We finished up our last couple of days in St Petersburg. The city was great. We loved it. But we didn’t love the cold. The first week and a half, the weather was great. The last 4 days, it was miserable. It was in the 40’s, but it was rainy and a little windy, and the humidity was terrible. The humidity makes it feel much colder than it actually was. I now know what Winters in the east coast must be like.

It made it hard to do too much outside with the kids.

On Tuesday, I took a Dostoevsky walking tour. I saw several places he lived, places he frequented, and the place he was almost executed.

A large part of the tour was in the setting of the book Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky didn’t write the complete names of the places in his novel, he wrote the first letter of the streets, bridges, and establishments that his characters visited. They were all real places. The guide would quote the novel, “Raskolnikov walked 60 steps to the end of S street and turned the corner where he faced K canal,”etc etc. He showed me where all these places were. It was kind of neat. I was kind of such though, and it was freezing, and a lot of walking.

That evening, we dragged the kids to more sites in the city.

Today, we packed up and caught a train to Moscow. 4 hours and quite pretty scenery on the way.

I’m proud of the crew–once we arrived in Moscow we took the metro, not a taxi, with all our baggage to our new apartment. Everyone did great.

Our new apartment is definitely one of the nicer ones we’ve had so far. It’s nice to have a little more space and to have drawers to put our stuff away.

It also helps that’s this place is super clean.

We’ve had a couple of bummer apartment that were kind of gross, but we’re four for six, so I guess we’re doing ok.

Even though the temperature in Moscow is the same as in St Petersburg, it’s much nicer here. No wind, no rain (today anyway), and much lower humidity. The cold is not nearly as biting as it was in St Pete

It’s also nice to have this view from our apartment building.

Today marks 4 weeks since we left the states. The weather has been remarkably good……until the last few days.

On Saturday, we left the house with most of us in shorts, and quickly regretted it. I hurried back to the apartment to get coats and pants for everyone.

It looked like it was a nice day, but it was cold. In the 40’s

We started off with some St Petersburg donuts, called пышки or pyishky. To me they were just heavy fried dough, but the kids loved them. I think they’d eat shaving cream though if you sprinkled it with sugar.

Next, we visited the Faberge museum. For the kids it was just another boring museum, until we made up a new game for them. They each “won” 200 rubles if they found the one item in each room if the museum that we gave them clues about. Turned out this made the museum not only tolerable, but fun. I did have to remind them fifteen times in each room to walk, not run.

Anyway, the Faberge museum houses a lot of examples of exquisite Russian craftsmanship, with its most famous being Faberge eggs.

The most important religious holiday in Russia is Easter. At some point, a man named Faberge created a decorative egg for the radial family for Easter. This tradition caught on and continued for many years, the eggs becoming more and more elaborate. Some of the eggs house intricate gears that animate jeweled hens. There were something like 60 of these eggs in total created, and each is worth millions.

During this time period (1800’s I think) Russian silversmiths, stone cutters, and Jewelers in specific areas were unrivaled in the world.

Anyway, here are a few photos from the Faberge museum.

After the Faberge museum, we took a boat tour of the canals and the Neva River

The next day, it was cold and rainy all day. Ashley ventured into the city (sounds like it was a cold and wet venture), and I stayed with the kids. So aside from a 10 minute jaunt to the playground near our apartment, during which time we all got cold and wet, we had to entertain ourselves inside.

Today (Monday), Ashley and the kids hit up a mall with a trampoline park and a bunch of other games and rides. They had a blast. They also found a bakery that sold in Jane’s words, “best macaroons I’ve ever had”. So it was a great day for them.

I visited the Russian state museum. Another boring museum. But full of more incredible art. I can’t believe the the sculptures. Here are a few highlights from the museum.

Since I only booked our first air BNB for 8 nights and we decided to stay in St Petersburg a little longer, we had to change apartments.

Our last apartment was on the main Street in the center of the city, a little like staying right in Time Square in New York.

Our new place is a little ways from the city center and a in little more “working class” neighborhood. But, it’s close to the metro, right next door to a grocery store, and only $27 a night (so you know it’s gotta be fancy).

