{"id":1424,"date":"2016-04-21T17:23:59","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T17:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/?p=1424"},"modified":"2016-08-21T01:26:43","modified_gmt":"2016-08-21T01:26:43","slug":"saturday-april-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/?p=1424","title":{"rendered":"Saturday April 16, Kunstkamera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spent the early morning writing blog posts in my bed. It was a luxurious moment, relaxing in a square of\u00a0sunlight, sipping my tea, resizing photos. I have to remind myself there’s no hurry to get anywhere, I am already here. No rushing in Russia.<\/p>\n

Planned to do an audio guide walking tour of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Reading about it in the\u00a0Eyewitness guide over my breakfast porridge, I started worrying about\u00a0all the\u00a0many variables. It\u2019s a vast walled-island fortress.\u00a0I\u00a0don’t know which gate to enter. My mind started\u00a0telling me I needed a day off. I should rest.\u00a0I had a sudden urge to get back in bed, but the truth was I just felt\u00a0anxious. Fortunately for me, I’ve learned\u00a0that feelings aren\u2019t facts, so I acknowledged my emotions, and got ready to go.<\/p>\n

I switched my venue to the Kunstkamera<\/em>, Peter the Great\u2019s personal collection of artifacts acquired in the spirit of scientific inquiry. It sounded smaller, more contained. Smithsonian lite. I Ubered over in no traffic to speak of, with Dale Earnhardt Sr. behind the wheel. JK! It\u2019s probably Mario Andretti.\u00a0No crowds, no lines, no waiting. I opened the museum entry door and did my windmill, flailing thing. The threshold the door closes against abruptly dropped six inches\u00a0**<\/p>\n

I did the ticket booth and coat check waltz. It was rubles (cash) on the barrel here. Good thing I brought plenty. The building was sturdy, but showing signs of hard use and lack of upkeep. Two upper floors were closed.\u00a0It began with tableaus of Inuit life \u00a0– tools and clothing, hunting gear and toys. There were posed figures; a family unit,\u00a0and a shaman tricked out in his\u00a0rig. I liked this child’s toy model of a kayak.\"inuit<\/a>And this\u00a0ritual basket , something my talented artist friend, Gin Petty,<\/a> would appreciate.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>
I wish I could take this home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This ritual mask reminded me of another ritual, in Golding’s\u00a0Lord of the Flies<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

\"{"focusMode":0,"deviceTilt":-0.01015253464249177,"whiteBalanceProgram":0,"macroEnabled":false,"qualityMode":3}\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Before I go further, let me say that I\u2019d read up on this museum and knew there were some creepy exhibits. My notes read – Peter The Great’s Anthropology and Ethnography Museum. Utter weirdness and cool shit.<\/em> I thought I was prepared.<\/p>\n

WARNING NOTE: Read no further if you are squeamish. Just don\u2019t. Resist your curiosity. Skip down to the next\u00a0sentence in bold.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The large well-lit room held glass jars of deformed infants\u00a0and animals\u00a0that Peter the Great collected. Scores of jars packed with the pitiful, pathetic and horrific. And not one two-headed baby in a jar, oh no. Shelf after shelf of them, from the utterly broken (hematomaed flippered open-spined cyclops) to the barely dented (a harelip). I thanked God I didn’t see this when I was of childbearing age. The fetuses weren’t even the worst part. To my modern CG-informed eyes they\u00a0didn’t look real, they looked like Blood Salvage <\/a>horror movie props.\u00a0No, what got me was the shelf with a row of baby arms in glass decanters. Tiny, tender little infant arms. I thought of the story from Apocalypse Now<\/a>;\u00a0<\/em>the guerrilla\u00a0army that lopped off all the vaccinated arms of children. The horror, the horror. That’s when I wished I could run the tape backward, erase the memory.<\/p>\n

Recall that Peter did this in the spirit of enlightened scientific inquiry. These deformed fetuses weren’t the work of Satan, he decreed. Unfortunately, he went on to add, \u201cThey were the result of disease,\u00a0or the mother\u2019s thoughts and feelings during pregnancy<\/em>.\u201d (my emphasis added) Thanks for nothing, .<\/p>\n

\"Death<\/a>
Death Mask of Peter the Great<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s pretty much the only thing that could have made this worse \u2013 being handed the blame for all this human misery. Here\u2019s the least gruesome photo in\u00a0the spirit of that room.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The autopsy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By now I was\u00a0queasy and emotionally off-balance and the vignettes of village or nomad life looked nasty, brutish and short. People in harsh conditions, scrabbling to exist.<\/p>\n

Moving right along, I had a\u00a0great encounter with a woman selling souvenirs.<\/strong> I liked a teeshirt that depicted the first two dogs to be rocketed\u00a0into space and come back safely. I wanted a red version but my size only came in black.\u00a0\u201cBlack is better,\u201d she insisted. \u201cIt’s outer space. It’s supposed<\/em> to be black.\u201d Ha! So true. Yes, reader. I bought one. I walked instead of Ubered over to another location\u00a0of my favorite restaurant, Fruktovaya Lavka.\u00a0It was a half hour walk and helped to clear my head. I was in the thick of St. Petersburg daily life and happened across some delightful things, like this monument to a trolley conductor\u00a0and his\u00a0faithful steeds.\"trolley\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And these efforts\u00a0to entice\u00a0coffee drinkers.<\/p>\n

\"coffee\"<\/a>\"hipster<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Best of all, this real life\u00a0Love, Actually<\/a><\/em> moment.<\/p>\n

\"Love<\/a>
Love in action.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sadly, this outpost had fruit and veg, but no caf\u00e9. Ended up at Bush, a bakery and coffee\u00a0place I’d starred on my Google map because, pastry! I gobbled a tomato and cheese on croissant and half of a hazel nut caramel and chocolate tart, and headed back to the sanctuary of my hotel.<\/p>\n

**there are\u00a0no lawyers in St Petersburg or there are\u00a0no liability personal jury laws.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spent the early morning writing blog posts in my bed. It was a luxurious moment, relaxing in a square of\u00a0sunlight, sipping my tea, resizing photos. I have to remind myself there’s no hurry to get anywhere, I am already here. No rushing in Russia. Planned to do an audio guide walking tour of the Peter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[21],"tags":[66,145,194],"class_list":{"0":"post-1424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-kunstkamera","9":"tag-love-actually","10":"tag-restaurant","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/H-view.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7OBxc-mY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1588,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions\/1588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}