06 Aug From Khabarovsk to St Petersburg on the Trans-Siberian Railway Part 4 of 4
[Continued from Part 3]
St Petersburg
Andrei’s apartment was comfortable and spacious with room for his studio. His artistic style might be described as Post-Impressionist and there are echoes of Gauguin and Cézanne as this photo from my brother’s gallery shows. Andrei considers himself Siberian and spent much of his childhood in the Arctic where his father was a gold prospector, sometimes in temperatures down to -65oC. Gold hides in some extremely inhospitable places.
After tea Andrei was keen to take a walk to point out some of the highlights of the port. His English was reasonably good but Masha came with us just in case. The port was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 after Russia’s defeat of Sweden in the Great Northern War. It was established on captured Baltic territory as Russia’s long-sought ‘window to the West’. From the outset, it served as both a naval stronghold and a commercial gateway, anchored by the Admiralty Shipyards and the ceremonial Strelka of Vasilyevsky Island, where the rostral columns (seen in the photograph below) commemorate Russian naval victories.
In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I and in a gesture of wartime nationalism the city’s name was changed from the Germanic St Petersburg to the Slavic Petrograd. Just three years later in early 1917 Petrograd became the epicentre of the Russian Revolution, when mass protests and a soldiers’ mutiny forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate ending centuries of imperial rule. Then in 1924, following Lenin’s death, and to keep the postman on his toes, the city was renamed Leningrad and remained so throughout the Soviet era. After a public referendum in June 1991, the original name St Petersburg was officially restored shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed.
During World War II, though icebound in winter, the port played a vital role in the Siege of Leningrad, with supplies delivered across the frozen ‘Road of Life’ over Lake Ladoga. Though not entirely ice-free, the port now operates year-round for cargo and cruise tourism with icebreaker support and remains Russia’s largest Baltic seaport.
The last day of my tour dawned bright and sunny so I took a day tour to Peterhof, the once-glittering summer residence of the Romanovs. Following Russia’s victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, Tsar Peter sought to build a summer residence on the shores of the Gulf of Finland to rival Versailles. Unfortunately, in 1941, it lay directly in the path of the advancing German Army which seized the estate before curators could evacuate all the treasures.
The German occupiers looted, vandalised, and systematically destroyed Peterhof. The Grand Palace was gutted, the world-famous Samson Fountain blown apart, and gilded statues were smashed or stolen. What had once been a showcase of Russian imperial artistry was reduced to rubble and scorched ruins. This deliberate cultural desecration became emblematic of Nazi war crimes against Russian heritage, and it helped shape Soviet post-war policy toward German-owned art. After the Red Army occupied Berlin and other German cities, it seized vast quantities of artwork and the destruction of Peterhof was frequently cited by Soviet authorities as justification
Today, the argument remains contested. While Peterhof has been meticulously restored, the trophy art debate lingers unresolved, with Russia invoking wartime suffering as moral grounds for its continued possession of works claimed by others. In this painful standoff, Peterhof’s devastation still echoes, serving as both a symbol of loss and a shield for cultural retaliation.
With nothing planned for the last night of my tour I decided to try a night of miscellaneous ballet at the Hermitage Theatre in the Winter Palace complex. It’s a tiny theatre for chamber-style ballet, no chorus, a small orchestra and principal dancers. I’ve never been a great ballet fan, and this would not have got me over the line, but it was an interesting and enjoyable evening, nevertheless.
As my flight left for London next morning in glorious sunshine I was unaware there was to be an unexpected bonus. In 1978 I met a couple who had just moved to London. He was French and she was Swedish and her family had a grand estate, Börringekloster, not far from Malmo. I hadn’t known them for long when I was invited to spend a long weekend shooting. I accepted assuming it would be a pheasant shoot, but Gunther soon put me right on that – we would be shooting roe deer, fallow deer and moose, but if you would like to shoot pheasant that can be arranged too. And don’t worry, we will have a rifle for you.
My instructions were to fly to Malmo Airport and to be there in time for dinner on the appointed Thursday evening. It was easy in those days: British Airways, London to Copenhagen, a short wait and a ten-minute flight in a Twin Otter from Copenhagen to Malmo. There were other guests on the flight as well and Gunther was there to meet us. It was quite convenient really. When the authorities had decided a new airport was required for Malmo, the Beck Friis family was quite happy for the airport to be built on Börringekloster since it gave them a handy airfield just five minutes away from the big house. And what a big house it was. We arrived in darkness but a scattering of lights in several front-facing windows was sufficient to convey the simplicity and beauty of this classic Swedish manor house. The cobbled reception hall was decorated by an immense herd of mounted stag heads and its double doors were built to accommodate arrivals on horseback.
Having shown us where we would be assembling for pre-dinner drinks, Gunther showed us to our rooms. They were spacious, warm and comfortable. Our pre-dinner drink in a cosy drawing room decorated with hunting scenes was aquavit served from an ice encrusted bottle—a foolproof way to get a party started. We were six guests, two from London including me and two couples from Paris. When we moved to the formal dining room for dinner we were almost lost with eight sitting at a table that could easily have accommodated twenty.
It was not a late evening. Gunther was keen for the men to rise early to man the miradors. These shooting towers stood in cultivated fields around fifty metres from the forest fringe. The idea was to walk to a mirador and climb it as quietly as possible in darkness. Then you sat there with your rifle on safe, waiting for the dawn and the game to break cover to graze on the cultivation. Those wily animals stayed put and if they hadn’t it would have made no difference. My new Barbour jacket from Cordings was no match for that cold. I was shivering so much I would have missed a barn. Bacon and eggs in the breakfast room off the cavernous kitchen restored spirits. Gunther was a tireless host and his dedication to field sports took us all over that wonderful estate. We walked up red deer, fallow deer and pheasants, waited impatiently in hides for ducks that stayed away and even had an afternoon trout fishing in the magnificent lake a short walk to the south of the house. We didn’t kill much but I did come to enjoy the cold black-and-white landscapes so reminiscent of Bergman films I didn’t enjoy at all.
That was the first of at least three visits to that glorious house and its old world charm and hospitality. But the memories were fading until twenty six years later on a crispy clear autumnal morning during a flight from St Petersburg to London I was there again. Who knows what made me look down from my window seat just as we passed by Börringekloster on that beautiful morning but there it was, the big house, its airfield, its trout lake, its miradors and its game covers. It all came back. That fleeting glimpse from the air, unsought and unplanned, felt like a gift: a quiet salute from the past, reminding me that travel’s richest rewards are often the ones we never set out to find.
Roz Wilson
Posted at 07:45h, 02 SeptemberHow true…. very treasured gifts!!