The Hermitage

This morning, we toured The Hermitage with several thousand of our fellow tourists from German, China, etc.  The Hermitage is the art museum housed in several of Catherine the Great's Palaces.  She started purchasing collections of art in 1764, and the museum has continued collecting to this day, making it one of the best art collections in the world, made better by the beautiful building and rooms in which it is housed.

We were on a Semester at Sea trip rather than going on our own, so our tour guide collected 36 of us at 9:30 and we headed out on a bus.  The tour operators around here all seem to use little receivers for all the people on the tour with a little earpiece in one ear.  She had her own little transmitter, and we set our receivers to channel 38.  We only got interference at one point in the entire tour, and were able to hear her narration without hearing all the ambient noise around us.  At some points, there were four different tours in the same area, so you can imagine the shouting that would have been needed for them to be heard otherwise.

On our way (because The Hermitage didn't open until 10:30, we made a photo stop at St Isaac's Cathedral.  St Issac's Cathedral is now a museum.  In its days as a cathedral, it could hold 10,000 people standing, and our guide said it was the 3rd largest cathedral in the world..

In the square in front of the St Isaac's Cathedral is the statue of St Nicholas I, erected in 1859.  We love horse statues, of course.









Then we hopped on the bus and drove to The Hermitage.

This is our group (minus me of course) with the Winter Palace in the background.
Our guide, Elena, was flooding us with information.  I asked why a winter palace and a separate summer palace.  The simple answer was that one was heated and the other was not.
Then after a 15 min wait, we were able to enter and got crushed by the crowds as the various guides were jockeying for position and imploring us to NOT start world war III among the various tour groups with different cultures of moving about in groups.

One thing we were encouraged to pay attention to was the building itself and its ornamentation.  So, we moved about this incredible structure with continued "Oh Wow!" moments.

The main thing I can say about the collection at the Hermitage is that it is amazing.  I'm going to just show  a few photos of some of the artwork, and say that it ranks right up there with the other great art museums of the U.S. that I've visited.

I wish we had started at the end, because I like some of the more recent artists best, but the tour guide wanted to give us a chronological perspective.  Finishing up on Picasso and Gaugin was a treat.  Unfortunately, the Matisse collection was being moved.

It was a busy morning, and everyone was exhausted.  We were late getting back to the ship, but the wonderful dining crew pulled some food back out for us.  We went back to our cabin and recharged our camera batteries, and took a nap to recharge our own batteries.  Then this evening we headed out to what was essentially a repeat of yesterday's river cruise, but this one was a night cruise to see many of the buildings and monument under the lights. While we were waiting for it to get dark, we made a couple of stops for "photo ops".  The students love photos and love photographing themselves all over the place, so I've included a few photos of students.  Nicole posed excellently for me in one of them.

It was a cold night on those open boats, and I'll swear that the wind was blowing right out of Siberia

St. Petersburg

I woke up at 4:30 this morning full of excitement about St. Petersburg, and I couldn't go back to sleep. We had set the alarm clock for 5:30 am because we love to watch the ship come into a port.  You can see a lot of the area and city that you will never see flying into a country.  The pilot boarded the ship at 4:00 am, and by 5:15, we were out on a cold bow of the ship with a handful of other people.  It was still dark, and the clouds really never allowed us to see a sunrise, but we did see the lights of the city and the nearby area as we closed in on the port.  The captain eased the ship through a narrow passage of islands as we came into what was a continuing branch of rivers. (Thank goodness for the pilot)

We were all called to pick up our passports, and then called to head out on trips.  Russia was an anomaly (in many ways) for a visa.  If you wanted to only go on Semester at Sea sponsored trips and never get off the ship any other time, a visa was not required, BUT you couldn't explore on your own. On the other hand, if you wanted to get a VISA, it was pretty pricey.  About 40 percent of the voyagers chose to get a visa, and the rest of us signed up for many trips that guaranteed you would not get lost.  So, we chose a popular trip that met at 8:30 am--the river voyage city exploration. We were met by a bus and guide and headed out to meet an open boat on a chilly morning.  It was great, unless you hadn't really dressed for it.  What followed was a tour by water of a city that is in its entirety a World Heritage Site.  I'll just post some pictures without any narrative since I can't really label them yet without a guidebook. I do know that many of them were palaces of Russian royalty through the ages.  Many of those royalty were killed in their homes during coupes or insurrections.

