Two Geeks On The Town

St Petersburg

Made it to the Hermitage yesterday afternoon, it's an enormous exhibition and with much of it housed in hugely opulent surroundings it's hard work to try to take it in. In fact it's impossible to even try to take it all in so we concentrated on the Western European art (French good apart from Matisse, Flemish and Dutch pretty dull apart from Rembrandt) and the 1812 gallery of Russian war leaders which was well worth seeing for the fine array of facial hair they displayed.

We had a languid three hour dinner which included some very fine borsch and a few quiet drinks before easily my earliest night of the week - tucked up in bed by half past midnight.

Checked out the Museum of Political History again today, a really great way for two sad men to spend an afternoon, we both enjoyed it much more than the Hermitage. The revelation that the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 was merely an excuse for peasants to raid the wine cellar and go on a massive piss-up was particularly interesting. Some of them stayed down there for a week. That's the kind of revolution I'd like to be involved in.

Dodging the rain we found the spot where the sex priest himself Rasputin was finally dumped in the river after being poisoned, shot and beaten. Ra Ra indeed. Then, once again failing to dispel the notion we're just a pair of sad studenty tourists, we walked round like a latter day Raskolnikov and Razumikhin and tracked down the flat where Dostoevsky wrote "Crime and Punishment".

We're hoping to throw off the geeky image for one night at least and turn ourselves into Count Vronsky figures for an evening on the town. Another three hour dinner could be in order then maybe even some vodka.