Petersburg Adventure

So, back from our trip to Petersburg and back to the real world. Molly and I had a great time. I love Petersburg more every time I visit it and look forward to having a chance to live there some day for a while. We saw a lot of fun stuff, wandered around, and hung out in cafes and things. As you can see from this traditional "Aaron with coffee" picture, I decided that the beard was getting too itchy and shaved it.


One of the cool things that we found was this group of lions. The real marble lions are on an embankment overlooking the Neva not far away. These replicas had been painted by various groups, including some young students, which was pretty cool. We took pictures next to a couple of our favorites.





Another prominent feature of the city was election posters. The trick is that even though there were many parties running, only two actually had campaign materials out. Surprise, they were the two pro-Kremlin parties. In Indiana, I often get told I look like Larry Bird or Peyton Manning. (My common response is to say that I wish I could play and or get paid like they do.) In Russia, I am told that I look like Evgeniy Plyushenko, the Olympic Gold Medalist figure skater.

Along the way we visited a museum to Anna Akhmatova, the poet and searched out several used bookshops where we made interesting discoveries like Czech textbooks and books on Soviet economics.





All in all it was a great trip and we had a blast. The weather was typically Petersburg-like, but other than that we had a great time. This last picture is from one of our evening walks in search of a bar that has been opened in the boiler room where our favorite Russian rock singer, Viktor Tsoi, worked. Come to find out, it was a block from where I used to live when I was a student in Petersburg. Sadly, the bar was closed because of a private party there.

We caught the train back to Vladimir on Saturday night and arrived before the crack of dawn, a little tired but happy!