The students were taking some great selfies, of course.

In the afternoon, we went on a walking tour and market tour.  We saw some  of the same places on the drive over, but we got out into the everyday life of the citizens (well not all 7,000,000)

Here are a few shots with the first one starting at the National Library of Russia.

And just in case anyone is inclined to feel sorry for me because I don't have a visa and am not out on the town.  Here is my view from where I am typing, and I have live rock music coming from the festival next to the ship. BTW, I've offered a $5 reward to anyone who can get an immigration official to smile.

I can see Estonia

Today is a B day (see previous posts about what that means), and there is a different dynamic on board.  One reason is that we have a time change, and many of us are struggling with the lost hour of sleep.  Another reason is that we will dock in St. Petersburg, Russia tomorrow morning and be there for three days, so there is not the rush to get ready for the next day's class--sort of like the UVa Library on a Friday afternoon.  But students are all over the library today, mostly planning for the trip or pre-planning for the next port in Gdansk, Poland combined with Germany. The ship library is prepared with a large collection of travel guides, so we are very popular right now. There is no photocopier available, but they just take pictures of the maps with their phones.

The outside temperature has dropped, and the people who are eating on the outside deck are wearing jackets.  Our weather outlook for St. Petersburg is highs in the low 60s and overnight lows around 48 with partly cloudy days and 10 mph winds. There is only a 10 percent chance of rain.

 

One of my goals for this voyage is to learn the names of at least 100 students.  I'm piling these names on top of the 35 faculty and a bunch  of staff and a few life long learners whose names I've already learned.  The way Nancy and are meeting the kids is by joining them at meals.  I also introduce myself when they check out materials.  I have to say that the guys are easier to remember than the hundreds of females with long blond ponytails.  But one a day should meet my goal.  I'm ahead today with Greyson, Jennifer, Mai, Kala, Paige and Kumba. There were more that I have met, but now I can't remember their names. The picture directory, posted on a bulletin board, is a great place to put a name with a face, and you will catch a lot of people looking at doing what the students call photo stalking.

 Nancy is great at getting the students to talk about themselves. Jennifer, the student that we met at lunch told us all about riding horses at her grandfather's ranch in Mexico.  She's taking an acting class (even though she is terrified) because she wants to get out of her comfort zone.  That is one of the great things that Semester at Sea does for everyone who participates.

Tonight was a "Global Cafe" on photography and travel writing.  Todd Forsgren, a photographer and faculty member gave us some great ideas, and Ruth Setton, a novelist and teacher of creative writing talked about journaling.  I'm certainly glad I took the time to attend.

 At 8pm, we had a long-anticipated Logistical Pre-port where we got information on everything to do with the port from immigration, trips, travellers's diahrea, picture taking rules, and what to do in an emergency.  Each person was given the "green sheet" that has contact information, directions and even an address written in cyrillic to that you can get a cab driver to bring you back to the ship.  It is a well-orchestrated, information-packed meeting with lots of excited folks listening.

And finally, here is a stowaway from the Kiel Canal--identified as a fly catcher by a faculty ornithologist.  We hope he gets off in Russia, but it could be a cold winter.

The Rhythm of the Ship

No, this is not a terrorist on our ship.  It is one of the wonderful crew doing the maintenance that goes on every single day to keep this ship, well, in ship shape. Things have settled in on the ship.  Students have had two class days for every course, and they were all over the ship studying today.  Almost everyone has now at least  fought the technology to a draw even if they haven't beaten it. The above picture took 3.5 min to upload.  Yes, the internet bandwidth is limited and as a consequence it is very slow.  I was not able open my ship email for two day because someone sent me a message with an attachment.  One day, internet by satellite will get better, but that won't necessarily make the ship a better place.  Being unplugged from the internet for non-essential things makes the shipboard community operate in a more personal way.  No one is walking around texting like back home, and I like it. I got to watch a sunset in my cabin while I was waiting for that picture to load.

People are starting to need to have laundry done.  You just fill one of the bags as full as you can get it, and a day or two later, it will magically be outside your cabin when you get up--all for the price of $6 a bag.

