Saint-Petersburg: The Tsar salutes smartly

Dear readers, I beg your pardon for the long absence of posting. As you can notice, the announced study trip to Saint-Petersburg took a lot of time for last-minute preparations, changes and logistic capacities.... I travelled with 62 architecture students one week to Russia.
See our group here:

Shortly said, it was a marvellous time with all of them, they were funny and adventurous - the motto was the baroque foundation of the city of Saint-Petersburg and its transformation during the last 300 years into two other cities - Petrograd - Leningrad - and today just spelled "Piter" by the citizens.

Grace to the winning championship soccer club "Zenith Piterburg" the russians were already very sunshiny at our arrival. The hostel was as cheap as dirty, but we loved it: Cuba Hostel, 1 minute away from the famous Nevskii Prospekt. Well, shortly, we were walking 8 hours every day and slept 3-4 hours, because Petersburg by night is a special recommendation..

We travelled to Pushkin and visited the famous Catherine´s Palace with the Amber room, a gift of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I. to the Tsar in 1745.

Enjoy some pictures of this:

The greater palace is placed at Pitergof (german: Peterhof) the summer palace of Tsar Peter I. It is an incredible building dimension and the parc is in fact a rivalry to Versailles. But the most stunning was the direct access to the sea: imagine a baroque palace and parc situated directly at the beach of the Baltic Sea. Great!

Petergof, the palace

view from the Tsar´s terrace - in the background already the Baltic Sea.

We had a full program during this week and came home with a lot of good and also some heavy memories. Honestly, I recommend you a trip to this city!

I will let follow some pictures from the Russian Artillery Museum with its splendid SYW department soon!

All picture are taken by my student Severin. Thanks to him.