June 10th: Bike trip to Peterhof with John Roseman, by John and Karl

Today we ventured out on a very unusual trip to the town of Peterhof, about one hour outside St. Petersburg, where we took a day-long bike trip with Donna and Joan’s old friend from Yale, John Roseman.  John moved to Russia in 1991 and so is fluent in the language and is a permanent resident. He lived in Peterhof for 20 years prior to moving to Minsk about a year ago.

To get to the town we had to take trains and planes.  First, we took the subway to the train station. The subway is really pretty, with great Romanesque details and is almost nicer than the street level details. The stations have beautiful mosaics – a theme in Russia—and are very safe.  (We were thinking of Chechnya while we were there). The subways are very fast, and deep, to get below the river and the sandy soil on which St. Petersburg is built. Then we switched to the local train for a 40 minute ride to the country. In typical Russian fashion, our tickets needed to be swiped four times! Of course, the first time, Missy’s didn’t work, so we had to go see the stern faced (former) communist guard to let her through. Then we had to produce our tickets again on the train. Thank God we had John, who spoke Russian and made sure we didn’t get deported to a gulag!

 
After a great ride, we downscaled to proletarian bikes.  To get to the bikes we walked through the Peterhof park and past the local sanatorium ---we didn’t know they still existed, but apparently they do in Russia. We needed to go to the bathroom by this time, so we stopped at a local restaurant that is set up permanently for weddings.  Of course Karl and I had our picture taken under the wedding banner! With that, we were off and riding through Peterhof with John.

 
We saw Dachas, with and without plumbing, we saw Stalin-style housing, we saw the piping that led to the palace that Peter the Great built, we saw small palaces that had been destroyed in WWII and are not yet reconstructed, and we saw palaces with great new gilding and reconstruction in process. It is a very bipolar place, with both great riches in the public domain, and private residences that are extremely humble. Most people in Russia live in small apartments in tall buildings: they now own them, but there is no such thing as suburbia or a back yard.

We stopped at the Russian version of a mini-mart, with a kiosk selling home grown honey, and so-called cafes. It was a bustle of activity, including women with babushkas that reminded me of my Lithuanian grandmother, Domicela -- they had the same stern look! Donna had a great time smiling at them and scaring them.

Donna had managed to rent a three wheeled bicycle, which was often the center of attraction. At the rest stop, one of the local men came over to ask about the bike’s gearing!  We retraced our steps like real locals and arrived back in St. Petersburg around 9 pm, in full daylight.