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One of the most incredible places here is the subway “metro”. There is the largest and deepest escalator I’ve ever seen. I looks like we are going down into a big hole. The decoration is all from the 50s. There are some stations that are totally closed, dark. You don’t see when the train is coming, there are iron doors that open only when you can board in. It gives a claustrophobia feeling, the walls are thick and the iron doors always closed. It reminded me the film “The Cube”. Some people told me that the doors and thick walls are due to the pressure from the river and canals above.
I decided to visit Peterhof, a palace with nice gardens and lots of water fountains. If before I compared St. Petersburg to Paris, Peterhof is their version of Versalles. After an hour squeezed in a bus I got to the palace. The line to get in the museum was huge, it reminded me what it is to travel in Europe during the summer. I spend a few hours waking around the gardens. All the time you have the feeling of greatness. Landscape wise the gardens are not so impressive. Their high points are the waters. There are water fountains everywhere. They are beautiful. I just don’t think they work in the winter, because the water must freeze. The way back to the city I got a fast boat, nice and comfortable, 30 times more expensive than the bus.
Museum, yes, I visited the Hermitage. It is considered to be one of the three biggest in Europe (Louvre and Prado). I didn’t enjoy much because there was too many tourists. They were everywhere, I could here tour guides in Russian, English, German and Spanish, all talking at the same time. I even passed by a group of Brazilian. I looked really fast to all the rooms, my only wish was to be in a place with almost no people.
The Russian State Museum, that shows Russian art, was also crowded and hot. I could see they were not prepared for the summer. There was no air conditioning and the heat was too much. Beside every woman who takes care of the rooms there was a small fan blowing warm wind on their faces. They all looked like they would faint at any time.
The last museum I visited was the Dostoevsky Memorial Museum. It was a small house where the writer spent the last years of his life. There was no information in English. I hoped to find there a bookstore selling his books translated to English. But, no, this time they weren’t capitalists, there was no book to buy.
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