Reforming Sounds into Probable Words

Day 4

St. Petersburg, Russia

What the hell is that? I asked aloud, seventy-three seconds after I woke up.

A massive something on the horizon. Looking like a giant rocket. Five times the height of anything else anywhere near the thing. Silver and shiny and new and menacing and intimidating and definitely Making A Statement.

Russia.

Apartment buildings cluttered the shore. Teeming with humans, I was sure. But it was completely silent. And the cruise boat never made a sound either as it magically parallel parked itself. A massive beast. A colossal hunk of steel and gas and electronics with a belly full of fresh food and drink and laundry facilities waiting to serve the people up top. Giant and heavy and graceful and silent. A thing of pure joy.

The first tour we went on, a grouchy Russian lady with her mouth too close to the microphone screeched in poor English all morning. We each had a headset, and she would form words into it, supposedly telling us lots of rich history and stories and lore. She said “yeh” at the end of every single sentence.

Every single sentence-yeh.

Sometimes she’d get in the ‘yeh’ a few times extra.

“After the fall of the Soviet Union-yeh, the provincial government-yeh gave the apartments to the families who were already-yeh living there-yeh.”

Listen to a series of sounds she made, then play them over again in my head, removing ‘yeh’ and reforming the sounds into probable words. Repeat and repeat and repeat. We went to the Hermitage museum. So intensely focused on trying to understand her yowling-yeh, I worked myself into a mighty migraine. I took a medicine and an anti-puke pill and did my best to follow whatever it was she was trying to say.

But we did see DaVinci’s stuff and Rafael’s, and all the paintings of little baby Jesus everywhere by everybody (Baby Jesus is a pretty popular topic, after all), and then Rembrandt who only paints light on faces and hands because they tell the best stories and then, oh and then…

The Prodigal Son.

We finally got away from the howler and back to the boat and stuffed our faces just in time to get on another bus for another tour. In through stern Passport Control Russian Gate Agent People, out through stern Passport Control Russian Gate Agent people with all their loud stamp-stamp-stamping on various slips of paper and filing them here and there and giving some to us and stamp-stamp-stamping some more on other things.

No Smiling. Pretend You’re Mute. Do Not Engage.

This tour took us to a sculpture, and we weren’t totally sure why, two Egyptian sphynx (again not sure why) and then to a spot where we could see a replica of a sunken ship that is now a gym. Not. Sure. Why.

He told us how they’re super proud that they kicked Sweden’s ass 200 years ago.

How they’re just learning about recycling.

How there’s no such thing as fourth grade.

We went to some building but didn’t have time to go inside, and then to the Church of Spilled Blood where a Tsar was murdered one upon a time. Fantastic colors sprayed all over in mosaics and bold shapes. Goldens and blues and greens on bulbous onion domes. Kind of circus-y but in a sophisticated-kind-of-way. But there was no time to go inside there either. We had enough time to pee and snap a few shots and the guide hustled us back to the bus and we were out of there.

Over dinner I tried to refrain from migraine-vomiting and even tried wearing earplugs to help with the noise sensitivity and wished I had some sunglasses and tried not to get so dizzy I fell out of my chair. The aunts told us about how meaningful The Prodigal Son was to them, and we all teared up with the beauty of it all and they drank wine and we wondered aloud about the original Stroganoff recipe. And about the hundreds of workers who painted the onion domes with a mixture of gold and mercury and inhaled it on accident and fell off the roofs to their deaths. And how St. Isaac’s cathedral was used as as anti-religion museum during communist rule and how another church was used as an indoor ice skating rink.

And about how even the horses had their own palaces in Russia, which was a good enough reason right there for starving people to start a revolution.