The Kan Family: Email #5

In my previous email I mentioned about the horrendous traffic in St Petersburg. With the arrival of capitalism the number of cars must have grown rapidly. Any time during the day many of the city streets were choked. Somehow many prefer this to the fast and frequent underground metro. Yesterday, after the Hermitage Museum, we were to go to the grand Peterhof Palace and Gardens about 40km outside of St Petersburg by coach. It took us a long time to get out of the CBD and then there were more bottlenecks outside the city. Then we found that the road that leads directly to the Palace was closed due to road works and an alternate route had to be taken. Eventually the tour guide abandoned the trip and refunded our money (it was an optional tour). It seems that capitalism has its pluses and minuses. During the Communist times there were only two private cars in the city, we were told. I guess it would be Siberia for those who closed roads without warning.

Prior to the trip we were worried about the warnings regarding the law and order in this country and especially at St Petersburg. Even the tourist brochure in the hotel room warned that Asians and Africans should take extra care because of incidents in the past. We are pleased to say that we have not come across anything but politeness so far, although, when a guard spotted me standing with our group of mainly Caucasian Aussies and Americans listening to the tour guide at the Cathedral of Peter and Paul, she came walked over and wanted to evict me; not forcefully but gently tugging at my arms. Fortunately the tour guide spotted it, came over, put her arms around me and told the guard that I was one of the group ! It was probably that the Russians are yet to be used to diversity. By and large we feel very relaxed and comfortable going around even by ourselves. In fact Yvonne has gone off on her own to make her way by metro to the Hermitage to have a second visit. There were lots of memorials to the Second World War; not surprising since they lost 20 plus millions people. We saw the limit of German advance outside Moscow and a huge memorial on the road into St Petersburg formerly Leningrad. Lots of statues of Lenin too, some looking like he was about to hail a cab.

More later !