Summer Days

This week we had two gorgeous days and then drizzle, then sun again.

We're on the tough duty assignment of showing President and Sister Rawson the sights of St. Petersburg. Monday was their Preparation Day, so we took them out to Peterhof. We had been there in May, but not much was green yet. We were anxious to go back. Here are a few photos from the beautiful day there.

The upper gardens up on the bluff between the road and the palace.

The grand staircase and canal. In the days of the Tsars, people would come by boat from Petersburg and up this small canal to the palace, which is just behind the photographer.

The top of the grand staircase with palace on the left.

Another of the staircase waterfalls from the upper bluff to the lower gardens

The same staircase from the top looking down. There are at least three staircases.

Of course Sue had to put her feet in the Gulf of Finland.

This is one of the hydrofoil boats that go every half-hour between downtown
St. Petersburg and Peterhof. There are so many tourists this time of year that
at least four boats left at the same time we left. We had a mission driver
take us down to Peterhof and leave us, and then we took the hydrofoil back.

From the boat we had a great view of the Latka tower under construction.
It will be 460+ meters tall--88 stories--when it is finished.

On Tuesday we took President and Sister Rawson to the US Consulate to apply for their 2nd passports. See reason for that below.... Usually Sue just takes the passports of new arrivals and does this herself, but we wanted the Rawsons to meet the Consular officials. From time-to-time the Mission President is invited to various events at the Consulate. It's nice to know who the people are. President told them that we have about 50 volunteers who are willing to help with any Consular projects. We couldn't take any photos there, because when you go in the door they take away all electronic devices--no phones, no cameras, no iPods, etc.

After the Consulate visit we wanted to show the Rawsons a few sites in the area. But that turned out to be a bust. The Summer Garden is closed on Tuesdays. That is the site where the land of Russia was dedicated for the restoration of the Gospel in 1903, and again after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.  So we walked over to the "Christ on the Spilled Blood" monument to Alexander II. The line was several hundred people long just to get in the door. We know we can do that another day in October when the tourists have all gone home. We admired the outside, but then decided just to find someplace for dinner. President Rawson served his young mission in Italy, so he was glad to go to Mama Roma's and have Italian food.  

Our day was not over. We had been invited to a fun concert by a Belgian wind orchestra celebrating SPB Red Cross hundred-fiftieth anniversary. There were about 50 musicians of all ages, and they played a varied program--some classical, some show tunes, a medley of Elvis Presley hits, and one piece that was thirty great moments in music. It had 4 to 8 measures of lots of different famous songs from all genres. The hits of the evening however, were the wonderful arrangements of Russian folk songs. People were clapping along, and a couple even got up to dance!

After the concert there was a brief VIP reception.

We introduced Rawsons to Tatyana Lenova, Chair of Regional Red Cross

And also to the conductor of the orchestra.  

Wednesday, 3:30am: Just before the crack of dawn we arose, dressed and began our quick journey to Estonia, our quarterly Visa Trip to renew our Russian visas. We met our driver waiting for us in the bright predawn light and just after 4 am headed south then west across the freeway bridge as the sun broke through the clouds on the northeast horizon. We were the only two passengers, so we took advantage of the bench seats in the van and sacked out. 

This is the big new freeway bridge that was opened just a year or two ago.
Before that, if you were in the Central City between 2 am and 5 am you could
not get out. All the other bridges go up to let ships through.

Following freeways, passing the power plant on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, we took reasonably well-maintained two-lane roads through villages with monuments and past fields of enormous six-foot-tall Queen Anne's lace. 

We drove through a light summer drizzle toward the border town of Narva, Estonia. After two hours we reached a checkpoint in the middle of nowhere, five kilometers from the border. From here on, no photos are permitted. A lone guard, standing beside the road at the edge of the forest, where there was nothing but an outhouse back in the woods, flagged us down and checked our passports. 

On to the border, we drove slowly into the border town of Ivangorod, turning right down the hill on a couple of back streets to the pedestrian crossing for the bridge across the border river. The driver dropped us off at a dead end and pointed the way to the Russia border station, above us in the trees. We climbed a rickety wooden boardwalk to the gate, stepped through the entrance and approached the guard window. At that hour there was no line. There the first officious inspector stamped our current passports and took our expiring visas and resident's permits away from us. We stepped through the automatic door into no-man's land and onto the covered walkway across the bridge. We walked past a long line of cars and trucks waiting to enter Russia. At the far end of the bridge we entered the border station for Estonia, where a second officious inspector stamped our current passports--no visa required for Americans to enter Estonia. 

Out we went and up the hill past the vehicle checkpoint to a small park where we admired the map, taking a photo to commemorate our trek. After a few minutes we walked back to the Estonian border station, presenting and getting a stamp from a third officious inspector on our current passport. Out the automatic doors, we went back down and across the bridge over the river to Russia. Now we had entry and exit stamps from Russia and also entry and exit stamps from Estonia in our original passports. We are in no country. By this time, 6:45 am, the traffic was beginning to move. At the far end of the bridge we entered the other side of the border station, filled out a migration card and presented it with our NEW passport that had a new Russian visa to a fourth inspector. This is why all the volunteers here need two passports.