Tonight, we had "Cultural Preport" which is a big meeting in the Union to educate all of the voyagers about some of the culture of the next country we will visit.  Each voyage does it a little differently.  On this voyage, it is held separately from logistical preport which will be tomorrow night.  Cultural preport is not mandatory, but logistical preport is.  Tonight, we had two faculty and an interport lecturer speak.  An interport lecturer is someone who gets on the ship from the next country and spends the days at sea as a speaker/resource.  One of the faculty was Russian and another had studied in Russia, so we got a good perspective.

The Library continues to draw customers. I had a student this morning who already had a class project in her Oceanography course.  She had decided to study jellyfish and had found a useful book in our very good collection of 9000 books.  Then we went on the library network and got a journal article for her from the UVa online journals. She said, "this is exactly what I need"--music to any librarian's ears no matter where they are.  So, yes I'm enjoying this gig a great deal.

Nancy has "beverage duty" tonight. She has a part-time job as a student life assistant (or minion as I refer to it).  It's perfect for her because she wants a break from making a lot of decisions.  On certain days, students are allowed to buy two beverage vouchers which they can use that night for a two hour period to buy a couple of beers or glasses of wine.  Many UVa students "go out" late in the evening, so this gives shipboard students the ship version of going out. Since the beverages are limited to a certain outdoor deck on the ship, the Student Life staff have to cover the exits to contain the consumption.  It works, but it has been chilly at night.

Since I've gone ahead and set my watch ahead for the night, we lose an hour of sleep again. FYI, it's 11:30 on the ship as I write this off the coast of Poland and 3:30 pm back in Charlottesville.

The Baltic Sea

Last night, our ship, the MV Explorer, anchored overnight.  We're not sure why, but the speculation is that we made such good time in the Kiel Canal that we are ahead of schedule. We did pick up a couple of student passengers at the end of the Kiel Canal. Our original course was to use the Kiel Canal only for our return trip, but that route did save time and fuel and let us pick up some folks.  But, we anchored because we don't really have a berth in St. Petersburg until our scheduled arrival.  There were a few students who didn't get to the ship on time for a variety of reasons.  One poor young woman had her passport stolen in London and is currently in Paris getting it replaced and will join up with us soon. It is likely that another passport will get stolen along the way as people let their guard down.

So, we anchored and slept a very peaceful sleep on calm seas. In the morning we started up again and cruised at a leisurely 12+ knots.

    

Speaking of morning, we have all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  It's not hard to have a good breakfast on the ship IF you get up in time. The choices start out with fruits, yogurt, eggs cooked several ways, always potatoes, cereal and for me, grits. If you get there early, there is some kid of pastry with chocolate (but other kinds as well). For us carnivores, there is also at least one choice of meat--usually BACON.  With more and more people having dietary restrictions, the food is all well marked for various things like gluten.  At another station, there is cereal and a huge toaster with a rotating rack. Bagels, bread and English muffins are available along with peanut butter and jellies.  Juices and coffee/tea make up the beverage choices.  The coffee is available 24 hrs if you bring your on cup.  A coffee mug was the first thing I bought in the ship store.  I would rate the coffee good.  It's not as strong as some people like, but it's not terrible either.  It is easy to sleep through breakfast if you don't have a clock.  Some of the students seem to be relying on their smart phones which don't always know what the correct time is.  Tonight, we set our clocks ahead an hour, so some people will surely miss breakfast.

The Baltic has enough traffic to be interesting and we can see one coast in many places.  For example, this afternoon Denmark was in view on the port side of the ship.We've also seen more than a thousand wind turbines, some on land and some at sea.  I don't find them offensive at all--more like giant moving sculptures.

  Wind power helped Germany set a record on a Sunday in May with 74 percent of the electricity used that day created from renewable sources.  Wind power led the way among the renewable sources.  In 2013, renewable sources satisfied 27 percent of electricity needs in Germany, compared to 13 percent in the U.S. Most of agreed that the wind mills were pretty cool looking.

Tonight was trivia night in the Union.  There is always some kind of evening programming. There is a conscious effort to not over program so that the students have time to study.  At the same time, the building of community is one of the important values of the ship. I watched from the back so I could be on call for the library as our students assistants were just starting to fly solo. One of the final trivia questions was "For one point, name the ship librarian".  What an honor. And most of the groups got the point.