Odyssey magazine. - Noble Caledonia

diScoVer
st petersburg
simon Hoggart is parliamentary
sketchwriter for the Guardian. He
is also wine correspondent for the
Spectator. He has written 18 books
St PeterSburg iS, for most
passengers, the highlight of a
Noble Caledonia cruise in the
baltic. it’s romantic, historic,
stupendously beautiful yet with
a lingering memory of death.
it was built by Peter the great
on marshland, and 40,000 people are said to
have died in its construction. the Siege of
Leningrad, which lasted nearly three years
from 1941 to 1944, killed a quarter of the
population, as the rest survived on dogs, cats,
rats, roots and even wallpaper paste. When the
germans were finally defeated they left large
parts of the city in ruins – Hitler had vowed to
obliterate it from the face of the earth – but an
enormous and remarkable feat of restoration
now sees most of the finest palaces and
galleries looking as glorious as they ever did.
Of course this came at a price. On our
cruise aboard the island Sky, the lecturer and
antiques expert Nicholas Merchant, while
describing the breathtaking jewellery and
artefacts commissioned and owned by the
tsars, showed us a slide of a peasant, a serf,
shackled to his wheelbarrow. the fabulous
wealth that we see was acquired at a terrible
price for millions. No wonder there was a
revolution; the tragedy for the russian people
was that one despotism was replaced by
another, in many ways worse.
ONe Of tHe MaNy jOyS of our visit was
hearing people tell anti-Soviet jokes, of which
our guide had plenty. Pointing out the old
Kgb headquarters, she said it was known
as the tallest building in the city – ‘because
as soon as you go in you can see Siberia.’
and the other great source of jokes are the
nouveau riche, or what we call the oligarchs.
these are deemed to be stupid and vulgar.
they allegedly love dog fighting: hence, one
oligarch takes his dachshund to a fight. the
other men laugh at him but his dog literally
Clockwise from top:
tallinn is a blend of medieval
and modern, with cobbled
streets set beneath the spires
of 14th-century churches;
drying the linen on the street
of old riga, Latvia; a garlic
field in bornholm, Denmark;
and the Church of our
saviour on spilled blood in st
petersburg, by night
18 odyssey autumn/winter 2011-2012 www.noble-caledonia.co.uk