Thursday night, I took a guided tour called “A Different Side of St Petersburg”. We started out in an area called the Art Center, which became hub if musical activity in the USSR in the 80’s. Many famous Soviet rockers got their start here. It still is a musical and visual art center, but the buildings that had been in disrepair in the 80’s have now been renovated.

Most of the tour though was spent looking at buildings in the very center of St Petersburg that have a pretty interesting history. The majority of these buildings were built in the late 1800’s and were occupied by the well-to-do. Fancy entry ways, ornate decoration, some even had ceilings over 20 feet high!

Under communism, the apartments in the buildings were subdivided. Thin walls were installed to form small, single room apartments. These still remain. On a single floor, there may be 80-90 of these rooms. They have a communal kitchen and 2 communal bathrooms. 2 bathrooms for 90+people.

This is in the middle of downtown St Petersburg where real estate is most valuable, and in buildings that from the outside are beautiful. Here are a few photos.

The rooms in these communal apartments are owned individually. A single room can’t be sold without the consent of all the owners on a floor. For that reason, they are generally only sold to someone who can purchase the entire floor. Even that rarely happens and many people have lived this way for several generations and have no desire to sell. So, in the downtown center if St Petersburg, where each floor of these buildings is worth tens of millions of dollars, people live in absolute filth and poverty in small, sectioned of rooms

Our guide was somewhat of an expert on this topic as he lived 18 years of his life in one of these communal situations. He said that it was a fairly miserable existence.

Because often within a building, some floors have remained communal and some have been purchased and converted into luxury multi million dollar apartments, there’s an interesting mix in and around the buildings.

The tour culminated with an “unofficial” rooftop tour where you could see the whole city. Unofficially, we had to be very quiet and break our group into a few at a time so we could sneak up through the attic of an apartment building and onto a roof.

Today (Friday), was a little bit of a bummer. It rained all day so we wanted to do something inside. We decided to take a look at Tsarsckoe Selo, a palace built by Catherine the Great.

It took us about an hour and a half to get out there between the metro and the mini bus shuttle. When we got there, we had just barely missed the cut off time to buy tickets to enter the palace. They were shooting the place down early for some event that everyone just referred to as “an activity”. When I asked the cashier at the ticket office what the activity was, I got a typical Russian response, “how am I supposed to know?”. I asked multiple employees about it and got the same response. In any case, the activity involved food, music, and people dressed in period costumes of the 1700’s as well as regularly dressed guests.

This palace contains the Amber Room, a room completely covered from flour to ceiling in amber panels. The room is literally made from amber.

I wanted to see it even though, we couldn’t “officially” get in, so I followed a group of people into the palace with my kids in tow. When the guard asked if I was here for the”activity”, I said yes and kept walking. They stopped us at another checking in the palace though and it luck ran out. Although, I think we almost made it in as the lady working there said, “you must be the tall guy they told me about, although they didn’t say anything about children.”. I wasn’t sure if responding in the affirmative was going to get me past her or get the security called on us. Then a few other people got involved and in the end, whoever let me into the palace got a good tongue lashing over the walkie talky, and they booted us out.

Here’s a few pictures of the area though.

The last few days have been largely uneventful, so here’s a run down on Russian food and other options in the city.

The above picture is of a bowl of cold borsh. Borsh is a type of soup widely consumed in Russia although of Ukrainian origin (or so I’m told). Apparently there are many varieties, but the variety I am familiar with is based on beef or chicken broth and contains beets (hence the bright red color), carrots, and potatoes. It is usually eaten hot and the bowl pictured above is the first I have eaten it cold. Either way it’s absolutely delicious. I find it to be earthy and rich with no unusual or offensive flavors.

Many other types of soup are commonly eaten–fish soup, cabbage soup, beef soup with pickles, chicken soup, etc, etc. As I recollect, when I lived in Russia, soup with bread was the most common meal I was given in people’s homes.

Other common foods include salads (more frequently akin to potato salad than to lettuce salads), potatoes (pureed, boiled, fried), cabbage dishes (frequently with fermented cabbage), and various meat dishes from shish-kebabs to ground meat cutlets.

