At the end of each academic year, St. Petersburg has a two day festival to honor those graduating high school and sometimes the younger military academy graduates. This year it was held from the 18-19 of June, that is, this weekend. Basically the whole idea is to commend the graduates and promote the idea of possibilities for the future, which is kind of b.s. here. However, it also an excellent excuse for anyone under the age of 35 to get fabulously drunk for a night and not be bothered from their frivolity by the police. When we got back from Novgorod at 9pm, Nevsky Prospect was closed down and there were people everywhere. On every block there were groups of police and sometimes OMAN (Russian equivalent of SWAT) just chilling, acting more as a preemptive measure than as an attempt to intimidate people. We jumped off the bus, eager to join the celebration, and made plans to meet on Dumskaya Ulitsa at 10pm. Which ended up being 10:30 or 11pm because we severely underestimated the number of people on the streets and metro. Most of the clubs were charging a 100 ruble ($3-4) cover, which is 100 rubles that could be better spent covering the cost of a half-liter of beer, so we decided to hit up the produkti next door for beer at 36 rubles ($1.30) a pop for a half-liter. Oh how sweet the exchange rate is!
There must have been a half a million or more people on the streets last night! It was absolutely insane! People were drinking everywhere, signing, shouting; you name it, they did it. And the militsia just stood there watching everyone. There was an event in Palace Square that required purchase of tickets, but we decided to forgo that and instead headed through the Field of Mars to the Troitskiy Bridge where we could sit on the bank of the Neva and watch the bridge go up. Last night the bridge was all done up with sparkling lights in honor of the holiday and it was very cool to watch it go up. At about 1:30 am (when it finally got dark) a massive fireworks display started that far surpassed anything I have ever seen. There were even lazers (or lights, I couldn’t tell) to play off of the smoke left behind by the fireworks in the sky. Then the Ship with Red Sails floated down the Neva, supposedly symbolic of the possibilities of the future, but it really just invokes lots of cheering and more drinking. The whole display was so beautiful and awesome, definitely worth sitting on a cold stone wall during a typical chilly St. Petersburg night.
When the fireworks were over and the ship had sailed, the massive party broke up all at once. We attempted to go back to Dumskaya to go to a bar, but there were simply too much people. So, we decided to grab some food and then to split up and go home once the bridges closed and the metro restarted. All and all I got home around 6am this morning and promptly passed out till 2pm. Well deserved rest, if I do say so myself!
Last night was awesome and it’s been a fabulous past three weeks in St. Petersburg! But now I need to hit the books because I have a quiz in class tomorrow and I need to prepare myself! Love and hugs to all back home!
Xoxo
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