в сапогах) and The Adventures of Tintin. Both were good and since they were animated, you didn't really need to follow the dialogue that well to understand it, so I was able to figure out what they were saying based on context.

Anyway, I have written a lot for this post so, next time I will write about my adventures in Finland and Estonia. After that I will tell you all about the exciting things I have been doing in the last two weeks here. :)  Пока!