Tourists throng outside the Hermitage and drool at the Mariinsky, but they don’t see;- the crumbling homes and footpaths of the people’s suburbs; my landlady taking her handicapped son to hospital with presents for the doctors and food for his stay in the (vain) hope that he might be admitted to enjoy “free’ treatment for all. Perhaps Gordon brown might learn from this. Neither do they taste the drinking water tainted with giardia and heavy metals.
But St Petersburg lives, as ever it has, gay and colourful-a Vienna on water-against skies of pale blue or pewter gray-always hinting that, despite the vigil of the Bronze Horseman, the Nordic gods might send the mighty Neva a little off- course to wash away this 300 year intrusion on unforgiving nature
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