Thursday, July 05, 2018

Russia Travelogue day 4: the english tour


June19 4:45 am
Woke up today at 830 am, so only 4 hours of sleep. Yesterday I was complaining about waking up at 1 pm. 1 pm is 6 am est. So today when I woke up at what is 2 am Est, jet lag reminded us of its existence. You might say there was a ‘lag’ in our phase of ‘jet lag’. I was in that weird space, where you feel lethargic but can't fall back to sleep. So, like any self-respecting vacationer, i rolled around in the bed till 10 am before finally dragging myself to bathroom. 
A husk of my past day self, I trudged along with Shaks to see the cathedral of the savior of spilled blood. She is what makes my world go around. If it was left to me, I would have rolled around further in bed for hours. Now on to cathedral. the colors that make up its minarets are striking from far and near. The only blot is the tallest minaret in the center, covered in cylindrical scaffolding, wrapped around with a translucent white plastic like it's wearing a condom (Shaks’ words not mine) but when you travel as infrequently as I do then you take what you can get including a tall phallic object wrapped in a makeshift condom. Wait, that didn't come out right. You take what you can get including a colorful candy in a drab plastic wrapper. Yes, lets go with this metaphor.
After a mini photo session, where I saw an evolution in the skills of Shaks in asking strangers to take a picture of us together (More on this evolution of skills in a later episode), We entered the cathedral. The cathedral itself is a memorial to the fallen emperor Alexander II who was assassinated by nihilists. The new emperor Alexander III wished to make a cathedral around the assassination site. Inside the dome, there is a canopy making the exact spot where he fell. I guess that is the most expensive and beautiful chalk outline in the world. Inside of the museum is full of stones. Marble floors, marble pillars, rhodonite and jasper iconoclasts and mosaics depicting various scenes from the bible. There are no paintings inside. Only mosaics stretching from one end to the other. I can't imagine the man hours that went into making a sketch, then creating colored smalt and finally transferring them to the walls and ceilings of the cathedral. Kids, this is why you spend time in school learning arts and crafts, because someday you will grow up and an emperor will commission you on a 24-year project to decorate a tomb.
We tried some Russian food in restaurant named Yat'. The best thing there was Pelmeni, a Russian dumpling. Shaks loves dumplings because momo’s are the national food of Nepal. If they are not then they should be. I love dumplings because I love Shaks first (unashamed ass kissing) and secondly because momo’s are delicious. Corollary to that is that we love dumplings in general.
one thing I noticed about the restaurants here is decor. It's almost always pretty. A lot of thought has gone to add character to each interior of the restaurants that we have gone to.
 Once we finished our delicious meal we went in search of an English tour of the canal.  After asking a couple of them, we found one that had an English audio guide, but wasn't a tour with English speaking host. I was happy to settle for it and just walk around for next 20 minutes until the clock strikes 4 pm. But Shaks had other ideas. She figured that the bigger canals would have better tours. We had asked one a day before and they had mentioned the same time at 4p.m. So off we were, Shaks zooming past the crowd, while I tried to keep up with her. It was a long 20 minutes of rushed walking under the afternoon sun. Struggling for breath and considerably more wet from perspiration, we finally made it to the one we thought we had asked the day before. We were wrong. So off we were again. We ran to the other side of the canal, where Shaks happened to ask a guide. He said yes, they have English tours and herded us to a ticket booth. We finally made it! 75 minute English tour for 700 rubles each, not bad at all… is what I thought while buying the tickets. I asked the girl who was handing me the ticket about the tour, our guide nowhere in sight anymore, and she mentioned that this was an audio guided tour! So much for our running, back to square one.
It was too late to back out now and this was a Fabregé museum sponsored tour so it couldn't be that bad, we had to settle for it. Well what do you know, it was bad. Starting from the onset when no one handed us any audio guide, we spent few minutes hoping that Russian commentary on the speakers would end and an English one will follow. No such luck. We had to go and ask for the audio guide and so did other fellow tourists. We got the audio guides finally but they didn't work at all. No sound coming through except for one lucky person who was able to hear his. At this point with a quarter of the tour gone, Shaks was fuming. I take the life's punches and roll with it, Shaks on the other hand punches back. So, she marched in and had them figure out one if any audio guide worked. None did. So, we saw the sights of St. Petersburg in Russian. At least we were free to make our own history. Like the one building covered in green net head to toe. Did you know that it was abstract art from 18th century? The architect rejecting the notion of beauty from the outside yet at the same time the net itself made from Italian lace. Now a days, you can see copy of this model in all the cities. In general, people think that buildings with such net enclosures are closed for repairs. We did too, until our eyes were opened in this tour. We made similar conjectures for a few more landmarks while stewing over our abject failure, feeling cheated as well since the audio guide didn't work after all the running from one end of St. Petersburg to another.
Finally the tour ended with Faberge’s on our faces. Shaks was of the mind to fight for justice and the get the money back. After asking around, I realized that this crusade would further spoil our mood. So I convinced Shaks to give up for now and later write a strongly worded letter. She has taken all the details of this tour and would definitely be doing so. I think I saved the tour company there because Shaks was ready to bring down fire, fury and 'i want to talk to the manager' card. Lesson number 6 for all of you. Prepare beforehand. you can either be spontaneous or in a hurry. You can't be spontaneous and in a time crunch at the same time, that is the way our experience lies.
We had a nice walk to lift our spirits back up. St Petersburg is a beautiful city with wide streets, lined with three story buildings in light shades of green, yellow and pink. Great canals running through the city complete the picture of European city with its own identity.
Our final meal in St. Petersburg was a good one. ‘Rustaveli’, a Georgian restaurant with satisfying dishes. The Georgian food is similar to Indian food somewhat minus the heavy spices. This is just to give an idea, because it definitely is not Indian food. I don’t want to come off as dismissing the cuisine.  Oh yes, a mention of the native Georgian spirit called Cha cha is required. We felt adventures and ordered it. It was colorless and around 50% alcohol. So essentially it was tequila. Should have known when we got it in shot glasses. I still continued with my rule of “Don’t waste liquor, there are kids sober in India.’
I write all of this sitting in the train to Moscow. It’s a free train for everyone traveling to watch match in Moscow, provided by the Fifa and Russian authorities.The train itself is nice and is similar to the first class sleeping berths of back home. We have four berths in our compartment and two of the others are occupied by moroccan supporters. We didn't talk much with them as they promptly went to sleep. We should too.
Rest of the tale tomorrow. 


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