Bread is generally eaten with meals and the two most popular varieties are white and black, with white being the density and color of a baguette and black being a heavy, firm bread made in part with rye flour.

Pastries are ubiquitous and include small “pies” filled with meat or vegetables.

Throughout the city are “cafeterias”. They are a popular place for the average person to eat as they are quick and inexpensive. They’re really self-serve buffets where you pay for each portion/dish individually, often by weight. I love them because they serve all the hearty Russian staples. I’ve eaten in one at least one meal every day so far and I’ve made the rest of the bunch go with me.

In a large city like St Petersburg, you can find pretty much any type of food if you look. Since I was in Russia last, fast food chains like KFC, Burger King, and Pizza Hut have really infiltrated the city and can be found anywhere.

Apparently one of the most common choices Russians make when they go out for a meal with friends is Georgian cuisine, probably similar in popularity to going to a Mexican restaurant in the States. We haven’t been to one yet, but when I lived in Moscow in 2002, that’s where I would go with friends. Georgian cuisine is varied, but popular staples include steamed dumplings and a dish made with filo dough and cheese.

Our kids have done pretty well with everything we’ve eaten, but when we give them the choice, we end up at Pizza Hut (Jane), or Burger King (Nolan and Margaret).

On Tuesday, Jane and I split off from the rest of the family to visit a town called Repino, named for a famous Russian artist, Ilya Repin. He’s one of my favorites and I’m not sure where a true student of art would place him, but I would group him between realists and impressionists. In any case, when we got there, his home-turned-museum was closed, so we walked in a park and then along a beach, ate lunch and came back to town.

In town we checked out a flea market. Second hand clothing was a big part of the market and the nice stalls had high end clothes carefully grouped by category, size and brand.

The other stalls I found interesting included one with old Soviet knick knacks like stamp collection books, pins, and figurines. Another was run by a man who bought all the art at a school that had shut down in Moscow. Much of it was unfinished works. I loved the sketches.

I bought a small one with animal sketches dated 1949 for a few bucks and would have bought a few more, but didn’t want to have to cart them around and try not to ruin them for the next 11 months.

Today, we got caught up on home schooling.

I really hope kids are as resilient as they say they are. I’ll tell you this much: if you have to choose between having me as your teacher or having an actual third grade elementary teacher, choose the real teacher.

I think our kids are actually learning, despite our ineptitude as teachers, but home schooling with the Andersons involves many tears and melt downs.

I’m just hoping that what our kids learn outside of home school makes up for it.

This evening, we went to a church conference. I met up with Gennady Petrov, a mission compassion whom I haven’t seen since 1997. It was great to see him. Hopefully we’ll meet up again before we leave the city.

We spent about 6 hours yesterday between getting to church, church, and stopping at Smolniy Cathedral. So, that was pretty much our Sunday.

Nolan’s day was made today when he finally caught a pigeon.

All the mothers in the park out with their young children were appalled

Today, we also hit up the oldest banya in the city. A banya is basically a steam sauna. It is a quintessentially Russian experience and involves a very hot and humid room, a birch leaf bundle, and a very cold pool. We booked a family suite and once again, we had a great time. Add with our previous sauna trip, Margaret was the first to embrace the experience.

The plunge pool was a little deep and a little cold for the kids at first, and they weren’t up to sitting in the sauna for long, so they made do as they could (see photo below)

Later, we took in the church called Savior on the Spilled Blood.

The inside was pretty incredible with floor-to-ceiling mosaics covering every inch. Many familiar Bible scenes.

The detail in the mosaics near the altar was even more stunning though.

On a separate note, we are trying to teach the kids a few things about the places we visit. Ashley started to tell them about the Siege of Leningrad (as St Petersburg was known under communism) during WWII the other night, but then they were to scared to sleep alone.

If you haven’t heard about the siege, it’s one of many terrible and tragic events suffered by Russia during the war. The Nazis laid siege to the city for nearly 3 years. Hundreds of thousands starved to death. As things got worse and worse, their rations dwindled to 4 oz of “bread”, most of which was made of sawdust and other undigestible materials. People scraped and ate the glue from the back of wallpaper, boiled and ate shoe leather, and better it was all over, many had turned to cannibalism.

