01-03 Leningrad

The photo is of my wife Mary, taken in front of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad in 1987. There has never been anything in our life to compare to the Hermitage, and we have visited all the great art galleries of the world.
It is also called the Winter Palace, which was stormed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1918. That bit of history marked the end of Tsarist rule and the beginning of the Communist Party. The city was named Leningrad in 1924, and then changed to St. Petersburg in 1991.
I could not believe the size of the Rembrandt collection in the museum. The photo is a billboard promotion. I remember multiplying 81 paintings times a million dollars each. And that valuation would be on the low side.
The city is a collection of castles and cathedrals, all built before the Communist party took over the country. No one could take a tour of any city in the world and see anything more beautiful than Leningrad.
Our tour guide referred to Leningrad as the Venice of the north because of the canals that wind through the city. The photo is of the main Griboedov canal.
We were with a small group and decided to treat ourselves to a good meal and headed for what was one of the better restaurants in the area. But we were told the restaurant was full even though we could see it was half empty.
Our guide explained that we would have to bribe our way into any of their better restaurants. The one we had picked was a favourite haunt for government officials.
Good old Communism. If I could have spoken their language, I would have explained how we in the West were all part of the downtrodden masses.
If there was anything that we remembered from our two weeks visiting the Soviet Union, it would be the memorials to those who died in what they call the Great Patriotic War. And during the siege of Leningrad by the Nazis, thousands died each day of starvation. The photo is of one of their historic cemeteries.
We were treated to a concert on our last night of the tour and it was spectacular. The only problem was that I could not keep from sliding off my seat. How does a nation send people into space, yet cannot design and build a chair?
When we were departing at the Leningrad airport, we were suddenly faced with a series of crazy inspections. There were three different lines in which we were questioned, our luggage opened and inspected, and our cash counted. It was a three-hour process. I did not think we would ever get out.
It was the first time that I understood what “freedom” really meant. In the plane, everyone was in shock, and most of the women in tears. Everyone said the same thing. They would never visit that country again.