Grabbing at St. Pete memories

Picture this. We are strolling through St. Petersburg, along the wide and busy Nevskiy Prospekt, which is Russia’s version of New York’s Broadway. It is midday and the avenue is crowded with shoppers, workers and tourists.

Under most circumstances in a foreign country, I am content to see the sights from the window of a tour bus or from a taxi transporting us directly from our hotel to the best restaurant in town. En route, it’s: “Look, a cathedral!” “Oh, boy, a statue!” “Wow, a dog!” A dog? Well, I’m easily amused.

But on this particular day, I am filled with a false sense of well-being and hum a little tune (perhaps the Red Army marching song) as we meander up the Nevskiy toward a bookstore. We cannot resist bookstores in any language and begin heading in.

Cinelli, who, like Columbus, always leads, has just entered the store. I am about to enter when -- whammo! -- I am set upon by half a dozen women who are making strange squealing sounds and whose hands are all over me.

At first I’m thinking they’re just fans, but then I conclude (a) I probably don’t have any fans in St. Pete and (b) my fans rarely squeal and grope. And then it flashes on me: muggers!

I was set upon the same way in Prague a few years ago, with the squealing and grabbing, so I knew what was up. Back then, they only got a pair of glasses from a shirt pocket. This time, they managed to slip a few rubles from a pocket of my Dockers. But they paid a price. I began smashing and chopping as though I were under attack by the 127th Regiment of the Chinese Army and they scattered. Cinelli, who had turned to help, said she heard one or two scream in pain.

I mention the incident only to warn prospective travelers to be on the alert for groups of women who squeal and fondle. It is not just out of desire that their hands search your body, it is in a hunt for your money. Cinelli suggested that it might be an Eastern Europe tradition that has slipped into the new Russia. I bear them no ill will and I hope I didn’t break any noses.

The mugging didn’t stop us from wandering the 300-year-old city of Peter the Great in the daytime and at night. It is a series of islands separated by canals spanned by ornate bridges, a combination of Venice and Paris in its compelling charm. It’s the city of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky, Pavlova and Nijinsky, of domes and spires and nightlife equal to Manhattan’s.

I could go into spasms of delight over a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, an opera and folk festival in St. Pete, a room covered entirely in amber in the palace of Catherine I, the incredible Hermitage Museum and more statues, monuments and cathedrals than Vegas has hookers. I was distressed at first that very few places in Russia seem to understand an American martini. Extra-dry vermouth is as foreign to them as ketchup on eggs. But I found some in a vodka take-out stand, poured two grams into a plastic cup, and carried it with me like a life-sustaining serum. You bring the vodka, I’ll bring the vermouth and we’ll drink to the glory of the Romanov Dynasty.

We travel abroad to sample the incredible diversity of other cultures and to tap into histories that date back into shadows of antiquity. We talk to the people, ask questions and absorb. They talk to us, ask questions and wonder: What about that crazy recall election in California?

We were asked that not just by the Russians but also by our shipmates on a cruise up the Volga-Neva, by Brits, Belgians, Lithuanians and the tittering French. It was asked for the most part in smirky tones, some mimicking the way Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tuesday’s nightmare, says Col-lee-forna in that accented basso profundo.

When I get out of the country, I am happy to get away from politics and street fights, but our recall election is a form of intriguing gossip from which there is no escape. The question arose in conversations throughout Russia and in New York, when anyone discovered we were from the great state of Col-lee-forna. Near the end of the trip, Cinelli was telling everyone we were from Waldo, Kan., where there are no ego-bloated actors seeking new areas of recognition.

I’m always a little sad when our journeys end. As I sit now, thumbing through my travel journal, surrounded by tour books, folders and bits of memorabilia, I wander back to our last dinner in Russia, in a candlelit French cafe on a quiet street of St. Petersburg, across from the winding Moyka Canal. “This is it,” Cinelli is saying, “our last night.” Her face is radiant in the soft light, her eyes still bright with the excitement of travel. “But,” she says, “we’ll always remember it, won’t we?”

Yes. Always.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at [email protected].