Firstly, an apology. My last couple of weeks in St. Petersburg were fairly manic, as were my first couple of weeks back in England, and so I've only just got round to updating. But I do have at least three entries to come, starting with this account of the second-to-last week.
The museums featured mainly in our celebration of Helen's 21st birthday on 11th December. As we wanted to make a day of it, we decided to visit the Oceanarium and the Arctic and Antarctic Museum before moving on to our favourite Wetherspoons-substitute, SPB. The Oceanarium was home to all manner of crazy fish but my personal favourites were the rays, who we were lucky anough to happen upon at feeding time. But, this being Russia, feeding time couldn't possibly be normal. Instead the rays, who were kept in a very low-walled tank, were goaded by the keepers until they flapped against the walls, causing a veritable tidal wave of water to slosh over onto the floor. As they became more and more aggravated, they began to flap without any prompting, and one of them just flopped down on the wall, looking like it might have died, until one of the keepers pushed it back into the water with a big stick. Dying during the show is clearly frowned upon. Mind you, the cleaners would probably have preferred it if they had died, judging by the grumpy expressions they wore as they mopped several gallons of water off the floor...
The Arctic and Antarctic Museum was marginally less exciting but contained some beautiful photos and some paintings which would have been beautiful were it not for the somewhat unneccessary addition of Soviet warships. It was also home to the few stuffed animals which hadn't made it into the Zoological Museum - including arctic foxes, polar bears and lemmings. However, before too long we began to develop the little-known condition 'museum knee' (name copyright Rachel Kitchen 2010) - those familiar with this painful condition will know that it can only be cured by the consumption of some kind of beverage - which in this case turned out to be strawberry beer. Six hours later we stumbled onto the metro, having sampled a large number of SPB's finest (or cheapest) beers, played numerous games of Cheat (and thus learnt that Tom knows how to swear as he got more than a little competitive), and compiled a list of quotes from the trip on Helen's phone. All the best nights finish before 11pm here....
The previous Thursday, Tom and I had attempted to visit another museum, the Museum of Railway Communications (ie. our university's museum) only to discover that when the cash desk closes at 5, turning up at 5 on the dot isn't a good plan. Instead we headed to the Yusupov Gardens to fulfil a lifelong dream. Like all the best lifelong dreams, it had actually only been a lifelong dream since we arrived in Russia, but it was a good one - to walk on a frozen lake! To begin with we were slightly terrified and would only put one foot on at a time, but after walking to the island in the centre and back we relaxed a little (those who think that this is an impressive achievement should Google the size of the Yusupov Gardens - it was about 12 strides) and decided to have a bit more fun. A small crowd of children had gathered to go sledging and after debating for a few minutes over whether we could ask them for a go (as the best Russian we could come up with was "Can I for five minutes have that?" we thought that the answer would probably be "No.") and then decided simply to join in their game of 'Let's slide on the frozen lake'. I failed spectacularly at this, falling over almost as soon as I'd stepped onto their 'sliding patch' (a 100m run of incredibly slippery and no doubt hazardous ice), but Tom managed to get about halfway along it, albeit with rather comical arm-movements. By this time, I had regretted leaving the house without a hat or gloves, but it was worth it, even if I couldn't walk properly for the next three days!
For my final 'm' I chose musicians due to the amazing concert which I saw on 13th December - Elton John (and Ray Cooper)! For this I was mocked mercilessly by Tom, who seems to be labouring under the delusion that Elton John's greatest hit is entitled 'I'm Elton John' and runs to the tune of nothing in particular. Or at least that's what you'd have thought if you'd listened to him in the days leading up to the concert... However, the morning after it I was forced to disappoint him, as it may surprise you to learn that Elton John has never recorded a song with that particular title. He has, however, recorded numerous other songs, many of which he played, accompanied with crazy light shows and some rather interesting back-up from Ray Cooper. I knew nothing about Ray Cooper before the concert, but apparently he is one of the world's greatest percussionists. He certainly made the night interesting when he suddenly appeared behind Elton John banging drums and cymbals with huge amounts of enthusiasm. This enthusiasm soon spread to the audience, who gathered around the stage proffering bouquets of flowers and begging for autographs. Not bad for £20 tickets....
No comments:
Post a Comment