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- Narcotics of any kind whatsoever – unless you want to make an in-person in-depth study of the Russian Penal System from an insider’s viewpoint. There is zero tolerance of narcotics in our destinations, and the death penalty applies in some cases.
- Pornography (which includes any “top-shelf” stuff – China has a zero-tolerance policy, you can be jailed for this).
- Literature advocating violent overthrow of governments etc. Especially overthrow of the Russian Government. Ditto, don’t try bringing any type of weapons, explosives, weapon diagrams, and don’t buy them as souvenirs to take home either!
St. Petersburg : Impressions/Contrasts
I’m leafing through photographs – other people’s memories of St. Petersburg – and marvelling at the city’s elegant sprawl. It does sprawl in fact; due to height restrictions imposed to preserve the magnificent skyline. The long-standing limit has been 22 metres at the city’s core, set historically so has not to obscure or contest the Winter Palace. It all helped to confer status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, granted since 1990 to St.Petersburg’s historic core, with it’s startling clash of architectural styles: Petrine Baroque, Classical Renaissance, Byzantine.
The height limit increased to 48 metres in 2004 and to 100 in 2008 for certain outer-centre locations, with only the most revered monuments daring to punctuate the city’s low-lying silhouette – well, those and a TV tower at any rate.
Okhta Centre (phonetically Okhta-Tseńtr), known before March 2007 as Gazprom City, is a construction project of a business centre which is set to include the first supertall skyscraper in the city, extending a 403 metre high middle-finger in the face of centuries of cultural history, not to mention planning legislation. It looked like more proof, if any were needed, that corporate money and political connections buy law in the same way that our small change buys toilet paper. However, UNESCO have advised that St Petersburg may lose its World Heritage Status and protests against the proposal have been vigorous, especially its 403m height. There is an agreement to hold an independent review of the project’s impact as a whole on the city’s heritage. Nothing is guaranteed either way, but if you want to see the splendid vista as-is, you may want to book sooner rather than later…
Lynda and Ross made the Trans-Siberian trip with Russia Experience, and had lots of great insights and impressions to give me about St. Petersburg:
“It was one of the classic rail journeys of the world. We kind of liked the whole romantic idea of doing a rail journey. The idea of travelling that far on a train is just ridiculous for a start, but we wanted to experience it. There were a lot of things along the way that we wanted to stop and see, so it worked out perfectly for us.”
I was interested in the impression they had of the city as a grand and beautiful place, which has faded somewhat over the years, and yet been given an additional beauty by its rather worn and forgotten appearance.
“St. Petersburg was gorgeous; such a beautiful city. You can see that it was probably one of the grandest cities in the world 100 years ago, before the revolution and so on. Everything was a little bit tired and a little bit faded. It was like a forgotten city almost, with an olde-worlde grandeur.
“A couple of things had been done up, like the Winter Palace. That looked gorgeous – blue pastel paint work on it that was crisp and fresh. If everything had been done up like that it probably would have lost some of it’s unique charm but it would still have been stunning. As it is, the few buildings done up in that way let you see how everything used to look. When you get on to the outskirts of the city there are just loads of those great big communist blocks of flats, some of which look completely abandoned.
They were visiting during the White Nights. This has become a world wide festival, held in many cities across the globe, but it originated in St. Petersburg.
“We were lucky to experience the White Nights – that was brilliant. We also went to the Alexandrinski Theatre to watch Swan Lake. That was just amazing! At the time the Alexandrinski hadn’t been done, up so that also had a beautiful old, untouched feel.”
[Photo by Terinea]
