Well, this is still day 2 by my count... but it sure is getting long. I was up at 6:30 am local time (7:30 pm Pacific time) and now it's 11pm local time (noon Pacific). In about 2 hours I will be on a train to Moscow, in a sleeper car, presumably in the top bunk in a tiny room with two bunk beds. Luckily I'm traveling with a whole bunch of math geeks so at least the other people in the room won't be strangers. But that's getting ahead of the story.
After my last post, the group of us met and most of us walked together (about 2 miles down Nevskiy, with some phenomenal detours to see some amazing architecture -- photos coming next time I blog, the cable I need is in my suitcase which is in the bag check room of the hotel waiting for me, but in the meantime look at http://www.saint-petersburg.com/virtual-tour/church-of-savior.asp for example) and ended up at the Hermitage. An impressive enough building from the outside, on the inside I just ended up with complete sensory overload. Even if you took out all the works of art hanging on the walls, and just walked around looking at the architecture and the ceilings and the ... actually, even if you took out everything but the floors, you could spend a full day walking around and enjoying the beauty of the work. There are some awesome mosaics but I was most impressed by the wood inlay everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. Wow. And they just finished (within the last decade) a huge restoration. And you can actually WALK ON THE FLOORS. Any museum like this in the US, there'd be a strip of carpet laid down and some railings up and you could peer at the pretty floor over there on the other side of the railing. But here you can walk on it! Just for two examples: http://www.europeportreviews.com/RussiaPics/HermitageFloor.jpg and http://veronicasart.com/ShowArt.aspx?id=166&mediaid=8 ). Anyway, amazing museum. Da Vinci and Michaelangelo and Titian really are as good as people say. (I used to think they were overrated. Seeing their work in person makes a big difference.) Titian especially; I used to not be a fan. But now I saw http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/titian/mary_magdalen.jpg.html and those eyes ... wow. Especially with the painting technology way back then, it must have been an amazing feat to make them look so ... yeah. I was going to say watery, but that's not even close.
Anyway, while we walked to the museum it was only about 30 degrees out and the weather was fine. Plenty warm. In fact most of the time I'm too hot, if I'm walking, or indoors, which adds up to most of the time. I thought layers would work well, but they don't because I have too many things to take off when I step indoors. I need to use the one heavy coat method instead.
While we were in the Hermitage, it started snowing, first kinda wet yucky snow, then nice big fluffy flakes. Very pretty to watch. And, most importantly of all, not freezing rain/sleet. Fluffy flakes are fine. I'll upload some cute snow pictures later if I get the chance.
Then we were off to the world-famous school 239. Looks like any public school around, with the same crazy architecture, only much older. The stairs are worn down all concave to the point that it's hard to keep your balance walking on them. You always feel like you're going to slip, especially going down. The classrooms are fairly spacious (though we went to the most spacious one so there was room to pack all 20 or so of us into the back of the room in some extra chairs). The students sit two to a desk, facing forward, but I think that's for economy of furniture; working together is strictly forbidden at pretty much all times, a pretty alien thought to those of us who came from the US educational system. There are maybe 25 students in a class at this special school,
Comments