Dispatches From the Baltic 2013: 9 - Dispatch From a Hoarder

Peter the Great may have started St. Petersburg, but the later Czars and especially Czarinas, filled it up. Catherine the Great hoarder built a closet for her stuff that now has about 400 rooms - it was her Winter Palace, but she likened it to a monk’s cell and so humbly named it the Hermitage. My life quest to complete an entire museum in one day is preposterous here.

Of course, this is the major tourist draw in all of Russia. An incredibly lavish physical site filled with fabulous art and other stuff from caveman thru modern. With Russia not having conquered many artsy areas, most of the trove was actually purchased from abroad or confiscated from autocratic collections after the revolution made everything belong to the masses.

And the masses are here. Tour groups line-up and jostle for space in the grand stairways and gold covered halls. Voices of dozens of guides are mercifully shared via headphones, but the snobby tone of the art critic fills the din in every language known.

And above it all, the snapping of the old babushka grandmother minders, who howl in all major tongues should someone touch a wall or doorway, correct a clock - or even try to pose a kiss on a statue.

The total effect is the Louvre’s art moved into the Palace of Versailles, then jammed full with all the people in every airport customs queue - then toss in a worn tooth pit-bull bitch pacing every room.

But at the end of a long long day of digging thru the Czarinas’ closets, we wind downstairs into the lowest levels of her basement. In a silent, dimly lit and climate cooled floor, just Jean and me wandering thru rooms lined with wondrous finds from prehistoric tombs frozen in tundra time. Royal robes, jewels, statuary, carvings and mummies of peoples, horses and places my National Geographic collection must have missed - and nary a babushka to be found.

- Stairmaster Stew