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St. Petersburg the Great1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Itinerary | Home Russia’s once grand imperial capital city is again the country’s gateway to Europe – and awash in culture, kitsch and a lot of cash.
At Lenin’s Mating Call café (“Zov Ilicha” in Russian), busts of the eponymous revolutionary have been fixed to the mirrored ceiling – upside down. The trademark profile of the goateed Lenin staring defiantly skyward is printed on the laminated placemats, and other memorabilia of the Soviet era adorn the walls. This peculiar, congenial hole in the wall is near the Haymarket, the district where the great novelist Dostoevsky lived and wrote. At the café’s four spare tables, some students but also a few workers are drinking shots of vodka over pelmeni (the small meat dumplings that are a local specialty) or plates of herring and potatoes. The herring is delicious – moist, fleshy and sweet, the best I have had in the city. The vodka – Russian Black Standard – is even better. |
The Catherine Palace