The journey to Moscow and St. Petersburg was it’s own adventure, as travel always is, and in this case involved two back-to-back overnight train rides. I took a train from Kiev to Moscow, spent a day in Moscow, and then took another train to St. Petersburg. I traveled with my friend Kat on the way to Russia, we met up with several friends there, and I made the trip back to Kiev alone. I would not have planned to be in St. Petersburg solo for three days, it worked out that way due to visa-related issues and travel weariness on the part of my companions. Although it was unplanned, I welcomed the opportunity to have a unique adventure.

So, the first question - Is it really light for 24 hours? During white nights, the sun sets at around midnight, and starts coming up again about an hour later. At 1:00 it is almost dark, but not quite. There is still some pink on the horizon. In the city, I could sort of see a few stars, but I think outside the city more stars must have been visible. After about 1:30, instead of getting pitch black it starts to get light again. In St. Petersburg, it rains a lot! Partially cloudy is the default weather report for the summer. When the sky was cloudy it did look dark outside. However on clear nights (partially cloudy) walking around in the evening, and the wee hours there is a magical quality to the light. It reminded me of that five or ten minutes right before it gets dark, when the light is perfect and I just want it to stay that way forever. But, it always gets dark. In St. Petersburg during white nights that magical time stretches on for four or five hours. One night I even stayed up, and down at the waterfront, late enough to watch one of the drawbridges being raised. It was very cool. The pictures came out pitch black, though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it!

I was lucky to spend two days out of my week at the Hermitage museum. The hermitage, as you probably know, is a world famous museum with an extensive art collection. Tourists actually are allowed to take pictures in most rooms, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Everything I saw was beautiful, the phrase “heartbreaking” kept floating through my mind as I wandered through the rambling rooms of the former castle. I especially enjoyed the Matisse exhibit, the ancient Egyptian artifacts. I toured one of the two “treasure rooms” where I was impressed by gold leaf jewelry from Kerch (a city now part of Ukraine) and diamond-studded saddles. I was surprised to discover a group of French painters from the late 16^th and early 17^th century who feature biblical scenes in their works. I enjoyed these large, dramatic canvasses.

One of the best things about being in Moscow and St. Petersburg was language. There was no Ukrainian! All socio-political-historical considerations aside, I was relieved from the point of view of a language student. My brain had a break from keeping a division between Ukrainian and Russian. I especially enjoyed hearing the recorded announcements in metro stations and on the subway cars in Russian. In Kiev, they are all in Ukrainian. I know what is being said, but I don’t understand each word. In Moscow and St. Petersburg I actually understood the whole message, word for word. (Okay, maybe you have to be here to realize how exciting that is). Overall, the services for non-Russian speaking tourists were quite developed.

One day I looked up the last functioning synagogue in St. Petersburg on the map and walked over there. The building was remolded for the cities 300^th anniversary last year. Both the outside and the inside were very nice. The lobby featured an exhibit on the history of the Jewish population in St. Petersburg as well as pictures of the recent renovations. There was also a picture and press coverage depicting G.W. Bush’s visit to the synagogue.

On my last day in St. Petersburg, I took an excellent walking tour of the sites memorializing the Siege of Leningrad (former name of St. Petersburg) during WWII. I didn’t get many pictures on the tour of the siege, so I’ll do my best to describe it. The tour guide, Nick, started the tour by telling us that his grandparents lived through the siege so it was not just a historical tour for him, but also his family history. I thought about how parts of my family left this area in the 1880’s, a few family members were here through the war. Not in Russia, but farther west in what is now Ukraine. But, I didn’t.

The first site we visited was a mass grave and memorial to those who died during the first winter of the siege. It happened to be a warm, sunny day and many people were sunning in the grassy area of the cemetery. During his description of the time period leading up to the siege, Nick said, “The Germans blamed the Jewish Bolsheviks for the revolution.” Many Jews were Bolsheviks, but far from all Jews. And the Jews who were politically active were mostly not religious. But my problem with this statement had more to do with how it neatly absolved Russians. Russian’s don’t hate Jews. Germans hated the Jews, and they used the Jewish involvement in the communist revolution to trick Russian’s into persecuting and killing Jews. At this point in the tour, I decided that I was way too tired from a week of walking and site seeing to enter into any political and/or religious conversations. But, I gathered a lot of food for thought.

The next stop on the tour was the line where the German’s had been camped out. There were many signs in the terrain of the siege – cement blocks, former trenches. A line of birch trees now marks the siege border. That is the one picture I took on the tour. We also saw some tanks like the tanks that were in use at the time (KV-85 tank).

The final spot on the tour was a monument to the siege – and a museum. The monument looks like a tall obelisk, but then you walk down some steps and you are in a big circle. In front of you is a statue depicted starving people holding each other up. An inscription running around the inside of the circle reads, “900 days, 900 nights.” There is an eternal flame. Inside the museum there are artifacts from the time of the siege. There is a 10-minute documentary that runs continuously, video footage from the siege. There also a constant audio signal – meant to resemble a heartbeat and signify the fact that the heart of the city is still beating.

I came away from the monument, and the tour, struck by what a monumental feat of bravery it took to survive such a siege. And, of course, I considered the larger question of the incredibly overwhelming history of humans committing atrocities acts against each other.

Now I’m back in Kiev, where no one is killing anyone, (except for the occasional car accident) and life resumes it’s sleepy pace and I have lots of time to reflect on my travels.