Shopping and Tsarkoe Selo

This morning I awoke to the sound of multiple people in the flat. Irina, her son, Mark, and her mother arrived late last night while I was in bed. For breakfast, Irina's mother made blanched Zucchini that was stuffed with rice, meat, onions and sour cream. It was super good! Irina and I talked over breakfast about what we had seen and done over the past few days in mixed English and Russian. She told me about the projects she undertook at the Dacha and I told her how I had seen many things and wore myself out. 

I gathered my things and leisurely got ready for the day and left at about 10:30am for a bit of shopping. My first stop was a place off Mayakovskaya ulitsa which had lots of Russian antiques and was certainly off the beaten path. Prices were pretty good, but I didn't really see anything I wanted or needed. The book cases were stuffed with books by Pushkin, Solovev, Tolstoy and others. I almost bought a copy of the Master and the Margarita by Bulgakov, my favorite novel, but it was not really a collectors item and I knew I would never really have the time to read it in Russian. Towards the back of the shop were old cameras,  pins, scarves, an old portrait of Lenin that has a tear across the top, dishes and several other flea market type items. The second place I visited was pretty much at the opposite end of the shopping spectrum--Yeseliev's, a super fancy delicacy shop dating back to at least the 19th century. Inside the interior was tastefully decorated in art nouveau. A piano played songs by itself and store cases displayed pastries that probably taste as good as they looked.

   Yeseliev's

I shopped a few other stores briefly before I caught my excursion bus for Tsarskoe Selo. The bus ride took about 30 minutes and passed several Soviet-era monuments along Moskovskaya Prospekt. The rain started as we left the city. Our tour guide, Alexander, was a tall, soft spoken, coke-bottled bespectacled man in his forties. You could tell that 1) he learned the Queen's English but still did not have command of it. And 2) in terms of history he knew a lot though was irritated by tourists. Perhaps, he wanted instead to be. . .A Lumber Jack! (start the Monty Python sketch here :) At any rate, Catherine's palace was amazing and had the majestic feel and power of Versailles. Many of the rooms had been inhabited and adopted by various Romonovs in the past not just Catherine the Great. Especially impressive was the Amber Room created from huge panels of amber stones. 

   Tsarskoe Selo

The room has an interesting past. . .I'll be brief though. It was originally commissioned by Frederick the I of Prussia for his wife to be installed in Charlottenburg. His wife died and he discontinued the project. His son, concerned more with war, sold the panels to Peter the Great where upon one of his successors installed them in Catherine's palace. During WWII, Nazis dissassembled the panels and took them to Germany where they may been buried somewhere or might have got lost at sea. The recreation of the room has cost some $12 but some also say that it is actually the original for reasons too long to describe here.

   The Amber Room

After a brief tour through the rooms, we headed outside. Luckily, by this time the rain had stopped and we got to enjoy the lush green surroundings. In the grotto, near an idyllic pond, we got to listen to a small Russian choir. The acoustics of the grotto and dynamics by these men were unbelievable. Toward the end of the tour, Alexander left us to snap some photos for about 15 minutes before heading back to the bus. A lady near me asked where the restroom was located and Alexander pointed her back to the entry of the palace and confirmed her repeated directions on how to get to the bus. At the appointed meeting time it turned out she could not be found. Alexander tried to look for her for about 10 minutes but couldn't find her. Her husband, who sat idly in the back, asked Alexander if he wanted him to look for her. At one point their conversation got heated, and Alexander said he tried to find her and that "she could not sit on the toilet for half and hour." When the husband asked for Alexander's name (I guess he forgot when he mentioned it earlier,) wanting to make him responsible for losing his wife, Alexander replied "I will not sign anything." After looking for another 20 minutes Alexander sent our bus back to Petersburg and he stayed to look for they woman. It was kind of funny and tragic at the same time. Moral of the story: if you're with a group, stay with the group.