Last Day in St PetersburgJul 28, 2011
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| July 28th, Thursday, St Petersburg Today is our last full day in St Petersburg, and we will visit Yusupov's Palace, and in the afternoon take a river and canal tour. The Yusupov Palace was built in 1770, and belonged to the House of Yusupov, a wealthy noble Russian family, from 1830 until 1917. They were known for their philanthropy and art collections. The palace is best known, however, for the murder of Rasputin, who had become a favorite with the Romanov family for his special powers which enabled him to miraculously treat and save the young Alexander from the ravages of sex-linked hemophilia. However, Felix Yusupov, and others felt Rasputin was gaining too much influence with the royal family, so Felix, along with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, one of the Romanovs, invited Rasputin to the Yusupov Palace where they fed him cakes and wine laced with cyanide. When he seemed unaffected, Felix shot him in the back, and when he returned to the room to see Rasputin still alive, shot him several more times, and later clubbed him, wrapped his body in sheets and threw him in the river. Supposedly, an autopsy found that he died of hypothermia rather than the other wounds. There remains much unknown about the circumstances of Rasputin's death, but in the tour, we visited the basement room where he was poisoned, and they have it all set up with wax figures of Rasputin and his assassins. As I have mentioned before, the Russian guides love intrigue and macabre stories. The rest of the mansion is gorgeously decorated, and was not destroyed in Soviet times, but used as a museum. In the afternoon we took a riverboat tour through some of the canals and rivers that wind through the city, and because of which, St Petersburg is aptly called the "Venice of the North." There are scores of beautiful palaces, churches, and other buildings lining the waterways, as well as many beautiful bridges, It was quite hot, however sitting in the sun. We had our last dinner together on the ship, exchanged email addresses and said our good byes. We ate with very many people over the course of the 2 weeks, though, because there were 200 of us, we didn't get to know many well, but certainly shared many interesting conversations and experiences. Our program directors of which there was 1 for each approximately 30 people were fantastic. All were Russians, though spoke English fluently, were very knowledgable about their history and culture, and took very good care of us. The ship, just over 400 ft long, with 4 decks, and a crew of about 100 were also delightful and extremely helpful and well organized. The food was outstanding and the presentations of the food was equally good. All in all, this was a very good tour. We saw an amazing amount, and were exposed to a lot of history that I never learned or quickly forgot. One of the main things I learned is how severely they were affected by the 2nd world war in which they lost more than 25 million people, at least half of which were noncombatants. As I have mentioned before, they refer to WWII as the "Great Patriotic War." They have monuments everywhere honoring the heroes of that time, and everyone has stories of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Siege of Leningrad, the loss of family members to war or starvation, or the heroic actions of their friends and neighbors. They seem, on the other hand, to have been very minimally affected or impressed by the "Cold War." Though many of us lived in fear of Soviet Russia, and the possibility of nuclear war with them, we got the impression that they did not have the same fear of the U.S. It appears that U.S. propaganda was at least as important in shaping our beliefs as we believed theirs to be. Another discovery was the fact that they talk so openly about the horrors of the Stalin era, and joke so openly about the Soviet era. They told many jokes about the KGB, and never failed to point out their buildings to us. Perhaps, the biggest discovery for us, is how far Russia has come in the past 20 years. Instead of Babushkas everywhere there are smartly dressed women, instead of Soviet automobiles, their streets are filled with mid-sized Japanese cars, and as many BMW's and Mercedes as we see on our roads. Granted we were mostly in the 2 largest cities of Russia. The city streets are crowded with cars, and traffic jams abound despite very advanced metro systems in both Moscow and St Petersburg. Unfortunately, they have acquired the negatives which accompany a free market economy and a less authoritarian system. They now have much more crime, drug problems, and graft. The people, themselves, seem very friendly, and always willing to help out when they see a confused or lost tourist. So, in summary, a very rewarding tour which I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone. |
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