No nation suffered during WWII like the Russians. They remember it as the Great Patriotic War and celebrations of Victory Day are a big deal every year.

For a good listen, try Dan Carlin’s Ghosts of the Ostfront https://youtu.be/upAzM5Mduvw

We’ve had a few days in Russia now. Our apartment here is right on Nevskii Prospect–the main street in town. It’s always super busy on the street. The street is lined with little cafes, pharmacies, flower shops many of which are open 24 hours. But you step into the courtyard of our apartment building, and it’s really quiet. The apartment is quite nice. They all have been, not counting the first in Vilnius. One thing I did not expect is that they all have a washing machine–no dryer, but at least a washing machine. I think we would have packed a little different had we known this.

In the Baltic countries, we took rideshares/taxis to any place we didn’t walk. They all had public transportation, but it was mostly buses with a few trams. It honestly cost less to take the rideshares (for 5 people as opposed to buying 5 tickets on public transport) and was definitely much easier than public transport.

In Russia, we’ve gone everywhere on public transport. Mostly the metro. The metro here is great–pretty easy to figure out, clean, efficient, and has many lines and runs through most of the city. Because St Petersburg was built right near the sea and over wetlands, the metro has to be deep. It’s the deepest metro in the world. It costs 45 rubles (about 75 cents) to ride and Nolan and Margaret are free.

At the entrance to every station, you pass through a metal detector and past at least one policeman.

Once you pass the policemen, you scan your metro card and get on the steepest and longest escalator you’ve ever seen. It takes about 5 minutes to ride to the bottom. After that, it’s like any other subway system I’ve been on, but the stations are very clean and ornate, lined with marble, with busts and mosaics on the walls.

This was definitely something I wanted my kids to experience–public transport. And they definitely are. We ride the metro every day.

On Friday, we hit up the St Petersburg Zoologic Museum. It’s huge. One of the largest museums of its type. The museum has 17 million (!!) specimens although it only has enough room to house 500,000 of them.

One highlight is the complete skeleton of a blue whale, the largest animal to ever live on the earth. It is huge. But looking at it, I guess it makes me think that some of the huge dinosaurs must not be as big as I thought they were.

Other highlights include an actual mammoth that was found in the permafrost. It has the skin and some fur intact, although it is missing much of its trunk.

There were also several skeletons from extinct elephant lines that were ENORMOUS–twice as tall as African elephants today.

Today, we took a marshrutka to a place called Peterhof. A marshrutka is a kind of taxi bus that takes you to a destination, usually outside of the main city, with just a few stops on the way. They are basically, run down, private mini-buses where the driver lets as many people get on as possible so that half the load ends up standing the whole trip. The driver takes payment and gives change on the go.

As a side note, I took one of these with my brother Lance in Poland where we were so packed in and I was so jet-lagged that I fell asleep standing up but was so tightly packed that the pressure from the other passengers kept me in a standing position.

Anyway, we fortunately weren’t that packed today, and made it to Peterhof. Peterhof is a palace originally built by Peter the Great to commemorate a victory at war with Sweden. It is modeled after Versailles and is pretty incredible. During WWII it was taken by the Germans. Hitler planned to host a celebration there. Although it had suffered some damage from the war at that point, it was still standing. Stalin was so angry at the thought that the Germans were going to live it up at this place that he basically bombed it to the ground. They had to rebuild it after the war. It’s now a UNESCO heritage site. Here are some photos from Peterhof.

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Nolan was pretty sure he was going to catch something, so it was hard to keep him out of the water in the garden ponds.

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In any case, it was another great great day. It takes us all day to visit one site like this. Home school takes a bit of time as does getting to and from our destinations. So we spend 3-4 hours at one site and all come home exhausted. The kids are proving to be first rate travelers. No real complaints about the food and although they could be done after 5 minutes in the museums and other sites, as long as they get a little free time, they stay pretty happy.

