Russia – anchored & adrift

A Catherine the Great-Inspired 36 Hours in St. Petersburg: Day 2 at Catherine’s Palace

From left to right: the 2018 FIFA Stadium under construction, the Port of St. Petersburg, and new, privately-owned condominiums. [Click to enlarge]

When you wake up and open the blinds in the Port of St. Petersburg, the view seems like it is constructed out of socio-economic satire. To my left, shiny new condominiums were recently finished or in the final stage of construction. Still further to my left was a developing soccer stadium, scheduled (and politically pressured) to be ready by the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Sochi-style, as St. Petersburg is one of the host cities. In contrast, directly ahead of me were dismal, rundown, seemingly Soviet-era apartments with external AC units. I later found out, they were in fact Soviet, state-owned apartments. They’re apparently still in operation.

A morning view of the Soviet-era apartments visible from the port.

With my day already starting with Russian real estate development, it was time to head out to St. Petersburg’s countryside to observe the land use of the tsars. Our destination: Catherine’s Palace. Continue reading “A Catherine the Great-Inspired 36 Hours in St. Petersburg: Day 2 at Catherine’s Palace” →

Destinations, Russia

A Catherine the Great-Inspired 36 Hours in St. Petersburg: Day 1

If you read my post on my pre-trip reading, you know that I read Robert Massie’s Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman just before heading to my Baltic destinations, and found both Catherine and the clashes of European histories during that era to be absolutely intriguing. With two full days and one night in Russia, arriving via the port of St. Petersburg, we spent the first day touring the historic heart of the city, spying after onion domes throughout the former capital while focusing on two main sights: The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood and the Hermitage Museum. The second day we headed out of the city to take in a summer residence of the Russian tsars. Continue reading “A Catherine the Great-Inspired 36 Hours in St. Petersburg: Day 1” →

Destinations, Europe, Germany, Russia

Pre-Trip Reading: Berlin & St. Petersburg

Most of my life, I’ve been a voracious reader. I remember reading Little Women and Gone with the Wind in fourth grade, always having a good book for long flights, and even learning how to write Swedish fluently solely based off of being read to and reading as a young child. But in college, I was always reading books for classes (though as an English major most of those were fantastic), but if I wasn’t finishing up a reading for class, I was doing one or several of a hundred other active projects. I got out of the habit of reading for fun. After more than a year since graduation of my primary reading material being news on my phone, I decided preparing for my next trip would be the perfect occasion to break this streak.

I’m soon headed to three cities that I have never visited before: Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Tallinn. My interest in Tallinn had previously inspired me to do background research on the city online, and last year I spent an insightful evening at the Embassy of Estonia in Washington, DC, so I turned my attention to Berlin and St. Petersburg. Continue reading “Pre-Trip Reading: Berlin & St. Petersburg” →