Fact: Frozen hair is
not fun. It is likely to break, make you look momentarily old, and means that it's probably much too cold for you to be outside....
Follow-up fact: Sometimes it's worth the risk in order for adventuring to occur.
This past Saturday at 9:50 am, I bundled up in as many layers as my jacket could contain, hopped on a bus, and set off for another student excursion-this time to Catherine Park and Palace in Pushkin, about 25 km from SPb. With weather in the negatives my main concern was that my legs would run the risk of freezing right off my body if we were going to do any walking around (which
SURPRISE we were told we would be doing!!), but, after some adventuring in our allotted free time, I soon learned that girls with long hair that does
NOT like to stay in a hat, run the risk of having their hair freeze! And I kid you not when I say that it can, in fact freeze and break right off (I guess it would save me the need of having to get a hair cut, no?). After a tour of the palace and its
b-e-a-utiful rooms, we were given a few hours to explore the surrounding area on our own. Hoping to escape the hair-freezing cold, I joined some friends in a hunt for coffee, which lead us to
"The Tzar's Pancakes"-the tiniest shop you can imagine with the most delicious
chocolate/
banana stuffed pancakes (more like crepes) I have ever had...and coffee too! But we could not avoid the cold forever. After our snack, we continued on to bravely explore the snow-covered palace grounds.
Catherine Palace is named after
Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great, who ruled Russia for two years after the death of her husband. The palace was reconstructed in 1743 by Empress Elizabeth, who chose Pushkin as her summer residence and completed in 1756, taking the palace from a modest 2-story residence to the beautiful palace we see today. It took
100kg of gold to complete the palace to Elizabeth's liking, using state and private funds to decorate the building (and we thought Deval Patrick re-curtaining his office with our money was outrageous!)
The most breathtaking room of the palace, in my opinion, is the Amber Room.
According to some sources, the room was originally completed in 1770, using amber mosaic presented to Peter the Great by Friedrich- Wilhelm I of Prussia (to celebrate the peace between Russia and Prussia at the time), additional amber panels (to total 450kg of amber), and other gemstones from the Ural and Caucasus Mountains. The room was so fragile that in the 19th century alone, it was restored at least
3 times on top of there being a constantly employed caretaker of the room. In 1941 when the Nazis took over Pushkin during
Operation Barbarossa , they took with them the panels of the amber room. It is said that the room was dismantled in about
36 hours (who could even confirm something like that?) packed it up into 27 crates, and shipped it all to Konigsberg, Germany where it was re-installed in Konigsberg castle museum on the Baltic Coast. It was taken down from the castle museum in 1943 and in August 1944 the city was destroyed during ally bombing raids. There are a few interesting
curse/conspiracy theories regarding the Amber Room and its removal, if you're interested in checking them out, riiiiight
HERE and
HERE (for anyone with lots of spare time and curiosity, this article's a little more in-depth)
.
The reconstruction and restoration of the Amber Room began in 1979 and finished up 25 years later in 2004 at a cost of about $11 million dollars. The room was dedicated in a ceremony by Russian President Putin and German Chancellor Schroder, echoing the same peaceful opening of the original room, in celebration of the 300th year anniversary of the city of St. Petersburg.
And as always, it wouldn't be a complete post without pictures!
Hope you enjoy the slideshow!!!
(It was my first time making one)