I’m so glad we checked out the Baltic countries. They were all great. I think Ashley and I both liked Estonia the most, but it’s hard to say since we spent the most time there. It would have been great to have a car and be able to explore the area outside of the city a little more.

Overall impression of the Baltics is that they are on the up and up. Their economies are growing. They have a strong national identity, but definitely align themselves with the rest of Europe more than with the country that borders them on the east.

It was an easy and safe area to travel. Very beautiful. Lots to see and experience.

We hopped a bus on Wednesday bound for Russia and six and a half hours later, we made it.

This is a whole different experience. And it is fantastic!

Russia is a hard place to be a foreign traveler. You need a visa to get in from nearly all countries. The visa has to be obtained in advance and takes a fair amount of work and expense. Relatively few people here speak English and it’s not easy to navigate the city without speaking at least some Russian.

But, to be honest, I’m glad it’s that way. If it were easier to get here, the place would be packed with tourists. St Petersburg is an amazing city.

It’s big and busy–feels a little like new York. There are 5 million people in St Petersburg. In contrast, the total population for all the Baltic countries together is only about 6 million.

It’s historic and beautiful. In the historic areas of St Petersburg there is way more Art Nouveau architecture than even in Riga. The architecture is every bit as beautiful. But instead of a sequestered area in the city paved with cobblestones and reserved for tourism, St Petersburg’s streets have four lanes and thousands of honking vehicles.

The number and scope of museums and other cultural sites is crazy. I’ll post about them as we visit those places.

Today, we hit the Hermitage. I really don’t think I’d heard of the Hermitage until I visited it when I spent a day in St Petersburg 17 years ago. I had heard of the Louvre of course, and the Met, but not the Hermitage. But the Hermitage easily rivals those museums. It is second only to the Louvre in size (as art museums go), with the Louvre being 10% larger. But while the Louvre has 38,000 pieces, the Hermitage has over 3 million!!! So many pieces that the vast majority aren’t on display.

All this for just over $10 a person. And kids get in free. As do students.

The display pieces start with 300,000 year old stone tools and progress through Egyptian art, Greek art, Roman art, all the way to fairly contemporary pieces.

It was ambitious to drag 3 kids through the Hermitage, but we did it. I’m sure we only saw a very small fraction of what the museum holds, but here are some highlights.

We spent Monday on the beach. Tallin is a port town like Riga; you can see the sea from any hill in town. There are many beaches along the coast near Tallinn.

The most popular beach is called Pirita, so we headed there yesterday. As it would happen, yesterday was the first day of school here, so the beach was nearly empty.

The water in the sea near the beach was quite shallow. You could walk out 100 yards before it got to your waist. It certainly wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t too cold either–it seemed warmer than the ocean in southern California.

Nolan had a great time. He caught lots of jellyfish, but was unsuccessful at his attempts for fish. He reminds us frequently that he could catch a lot more stuff if he had a net (at home he never goes anywhere without a net).

Jane and Margaret had a great time playing in the sand and wading in the water as well.

I feel asleep and managed to get pretty sunburned. My chest and belly don’t usually see much sun.

The weather most of the day was great–another sunny day in the low 70’s. In the afternoon, a storm rolled in and brought rain and cold winds.

Today we started by visiting a local donut shop. The donuts were a little more like fry bread than the donuts we’re used to, but very good. By mistake, I also ordered a large plate of pickled herring and sour cream, so I ate that plus a donut for breakfast.

Our plans today were to go back to Lahemaa National Park, to a village called Kasmu. It turns out that after August, public transportation doesn’t run regular routes there. This took many hours and a few false starts to figure out. Instead, we visited the area north of Tallin, saw an old monastery and spent some more time on the beach.

The wind was blowing pretty strong today. There was a little marina and I sat and watched the sailboats leave the marina. Most of them were very small, meant for one person. A lot of kids manning the boats. The wind was blowing almost directly to shore, so it was incredible to watch these little boats sailing out to sea almost directly into the wind. They were of course tacking and had to angle back and forth, but still, they moved along at a pretty good clip even when they were sailing almost straight into the wind. It was neat to watch.

