The 900 Day Seige

After finally finding our hostel and then hanging out in the common room for about three hours we decided to take one of the Peter's Walking Tours advertised by a handwritten sign posted in the lobby.

The Siege of Leningrad tour was a six hour extravaganza that included a visit to a Siege Museum and several different cathedrals. Starting at the siege museum we did an excellent guided tour before sitting down to watch a documentary at which point both Kate and I promptly fell asleep.

Then after lunch we took a Metro down to a park where our excellent guide, Mike was able to point out a number of points of interest including a memorial made out of a cart that was used to cart the dead off to be incinerated. (900,000 people perished so come summer thaw there were a few bodies lying around.)

He also peppered the tour with fascinating stories like the tail of the Feline Revolutionary Defenders of the Hermitage from Yekatrinburg. These cats, from Yekatrinburg, were shipped halfway across the country to deal with the rats that had infested the Hermitage during the siege. It was the brainchild of the museum's head curator who had been shipped off to Yekatrinburg at the start of the war. Apparently the ancestors of these cats still reside in the basement of the Hermitage to this day.

Then we continued walking stopping at a bunker nestled in between some post war apartment buildings, we saw some pillboxes that were used for fighting and a soldier's cemetray. Luckily for us the tour also took us past the Chesme Church which was built by Catherine the Great to mark the spot where she first received news that the Russian's had just defeated the Turks at Chesme Bay in 1770.



Next stop was a massive statue of Lenin that stood in front of the equally impressive House of the Soviets which was built with some high lofty purpose but now simply hosts the district administration. With towering Stalinist columns and an intricate stone frieze depicting the labour of the proletariat across the top it was more than impressive.

Last stop on the tour was a memorial built about nine kilometres from the front line which included another towering pillar, some beautiful sculptures, haunting music and some unreadable Russian text.