Night at the Museum

A word of advice: don't go out on Museum Night. Let's just say organization isn't exactly St. Petersburg's strong suite. And the people that are out and about are not the creme de la creme of Russian society. You could read about Museum Night all over the place, but when it came to exact details (which museums, which buses, what the cost was, etc...), all articles referred to the website where all this information was; that website crashed because of the amount of traffic. 

I started out from my place around 9:30 PM. The first museum I went to was the Kirov Apartment Museum. Sergey Kirov was the leader of the Communist Party in Leningrad until he became too popular and Stalin had him killed. This museum is literally a stone's throw from my apartment. It was, of course, not open; it wasn't participating in Museum Night. 

So, I walked down to city center (about 30-40 minute walk from my place). The streets were full of people with varying degrees of sobriety off to enjoy a little culture (supposedly). Anyway, I arrived at the Central Naval Museum which I read was included in the program. I had a little difficulty finding the entrance, but I went in, bought my ticket that would get me into the participating museums for the whole night, and discovered I had actually entered some sort of soil museum. As far as soil museums go, it was the best one I've ever been in. Anyway, I finally found my way into to Central Naval Museum and discovered that I had to buy another ticket to get in. I opted to save my money and go check out some other museums. I walked down Nevsky to the Shereemetev Palace. The line to get in was too long and the people in the line weren't exactly the cream of Petersburg society. So, I decided to walk back to my part of the city and visit the artillery museum. 

There were more lines here and tons of kids. I opted to continue on to the last museum on my list: the Museum of Russian Political History. There were no lines here. This was the one redeeming point of the night. It was great. They had clothes of Khrushchev, the ID card of Yuri Gagarin, anti-American propaganda posters, and expressionist portraits of Brezhnev. I returned home around 3:30ish, less than impressed by the people of the city (I may have called them "peasants"). I got home just in time for the EuroVision song contest finals. This is a HUGE deal here in Russia.  Every country in Europe enters one song and everybody votes for the winner. This year Norway won (if you care).