The fast, modern Allegro train whisked us from Moscow to St Petersburg at 200km/hr. We arrived refreshed, ready to do battle on the Metro again. After one false start we changed trains and arrived at our downtown hotel.
St Petersburg was in a festive mood; we found ourselves surrounded by drunken sailors – no change here, we hear you say! Eventually we discovered that it was Navy Day in the port – when old and new Navy personnel celebrate the naval contribution of the city by drinking copious amounts of beer and vodka.
We picked up another city walking tour that took us through the extensive palaces, churches and historical facades. In general, Catherine the Great and Peter the Great had done a good job of building a fine city based on the big European cities of the time (18th and 19th century).
The Hermitage is the icing on top – huge and overwhelming. Although the nobles had built up a reasonable art collection, the main collectors were the Soviets – pre- and post-war. As an example of the size of the collection, one million paintings were evacuated from the city during the siege of St Petersburg by the Nazis during World War Two. The collection grew after this with the confiscation of paintings from Germany and other ‘benefactors’ within Russia. Like the Louvre in Paris, it amazed us why some of the smallest and mediocre paintings by popular artists like Da Vinci and Rubens attracted all the crowds – we could not get close to De Vinci’s ‘Madonna and Child’ – but the rest of the thousands of paintings were ignored. It must just be good marketing of these guys.
‘Cultured out’ we boarded the high-speed train to Helsinki. Although our original planned route was through the Baltic States, the train from St Petersburg to Tallinn was suspended due to frosty relations between Russia and Estonia – although there is an express bus service between these cities. We opted for the high-speed train to Helsinki – well, why not?