Yesterday was our last day of work in Russia. John met with some of the
St. Petersburg engineers to talk about Open Solaris and also the Architecture
Review Committees. I had back-to-back meetings and got to talk with many excellent
candidates for the SEED program. I hope we will have many applicants by the
30 January deadline. Today, John and Jason and I got to do some sight seeing
around St. Petersburg during a very notable cold spell.
We spent quite a long time at the Fortress of Peter and Paul on Zayachy Island in
the Neva river. The cathedral inside the fortress is where the most famous
Czars (Russian kings and queens) are buried. We saw the tombs of
Peter the Great and Catherine the Great and the last Czar Nicholas II and his
family. They just moved the last Czar’s body into this church 7 years ago, close to
100 years after his murder. Most of the Czars’ tombs are very simple and very
similar white marble boxes surrounded by black metal
fences on the main church floor but two newer ones are of very bright colored stone – one
red purple and the other dark green – with gold letters. Nicholas and his family
have a room to themselves near the entrance. There are large marble plaques on the
walls with names and dates for him, his wife Alexandra, and their four daughters and son.
We did some shoping (which is difficult when it is twenty degrees below freezing). In the
early morning, we went to a farmers market to see how produce, meat, fish, and flowers
are sold here. Each flower bloom is wrapped in straw to protect it from the cold. The
shopkeepers in the outdoor stalls near the Church on Spilled Blood had to put
their pens in their mouths to warm up the ink to write me a receipt. We bought Ded Moroz
(Grandfather Frost – the Russian Santa) figures and 15 piece matryoshka nesting dolls. The
Church on Spilled Blood gets its name because it is on the spot where one of the Czars
was killed with a bomb. The church is large with many colorful and elegant onion domes of
different sizes, both of
golden metal and of colored tiles. We also walked out onto the frozen Neva river a little ways.
Lunch today was wonderful mushroom pie with soup followed by apple pie
and tea. We are still mostly eating our big meal in the morning because
it comes with the hotel room. I like blinis (crepes) best with jam and sour cream.
There are pastries with chopped hazel nut fillings – rather than the almond filling
more usual in the USA.
The hotel cook will make omlettes to order plus there are dozens of other
serving dishes of fruit, vegetables, yogurts, nuts and cereals and
granolas, baked goods, fish and caviar, and even baked beans and cooked
tomatoes for the English who don’t know any better. John and I went
to a late dinner at the Tandoori Nights Indian restaurant.
After four days of even the most excellent Russian food, eating something more
usual for us (chicken tikka masala and malai kofta) was a treat.
Tomorrow night, we are going to hear
Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” at the Mariinsky Theater. We also finally found a
place to go to church services tomorrow as well. We will see the
Hermitage art museum in the morning and go to church in the
afternoon. The Episcopal service is supposed to be held once a month in the St. Mary’s Lutheran church
building (at Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa 8) after the Lutherans are finished with
their morning services. The poor lady at the hotel desk spent over an hour trying to find an Episcopal
church in St. Petersburg in her directories. Because the Episcopal congregation is
sharing a building with another denomination, it did not show up on any
of her lists.
We fly to Tel Aviv on Monday to meet more potential SEED participants.
KatysBlog 