Atlantica - 01.02.2006, Side 30

28 AT L A N T I CA
ST. PETERSBURGa
After crossing the Finnish-Russian border, the farmhouses started to
look a little anemic. Fences were built in the middle of fields, keeping
nothing away from nothing. Two women walked alongside the train
tracks, wearing knee-length coats and big furry hats with earflaps. Here
we go, I thought. Bring on the cold.
In St. Petersburg, we arrived at The Finland Station, where Lenin
returned from his self-imposed exile in Germany after the revolution on
April 3, 1917. At that time, the city was called Petrograd. St. Petersburg
was constructed in the 18th century by Peter the Great, one of Russia’s
more ambitious tsars. Peter ordered the city built on an unlikely, boggy
complex of 19 islands as a base for a Russian navy and a European-style
showcase of his empire’s wealth. Since then, it has gone through four
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