I said in the video that these boats don’t have a keel–they really do, it’s just a detachable keel so I didn’t see it in the boats that were trailered on land.

We’re learning that our kids do best with a fair amount of down time. So, after the day at the bog, we got caught up on home school in the morning

For the afternoon, I booked us a family room at a local sauna. The kids definitely enjoyed it although Margaret was the only kid who made use of the actual sauna.

Jane and Nolan spent their time in the plunge pool having dive competitions.

After the sauna, we walked to a crepe place here that is pretty well known. Nolan thought it was great to have ice cream with a chocolate crepe for dinner.

That was pretty much the whole day for us.

Margaret spends about 25% of her time when we’re out and about like the picture below.

Fortunately, we brought a stroller.

Today, Sunday, we attended a local branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Speakers gave talks in their language of proficiency which included Estonia, Russian, and English. The talks were translated the talks into the other two languages.

They had just finished a large addition to the meeting house and it was dedicated today. So what Jane termed a “feast” was held in the cultural hall after church. Really it was just snacks and finger foods but it made Jane’s day.

The rest of the day, the kids played in the park and Ashley and I took turns checking out more of old Town Tallinn.

Tallinn is quite nice. The vibe is definitely more laid back than Riga or Vilnius. It’s also very quiet. Peak tourist season is past, but even accounting for that, I’m surprised at how empty these beautiful cobblestone streets are.

The weather continues to be ideal. Sunny and in the 60’s to 70’s.

Our first full day in Estonia was a “down day”. The kids really needed this. We got them caught up on their home school and let them watch a few shows and play in the park. I walked around Old Town Tallin for a little bit while Ashley stayed with the kids. It’s definitely beuatiful.

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Today, we went to a bog. It didn’t sound exciting to the kids or me either, but Ashley was all gung-ho about it so we went. It turned out to be a great day. We walked to the bus station and caught a bus that took us about 25 miles outside of Tallin and dropped us off on the side of the highway. We walked a ways to a trailhead in Laheema National Park. The trail took us on a boardwalk across a peat bog.

A peat bog forms where water tables are low and peat moss grows. The moss grows and then dies and is covered in a new layer of living moss. This happens year after year, century after century, eon after eon. Because of low oxygen levels in the water below the top layer of moss, the peat moss decomposes very very slowly. The layers of dead moss can build up this way until they are fifteen feet thick. When you walk on the parts that will support your weight, it is very wet and spongy.

We spent the whole day there. It was very other-worldly and beautiful. Apparently the water is very pure and clean although it is brown due to a high humic acid content. Jane and I jumped in one of the bogs and swam (this is a park sanctioned activity, although I’m not sure my euro-style swimmies were park sanctioned). The water was cool but not cold, and although it was as brown as strong tea, it didn’t smell at all.

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We also found wild cranberries and bluberries, and a type of berry that is called brusnika.

Nolan and Jane also caught 9 tree frogs while we were waiting for our bus back to the city

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So, here’s a brief rundown on the Baltic Countries in case you were wondering:

The Baltic States or Baltic Countries are so called because the border the Baltic Sea, the body of water that sits between the majority of the European mainland and the Scandinavian countries of Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The Baltic Sea is connected to the North Sea which is in turn connected to the Atlantic Ocean.

This is a very strategic location as it is a key sea connection to northwestern Asia. Historically, it has been the target of the Swedish, German, and Russian empires.

These three countries were under the control of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, but gained independence after WWI. This independecne was short-lived however as they were annexed by the Soviet Union after WWII.

In the late 80’s, during a massive campaign against soviet rule, the people of these countries held hands and formed a human chain that stretched from the capital of the northernmost country to the capital of the southernmost. This chain from Tallin, Estonia to Vilnius, Latvia took 2 million people. Soon after, they gained independence from the USSR.

Each area has it’s own language, culture, and traditions. Although the people of these countries speak their own native language, they are nearly all bilingual. Generally the younger generation speaks English and the older generation speaks Russian. Many people here speak both English and Russian as well as their native tongue. Each country also has a fairly large population of Russians.