Atlantica - 01.02.2006, Page 33

AT L A N T I CA 31
I nodded a lot.
He crossed his arms in an “X” in front of his chest.
“Closed?” I asked.
“Closed,” he said.
“Closed?” I asked again.
“Closed,” he repeated, and held up one index finger, which I took
to mean that my Vodka Museum had closed one week, one month, or
one year ago.
Whatever its fate, my first inroad into the Russian palate had clearly
disappeared into the fabric of the city and its beer-swilling masses.
(Beer has been gaining popularity in recent years.) I shuffled in defeat
across the street to the opulent Astoria Hotel, located behind St. Isaac’s
Cathedral. The Astoria’s liberal use of marble and high ceilings are a
modern face of Peter the Great’s plan to create a European capital in
Russia. The hotel was supposedly planned to be the location of Hitler’s
victory party had he successfully taken Leningrad after Germany’s 900-
day siege on the city during World War II.
I installed myself on a red velvet couch, eating English tea sand-
wiches, looking out the window at an enormous bronze statue of Tsar
Nicholas I. A harp player sat in the corner playing the Brazilian jazz
standard “Tristesse.”
The average salary of someone living in St. Petersburg is between
USD 200-300 a month. But I felt like my tour of the city had been of its
high-end – the expensive parts of town where Hugo Boss and the fancy
ST. PETERSBURG a
hotels lived. Where did that woman walking across the street in her long
coat and old handbag live? Where was the rest of the city?
Inside, perhaps. When I got back to my hotel room that night, a cour-
tesy card lay on my pillow.
“Dear Guest, The weather forecast for tomorrow is –13°C. Good night.”
How thoughtful.
THE RUSSIA OF THE IMAGINATION
That night, I met Maxim Nisnevich at No Name Bar, one of the city’s
slick cafés that could as easily be in Tokyo or Los Angeles as in St.
Petersburg.
“It’s hard to find a good Russian kitchen,” Maxim said, ushering us
– his girlfriend and my colleague – into a taxi. In the cab, he breath-
lessly painted a picture of a city that never sleeps. Bars and markets and
boutiques that stay open 24 hours. Russia’s hunger for human contact.
People living every day like their last. “If you leave the city for a week,
something new has opened,” Maxim said.
In Helsinki, a Finn named Mika had suggested I call Maxim when
I got to town to find out what was really going on. Maxim works for
the City Tourist Information Center. A former dancer with the famous
Kirov Ballet, he moved to Germany to dance in his early 20s, and only
recently came back to his hometown out of a kind of stubborn love for
his city. He calls his government salary “symbolic”: his moneymaking
business is importing clothes. Though he looks 25, he’s 37. (Ballet and
“The moisture in the air freezes as it moves, falling in silver drifts under the
streetlights like someone has thrown a handful of glitter over our heads. The
cars and street are covered in the city’s silvery dust.”
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