There, That Yellow Building

Andrei Bely’s book “Petersburg” is haunted and it is doing a wonderful job of animating the facades and frightening the corners and the canals of my Petrograd.  The stuffy Imperial Russian men I see painted in the national Gallery are the Appolon Appelonovich and the waitress at the veggie restaurant is Sofia Petrovna.  It has been three days but I need a good view of the Bronze Horseman.  I know that it will come to life before long, if I let it. 

The Church of the Spilled Blood sis dramatically named and perfectly pleasant but I'm never as awed stepping into a house of worship that is  “only” a few hundred years old.  It's dark and tall and there are many tombs to consider.  Tsarist blood spilled here?  A bomb? A shot?  I must refresh my memory. 

The Russian Museum is precisely where I want to be, after the day in the Hermitage, with Raphael's and Leanardo's.   I want Russian scenes and Russian faces, not not Renaissance Italy.  Now I've windows into bucolic country scenes and peasants heading off to war and windows into tough looking workers and folk art that speaks of what was inside all those wooden cottages we saw in Siberia passing along on the train. 

The vegetarian restaurant isn’t far.  But it all depends on who you’re talking to.  It isn’t raining, which is an upgrade over our walk to the restaurant yesterday.  We pass a group of young girls photographing one another on the bridge.  They don’t seem to think wherever they are is too far.  My daughters do.  "Where, exactly?"  "How much further?" Onward passed a park.  Onward passed the mansion off to the right.  There, that yellow building.  That’s where we’re heading.

Inside amazing bells can be heard from the red church across the street.  Once again in this restaurant, they have some tasteful hiphop that sounds like Prefuse 73, perhaps mixing a rapper from New York, for sure.   Yes, I’ll have more of your borscht and a beer and we’ll occupy this other bench and consider what it would be like to come here all the time.   We text the directions to mom.  It isn’t far.  But it’s all to complicated and she says shell pass.

It’s sunny now.  Yes.  We will walk back from here.  Older sister, will you tell the younger one it isn't far?  I try to explain this concept of pre-gentrification but I don’t do a commanding job of it.  At least I don’t think so.  Gentrification is probably something you need to witness.  

Friday 7/06/18