Telgen Vacation Report

Baltic Cities, July 2001

So we finally got underway from Copenhagen and started making our way through the Baltic. Our delay meant we would miss out on stops in Tallinn, Oslo, and Gdansk, but we decided not to dwell on that disappointment. (The 50% refund of our cruise fare helped with that.) Instead we looked forward to making the most of the places we did see. Our first stop was in Stockholm, Sweden. The highlight here was the Vasa Museum, which explores the world of the Swedish flagship Wasa, which sank in Stockholm harbor within minutes of its maiden launch in 1628. They raised this wooden fighting ship from its resting place in the 1960s, restored it, and made it the centerpiece of a museum which explores sailing life in the 17th century. (It also explores why the Wasa sunk in the first place—basically, because the king decided it should have an extra gun deck, making it too top-heavy to stay afloat.) After that stop, we were taken into Gamla Stan, the oldest part of the city, where the Royal Palace and its museums lie. We had a chance to walk around, explore a museum of medieval history, and look in the shops. We also took a few pictures; this one has the Stadhuset, or Town Hall, in the background. This is the building where the Nobel Prizes are awarded each year. As you can see from this picture, Stockholm is truly a port town, as the oldest parts of the city are on little islands and peninsulas that dot the harbor. It made for a lovely afternoon visit, despite the cloudy weather.

So we proceeded on to Helsinki, in lovely Finland, Finland, Finland, the place where I quite long to be…. (Monty Python fans will know the strangely compelling tribute song.) We had a beautiful day for wandering around this pleasant town. First we saw the Temppeliaukio Church (not the one in the picture), aka the Church in the Rock, which is a modern, dome-shaped construction built directly into the native granite. Its copper dome is just barely visible from the outside, and the walls inside the church are unfinished, giving it a rustic quality. It was very peaceful inside, however. We next walked towards the harbor and the older parts of town. There we found Senate Square, which was modeled after St. Petersburg and is dominated by the Lutheran church pictured above. The church doesn’t look very Russian, at least compared with the red brick Orthodox cathedral nearby, but is still very pretty. We had enough time after walking around to take a tour of Ainola, the home of famed composer Jean Sibelius. Ainola is 38 kilometers north of Helsinki, and lies in the midst of a very restful forest. One could easily see why Sibelius felt this was the ideal place to write. Afterward we were treated to a concert of the composer’s work, the perfect conclusion to a lovely day in Finland.

Because of our new schedule, it turned out that our last stop was also our most anticipated stop: St. Petersburg, Russia. The cruise company managed to get all the tours rescheduled, so we had two full days of extraordinary sights to see. On the first day we took a tour of the city. This is St. Isaac’s Square, with St. Isaac’s Cathedral in the background and a statue of Peter the Great (we think) in the foreground. I’m not sure if you can get a true sense of scale from this picture. But if you see people at the base of the statue, you can get an idea of how tall the statue is. Then realize that the cathedral behind it is actually about a block and a half away from the statue, and you understand how big that building really is. It was built between 1818 and 1858, and it’s not the main church in St. Petersburg, just one of many. Seeing the many huge churches and palaces here helped give us a sense of what Imperial Russia might have been like in its heyday.

The day stayed clear and bright as we continued our tour of the city. We heard a beautiful performance of local music inside Smolny Cathedral, which is located in the historic area where Lenin and Trotsky headquartered the Bolshevik Central Committee. Next we headed out to the most spectacular of St. Petersburg’s churches, the Church of the Resurrection of Christ. This beautiful building is also known as the Church of the Spilled Blood, as it’s built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was blown up by terrorists in 1881. (It may be good to be the king, but not so good to be the tsar, if you study your Russian history.) As you can see, we had a gorgeous view of the golden-topped domes, ornate mosaics, and exquisite tiles. This church, with its onion-shaped domes, is the kind of architecture you usually think of as Russian. (We saw it not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Helsinki, which at one time was under Russian control and thus influenced by Russian culture.) Unfortunately we weren’t there when the interior was open, but we got quite an eyeful just by walking around the outside.

After a tasty Russian lunch, we headed south of the city to Tsarskoye Selo (it once was named Pushkin, after the poet, but the historic name was recently restored). There we toured the baroque Catherine Palace. A forerunner of the palace was built during the lifetime of Catherine I, the wife of Peter the Great who became Empress after his death in 1725. She lent her name to the larger palace, which was built between 1744 and 1756 by some of Europe’s greatest architects. It was the favorite home of Catherine (II) the Great for many years, and the gardens and several of the rooms were extended and refurbished during her reign (1762-1796). The palace was often the center of court activities, and the interior reflects this status. Unfortunately, the palace was bombed during World War II and much of the interior destroyed. Luckily for us, some of it has since been restored to its former grandeur, and is filled with antique treasures saved from the bombing. This picture shows the most impressive room, for the walls of the Amber room are exactly as the name implies: covered with thousands of pieces of amber, in hundreds of different shades of gold and umber. The overall effect is warm, rather than bright; this would have been a lovely place to pass the time on a cold winter’s day.

We were much relieved to find out that our planned tour of the Hermitage on our second day in St. Petersburg was to go ahead as planned, as we knew it would be the highlight of our trip. When our cruise was delayed, it meant we reached St. Petersburg two days later than planned, on a day the museum was scheduled to be closed. The company negotiated with the museum and as a result, they opened just for us (and other cruise ships). I was almost glad of the change, for it was so crowded with tour participants that I couldn’t imagine trying to navigate the museum with the general public in there as well! As it was, we had a guided tour around the collection, filled with Old Masters, over a dozen Rembrandts, several Impressionists, and more pieces of decorative art than I can describe. The Hermitage actually resides in several neighboring palaces, including the Winter Palace, the Small Hermitage, the Greater Hermitage, and the New Hermitage. Since these are former palaces, many of the rooms themselves are works of art. This one, the Pavilion Hall in the Small Hermitage, holds a Roman floor mosaic (which you can just see at the bottom of the photo), as well as gorgeous crystal chandeliers, decorative marble detailing, and a huge golden clock resembling a peacock perched in a tree. There was more to see than we could absorb in a single visit—and we only had half a day there! We could have easily spent all of our St. Petersburg visit in the Hermitage, but we continued on and toured Yusupov Palace, where the Tsarina’s favorite, Rasputin, was murdered in 1916. (Actually, he was just poisoned and shot there. He didn’t actually die until they dumped him in the Neva River.) The recreation of the event with wax models is a bit over-the-top, but the palace itself is beautiful, as it was once own by one of Russia’s wealthiest noble families.

So that was our trip through the Baltic! We were disappointed at missing Tallinn and Oslo, in particular, but St. Petersburg more than made up for it and we would love to explore it in more depth some day. We also enjoyed the concept of the “travelling hotel”—all our things staying in one room while we were taken from city to city. (So much so that we planned another cruise for summer 2002, but that’s for another day…)

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Text and photos copyright © 2002 by Diane Telgen. All rights reserved.