Hermitage and Flowers

This was mostly another quiet week. Monday night we had guests for dinner, as we often do. Here are Elder Baptista (from Portugal & Germany), Constantin, Elder Wallace, Sue 
& Ken.






Because of the World Cup crowds, the Hermitage has asked for more helpers from our group of volunteers. They really like us because the young people are all fluent in both English and Russian. Many, many of the visitors are not Russian, of course. Sue spent about two hours on Tuesday afternoon "directing traffic" in the main courtyard of the Winter Palace. There were four different lines, and people needed to know why! (One for buying tickets by machine, two for buying tickets in person and getting free tickets for students and children and one for people who already have paper tickets.) Several people said to her that they were glad she spoke English--and English was obviously not their first language. And she could also tell people who had electronic tickets on their phone that they didn't want any of these lines, but needed to go in through an entrance on another side of the building. It's pretty frustrating to stand in a long line, get to the front, and be told you need to go elsewhere and stand in a different line!

Elder McKay Muhlestein helping Hermitage visitors

While she was doing that, the young Elders were across the complex giving directions and answering questions near the e-ticket entrance.











One of the Hermitage employees mentioned to Sue that there was a special flower exhibition in the Summer Garden, and Wednesday was the last day. So, after we finished at the Hermitage on Tuesday we walked down to see this. 








There were flower arrangements floating in the fountains.


















This is Carpian Pond, but we call it "Swan Lake," in the Summer Garden, looking across the street to St. Michael's (Engineer's) Palace. (We still need to visit that.)



















And one area had some small whimsical displays with animal and fairy-tale themes. We liked this one--a straw quartet!















There are little kiosks all over the Summer Garden selling snacks and souvenirs. We saw one that said ice cream, but since we hadn't had any lunch, and it was now about 5:30 pm we decided to have "French Dogs" instead. They have this bread that is sealed at the bottom and hollowed out in the middle, just the right size for the meat. They squirt mustard and ketchup in the bread, add the meat, and it's all ready.  








While walking to find our mini-bus to home, we saw lots and lots and lots of soccer fans. This group from Argentina was typical for the day. Argentina was playing Tuesday night in St. Petersburg. They said the stadium was about 95% Argentinian fans. They managed to win--just barely. Argentina has struggled in the tournament and barely made it out of the group play in second place. That means they have to play France in the very first game of the knock-out round. Going into the tournament, France was ranked in the top four and Argentina in the top eight. (Argentina and Portugal both lost on Saturday night, so Messi and Ronaldo, two of the greatest players in the world, are both out of the tournament!)

So the rest of the week was pretty quiet. We worked in the office. We went back on Friday afternoon for our regular Hermitage service. We watched a lot of soccer games in the evening. That was the exciting part of the week: A lot of upsets. A lot of close, low-scoring games. Japan and Senegal were so close that Japan made it out of group play and into the next round only because they had fewer yellow cards in all their games than did Senegal! By all other measures they were tied--their win/loss record, their game against each other, and their total goals for-and-against.  

But the biggest soccer news of the week is that Germany came in last in their group!!! They are the defending World Cup champions. Not this year. They've gone home. No one can quite believe that they lost 0-2 to lowly S. Korea. They were ranked second behind Brazil as the tournament started. It's a huge embarrassment to Germany, but Brazil is doing well. And the Russians are ecstatic because their lowly ranked team made it through to the knock-out round. The Russians play again on Sunday in Moscow against a powerful Spain team.


The other thing falling apart is our building. We noticed that the stucco facing was off part of the wall next to the door to our staircase. We just assumed they were repairing it. One day as we opened the door to come back to the apartment for lunch, we heard a "crash!" We looked behind the door and found that another big chunk of the stucco had fallen off. When we came home later, the mess was cleaned up, and this wooden frame propped up the facing to keep any more from falling off. But, can you imagine, is this twelve-story tall building really made of bricks? We hope it has lots of steel reinforcements, and we are glad this is not earthquake country.




Friday morning two of the Sisters called and asked "Sister Siri" (aka Sue) to find them Circus tickets. That sounded fun, so we went too. She first got on the Internet and found tickets for Saturday night, but couldn't get the website to accept a credit card. We decided just to walk over to the Circus building after we finished at the Hermitage and buy the tickets at the box office. (And Ken was craving Burger King for dinner.) Walking down Nevsky Prospekt, we saw one of the World Cup mascot statues that did not have a big line around it, so we finally got our photo-op.








Sue is shown here waiting for the bus at the circus building home after we bought our tickets. St. Petersburg has beautiful clouds.  

Sue, Sister Gregson and Sister Baker in front of the big poster
advertising "Circus on Ice."

The show very cleverly used the white ice rink as a 'screen' for showing movies. The clowns performed and there were polar bears jumping out through the ice at them. Then they ended up on this small piece of "ice" that floated in the sea all around them. It looked pretty realistic! You can see the sharks just to their left.

During intermission there is a wonderful trumpeter in the outside display hall. He plays all kinds of dance-able old classics with a recorded band.  

The show had trained birds, trained dogs and trained cats, acrobats and dancers, clowns and musicians. And the final act of the show is the four trained polar bears. They don't do anything spectacular, but just the fact that they stand up and roll over and run around where they are told to do so is pretty amazing!




Ken likes to take beautiful photos. He got up in the wee hours of the morning about three days in a row until he got the pictures he wanted. Unlike the photos last week, he wanted to get photos of the open drawbridge, which is only up for three hours a night. At 1:30 a.m., he walked downstream from our apartment building to be in just the right spot to capture this photo through a telephoto lens. There were tour buses that had stopped near him letting people off to take photos. The hundred-year-old Bolsheohtinskiy Bridge drawbridge opened as he took over thirty photos as ships passed under the bridge with Smolny Cathedral in the background on the far side of the Neva Riva. He took this first photo at 2:05 a.m. as boats approached.

This second one was taken at 2:14 a.m. 

And he got a bonus photo. Standing in the same place, he turned around and got the full moon over the Neva River with the Nevsky Bridge and Nevsky Cathedral in the background. Here the Nevsky drawbridge is also open.

(Sue slept like a rock right through all this. She didn't even know Ken had left the apartment.)