 After inspection, we were again admitted to Russia, passing through an unguarded metal detector and out the back door down the wooden boardwalk and through the mud to the end of the road, where we had started out. There we stopped briefly in a convenience store selling everything from vodka and switchblades to cookies and fidget spinners. We didn't buy anything, figuring we would breakfast at home soon enough. We found our driver asleep in the van, woke him, climbed in and headed home, back the route we came. We arrived in St. Petersburg's commute traffic two hours later after a short nap and some Russian language exercises, going straight to the office, where we turned in all our passports to the visa clerk. She then headed off to stand in the line downtown to register us as residents of St. Petersburg. This is the routine for all of us volunteers every ninety days for nearly two years.

Usually the visa trippers have to stay in the mission office for several hours until they get their passports back and can be out in public. But, since we only live across the driveway, they let us out of the building. We came home and took and nap and got to the office at noon, glad for a quiet remainder of the day.

Thursday we had a mostly quiet day in the office. But we needed to run one errand. Our itty-bitty dishwasher is broken. It gets stuck on the drain cycle and will just run forever if you don't manually move the dial around. Ken is the chief dishwasher, and he likes to have things work right! So he told Sister Efimova--our intrepid Babushka apartment overseer. She got on the phone to our landlady, who lives in Moscow, and told her that we needed a new dishwasher. This one is too old to repair. And she said it should be a big one, not a tiny one that fits inside a cupboard. We can move the refrigerator to another wall and put the dishwasher there. The landlady said it would be too hard to move the plumbing. So they decided instead to move the current dishwasher cupboard to where the fridge is and put a new built-in dishwasher where the old one was. Sue is so excited! Ken wants a new dishwasher, but Sue is looking forward to the three-foot-wide new counter top. This kitchen has so little counter space, so adding another three feet will about double the work area. (Hurray!) So we went shopping on Thursday and picked out a new dishwasher. Sister Efimova will buy it on Monday and has someone coming to install it on Wednesday. She really is a miracle worker!

Friday morning was a normal office day. But in the afternoon we went to do our Hermitage Museum volunteer service. When we first came to St. Petersburg and told us about this, we thought it was great. Then we found out we would just be standing at the entrance to take tickets. That didn't seem like much. But now we know how much we are needed. There are hoards and hoards of tourists. The lines go down the hall and out the door. And each one has to scan the barcode on the ticket or the turnstile won't go around. Most of them can't make it work right. It's so much faster for us to take the ticket, swipe it over the scanner and hand it back. There are two scanners and two turnstiles, and a woman at a desk nearby to solve problems.  She can't be at all three places because there are almost always problems. So we are needed and greatly appreciated.

We want to see a bit of the Hermitage Museum after our service each time. It has over 300 rooms, so it's best done in small bites. Last week when we were there, a bunch of people were getting in free because they had invitations to the opening of a special exhibit about flowers. This week the woman at the desk with us told us we had to go up to the second floor and see the flower exhibit, so we did. The exhibit is all flower and plant arrangements where the flower petals are all made of ceramic and painted. The leaves and stems are painted copper. The artist is Vladimir Kanevsky. He is Russian-born, now living and working in New Jersey. If you would like to see more pictures of his work, his website is here:  http://www.thevladimircollection.com/. And here
 Ken posted a bunch of photos on facebook which got turned into a short video.  

Saturday we spent our first day on a dacha. People in Russian cities almost all live in apartment buildings. But many, many of them also have a dacha. This usually is a garden plot with a small house. In the US we would call it a cabin. But you all know that 'cabin' is a word that can describe a one-room shack or a big fancy house in the mountains. A dacha is the same. But on the dacha people also usually grow lots of food. During Soviet times the government gave dacha land to lots of people to help alleviate the food shortage problem.  

This week we went with Elders Gerratt and Muhlestein to visit the dacha of Sister Vera from our ward. She and her husband bought this dacha many years ago. He passed away in 2004 and now she keeps it up by herself. It's probably about 1/2 acre with a small, very old decrepit house. It has no running water inside, just a hose in the garden. It has no electricity, but there is gas to run a two-burner stove top and a refrigerator. But it has a beautiful garden. She has many kinds of plants--fruits, vegetables and flowers. Several apple trees, berries, melons, currants, potatoes, peas, squash, dill, onions, etc.

We worked for about 2-1/2 hours to dig up this plot and break up the clods of weeds so she can prepare it for planting. It was hard work, but it was the perfect day to do it. A little bit cool with a bit of a breeze, and sometimes cloud cover and sometimes sun.  

And after we were done, she fed us a wonderful lunch. We sat on the patio next to the dacha and enjoyed real Russian food--potatoes with sour cream, cucumbers and lettuce, fried chicken medallions with cheese patties for dessert. And a few fresh strawberries from the garden. It really was a wonderful day!


Till next week!