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Postcards from Petrograd
(by Walt Brown - January 23, 2008)
I typically take the first week of January and get away from the onset of the cold weather by lathering myself in sunblock at places like Aruba, the Bahamas, or
Orlando. What never fails is that upon my return, I hear about the ice storm or deep freeze that I missed.
So I tried to reverse the trend this year, and, happily or sadly, depending on where you’re sitting, it worked. After much haggling over paperwork, I set down on a Finnair connecting flight in
St. Petersburg.
Russia. The cold
St. Petersburg. The place where you’d starve to death operating a sunblock outlet. How cold is it? It’s not just that you see your breath; your breath freezes and you feel it hit your toes as it falls. How many Community Life readers can say they stood on the
Gulf of Finland ? And, of course, the experiment: it was 65 degrees last Tuesday, and I was shuffling about in a snowstorm while the mercury sat at a balmy -11. I apologize for any typographical errors, but I’m still wearing my gloves, four days later.
Luckily, I learned to speak a little Russian before I went. When I say “a little Russian,” it is fair to say I knew enough to converse with A LITTLE RUSSIAN – but hey, those toddlers love American rock and roll.
Amazingly, and maybe it’s a language thing, but they love rap music. I’m not sure they understand that the lyrics occasionally make negative suggestions about one of the two prevailing genders. ”50 Cent” is a big attraction over there, and I started a movement to get him renamed “10 Rubles.” Look for that CD sometime soon.
Russian television. Welcome back to American television in 1952 without Uncle Miltie. They have cable, blessedly, because without cable, you would get more enjoyment staring out the window. What you see out the window is immaterial, because except for the palaces in
St. Petersburg , which are magnificent, the landscape in January is well-defined. ”What’s that elegant, tall white structure called?” I asked the tour guide.
“Snow.”
Watching American movies is very instructive, but I caught something of a bad break. The first two were an unknown George Clooney movie and “Mask” with Jim Carrey. If you think about those two actors, you realize their appeal and style is largely defined by their vocal mannerisms, which disappear with dubbed voices. They could have had John Ashcroft moving his lips and the result would have been the same. But the ultimate movie I would never want to see in English, much less Russian, as it described my situation – well, imagine the “Russian language version” of “Home Alone.” Even a child’s scream does not dub well.
Ah, the cuisine. Each meal was a toss-up: meat and potatoes or potatoes and meat? I foolishly remarked one night that I thought the steak was a little tough and I was told it was rather tender for reindeer. Blitzen, can you forgive me?
All in all, however, it is a magnificent city, history-wise, as they have at least one magnificent palace to honor each tsar or minister bludgeoned by an angry peasantry. Makes for a lot of palaces.
The
Pascack
Valley sits on the 41st parallel of latitude. St. Petersburg is on the 60th, which is equal to the middle of Hudson’s Bay, or the southern rim of
Alaska . Sunrise, 9:45 a.m. Noon – when the sun is high, is about 15 minutes later, and if you dash out at sunrise, the taxi will drop you off at your destination just at twilight. On the other hand, it must be incredible in late June.
It’s also unique to be somewhere where all the words on all the buildings, even “McDOHALDC” are different.
It was a joy, but it’s good to be home. There were a couple of “negatives,” and they’ll show up in “Postcards from
Petrograd , II,” on Feb. 6. “Ah, waiter, did this ‘steak’ ever work for a man in a red outfit? Oh, sure, I forgot, everybody used to work for people in red outfits…
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