Most people will tell you that Pushkin without meter and rhyme isn’t really Pushkin. Just about any English translation of his famous poem, the Bronze Horseman, follows the rhyme scheme of the original. However, the tradeoff is that much of the original meaning is lost in translation. I was fascinated by the Bronze Horseman before […]
With a similar anticipation to that on my flight from New York to Moscow, I couldn’t wait to get to Saint Petersburg. On the overnight train from Moscow I could only muster one hour of sleep. Like Moscow, I had learned so much about Saint Petersburg, Petrograd, and Leningrad, and wanted to see the city […]
Perhaps the most famous attraction in St. Petersburg is the Hermitage, a sprawling complex of art museums centered around the Winter Palace, the former residence of Russian tsars. Built by the Italian architect Rastrelli for Empress Elizabeth in the first half of the 18th century, the palace is a dizzyingly ornate Rococo confection of marble, […]
I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect to think or feel when visiting the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery or the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad. I figured that because I have no personal connection to anything related to the war in Russia, I would not be able to connect with either of these two […]
The bridges over the Neva River in St. Petersburg go up every night to let oceangoing ships pass. I’d heard that staying up until 1:30 a.m. to watch them was a magical experience. But the night I went, we were inexplicably out of luck. There were plenty of other people standing on the embankment, also […]
I never knew that I was much of a palace guy before our trip to Saint Petersburg. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I had never been to an actual palace before our day trip to the suburbs around Saint Petersburg where we managed to visit two in one day. Located about 15 miles from […]
“The water sustains me without even trying…” This line comes from a favorite song of mine, “The Water” by Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit. It lays out in seven words what I’ve been struggling to articulate when I contemplate why Saint Petersburg is so incredibly alluring. From the Neva River to the city’s snaking […]
If you recall from my first post, this is my first experience abroad. However, this inexperience did not stop me from having a preconception of St Petersburg as a European city separate from the rest of Russia—which is not definitively European. And, to some degree, I was right. The canals evoke ideas of Venice, there […]
The historical city center of Saint Petersburg is indisputably gorgeous. Sparkling canals are crossed by artfully curving bridges, and the skyline is peppered with cathedrals, spires, and monuments that pay tribute to the city’s rich history from 1703 onward. Strolling along Ekaterininsky Canal after sundown, one is struck by the reflections of timeless architecture and […]
While walking around the enormous gardens behind the Peterhof Palace, I was cold, hungry, probably dehydrated, and damp from the slight rain that had begun to fall in the early afternoon. It had been a long day, and my legs were becoming sore from walking. And yet, the beauty of the gardens at Peterhof made […]