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The morning after our arrival in St Petersburg, we moved to Lydia Nikolayevna's apartment, five minutes from the Finland train station. That was a plus and a minus: we couldn't be in the center in five minutes but we did get to know the city better by traveling a bit. We initially said we'd stay three days but because we got on well with Lydia, found the room adequate for our needs, and didn't want the hassle and possible surprise of something else, stayed seven nights. Lydia is about 50 and divorced.She rents out rooms in her apartment to make a living for her and her children; we think that she gets more that way than the average Russian earns in a job, provided, of course, that she gets enough guests. She only takes people who have been vetted either by the service bureau or some acquaintance. In other words she is careful about whom she lets into her home.

As time went on, we got to spend more and more time chatting to Lydia and sharing impressions of our two countries. As we found in Ukraine, post Soviet Union changes have brought uneven prosperity to former Soviet citizens. Lydia is bright, well-educated, and with children to take care of also motivated and seems to do quite well. Like our Russian friend Faina, she is warm and engaging and a very good cook besides. While staying with her we got to sample not only her wonderful apple pirogis but also her blinis: mmmm good!

Halfway through our stay, we met Lydia's friend Vladimir, a Russian-English translator and interpreter. Suddenly it was possible to communicate much more fully and effectively, but Jan regretted not being forced to practice her Russian. Lydia and Vladimir each told us their versions of living in their apartments 20-40 years ago when there was a family of 4-5 in each room. In these community apartments all of the families shared the kitchen. Often the toilets and bathing were down the hall. Lydia was going to give us a tour of the building, in which some apartments still use the hall facilities; because of lack of time that didn't come through.

We had heard similar stories from Frederik's landlady Olga. In post-Soviet Russia, you have the right to buy the communal apartment you are living in as long as all of the other tenants have moved out and give up their right to buy it. You have to be both patient and resourceful to end up with a decent apartment. Patience sometimes means that elderly co-tenants die; resourcefulness means that you can perhaps convince a co-tenant to swap his room for another room elsewhere to which one of your family members has a right. Because these residency rights can be shared and later inherited if the proper registration procedures are followed, having two children might mean that you can register them in two different grandparental appartments giving you more potential swap rights. There are many other such strategies but then of course once you are the sole tenant you still have to come up with enough money to buy the apartment. That takes great fortitude and lots of hard work. Olga through sheer determination managed to become the sole tenant of the apartment she now rents to Frederik. That already brings her almost enough to live on. When Frederik moves back to Paris, she plans to invest all of her savings to upgrade the apartment so that she can double or perhaps triple the rent and finally be assured of a decent income for her retirement. Even though she has worked for many years as a very respected translator of literary works from French, her official pension is very small.

Besides the Hermitage we thought the streets and canals of St Petersburg were the next big attraction. It feels much more metropolitan/big city than does Moscow. It is just a matter of having shops on decent (not too wide) roads. Like being on Fifth Avenue. There is no such place in Moscow.

Lydia gave us a set of twelve post cards with St Petersburg churches. We'd already seen 3-4 of them and then set out to see the rest. Several were impossible to get to because they were on closed military bases and the like. But all the others we did see, from the outside at least. As with the Golden Ring, all the same and yet all different, and all very interesting.

I don't know where to fit it in, so I'll put it here: we saw lots of statues of Lenin, always with his hand stretched out. But sometimes he has a cap, somethimes his hand points up, sometimes it points down. It is rather like the icons of the Mother of God, with Mary in her Vladimir or Hodogitria pose or something else. Much significance that is lost to us. Once we saw another statue of Lenin, hand in air, that we thought must be misplaced, because we'd already seen a more central one. It wasn't misplaced. It wasn't Lenin. It was the founder of the university at whose gates it was located.

On the Monday and Tuesday before our Wednesday departure from St Petersburg we went to the suburbs to see two palace complexes, Peterhof and Pushkin/Tsarskoe Selo. We misread the open-hours and consequently didn't see the inside of any of the palaces. We might not have anyway, even if open, because St Petersburg authorities charge an arm and a leg for everything. If we'd gone into all that charged we would have spent about $30 each at each place. Peterhof is to the west and is a mini-Versailles, noted for its fountains. We liked them and the park in which they are, so it was a nice day out, but we are too jaded to be impressed. Tsarskoe Selo is to the south and the site of one of Catherine the Great's palaces and from the outside it more than equals the Winter Palace. The grounds were delightful, including a small lake on which we ate our lunch.

There was a hidden item of interest involved with both places, not marked and found only with care: the front line in the Siege of Lenigrand. Both places were in German held territory for most of WWII ("The Great Patriotic War") and both were almost completely ruined. So what we see is really 20th century construction to 18th century designs. Coming back after visiting Tsarskoe Selo we stopped in the near suburbs to see the Chesme Church, dedicated in thanks for a victory over the Turks. Adjacent to it is a large concrete pill box and a cemetery with about 200 graves of solidiers. Clearly the front line was nearby.