When pupils of the “Detsky Gorodok” extra-curricular Russian School in Zurich were asked which city in Russia they would like to visit, they answered unequivocally: St Petersburg. They explained their choice simply; the city is the capital of culture in Russia and the place where the Russian language is spoken most eloquently.
“I loved St Petersburg. Wherever we went there was something fun and interesting to see or do. I would be very happy to go back to this beautiful Russian city with my classmates and teachers at the Russian School”, wrote Russian-School pupil David. He studies the Russian language at the “Detsky Gorodok” extra-curricular Russian School in Zurich. The trip was David’s first to St Petersburg.
“The choice of where to go for our first trip was an easy one”, explained the school director Irina Sarbach. “We’d always dreamed of seeing the city on the Neva. We gathered a group of twenty, pupils, teachers and parents. For many it was their first trip to their historical homeland, Russia. I was not disinterested in the choice; I worked at the State Leningrad University for many years. And although I’ve now lived in Switzerland for a long time, I have never forgotten my friends in Russia”.
The tourists lived in the historical town of Pushkin. “When you arrive in St Petersburg you have the sensation of being transported through time”, said Polina. “The city is very beautiful and peaceful. It’s a place for calm reflection. My favourites were Kronstadt, the Faberge Museum, the Pushkin House-Museum, and the performances we saw of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Dunayevsky’s musical Scarlet Sails.
“We did lots of interesting things”, recalls Inna. “In the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo the tour-guide was so evocative that we really felt we were young aristocrats studying in Tsarist times, and that somewhere nearby, perhaps in a nearby bedchamber, a young Alexander Pushkin was sitting absorbed in thought behind a desk and writing, ever so easily, some witty epigram.
For those who really did study with Pushkin, getting on the wrong side of his quill could have disastrous consequences for their future reputation. Such was the fate of fellow lyceum student Vilhelm Kuhelbecher, of whom the future star of Russian poetry wrote:
Here is Vilhelm, love he strangles,
Songs he writes in metres low,
His satire clumsy, Herculean,
His love is doomed, like Boileau
The average modern reader is unlikely to understand the meaning of this satire. Russian lyceum students of the early 19th-century would, however, be well versed in Greek myth, and know that Hercules, however strong and loving he may have been, was too straight-forward a soul for satire. They also studied European poetry, and knew that childhood illness rendered Boileau for ever celibate. Boileau therefore felt little attraction for the female sex and indeed penned many vicious satires against women.
The Russian-Swiss guests were profoundly moved by the St Petersburg Alexander Pushkin House Museum, which is dedicated to the last and most dramatic period of the poet’s life. Pushkin moved with his family to the former Palace of the Volkonsky Princes in 1836, taking up residence in 11 rooms on the ground floor. A mere four months later, on 29 January 1837, the great poet died in the apartment, mortally wounded as a result of his fateful duel with Georges d'Anthès.
“The tragic story came to life before our eyes”, recounted Elena. “The tour guide told us how Pushkin, having already hear from his doctor that he would most likely die, nevertheless summoned all his energy to keep face in front of his family, hid his suffering from them and assured his wife that the injury was naught but a flesh wound that would quickly heal. Listening to this account, our eyes genuinely filled with tears”.
Next the tourists visited the Peter and Paul Fortress, and sampled the sumptuous interiors of the Mikhailovsky Castle and the Ekaterininsky and Pavlovsky Palaces, the St Isaac’s and Kazansky Cathedrals, the magnificent Church of the Savoir on Spilled Blood, and the Summer Garden with its statues and fountains in Peterhof. To top it off, the trip was made during the white-nights period when St Petersburg is at is most romantic. Of course, seven days and nights are far too few to take in all the wonders of the Russia’s great imperial capital. When Empress Catherine II founded the Ermitage Museum, the collection numbered a mere 317, admittedly highly valuable, paintings brought from Berlin. Today the collection boasts around three million exponents from around the world, including art and artefacts from the Stone Age to the era of space exploration. The Russian Museum, founded by order of Emperor Nikolay II in 1895, today features around half a million works of art in its collections.
Time was also found to study some of the rich intricacies of the Russian language. The visitors attended a lecture by the winner of the national project “Education” Svetlana Ivanova, in which the pedagogical and linguistic expert shared many fascinating insights into the language with the adults and children of the group.
The vocabulary of our Russian-Swiss guests was further enriched by a trip to the village of Shuvalovka, where the staff of a museum recreating traditional Russian peasant life invited the visitors into an authentic peasant house for song-singing and tea-drinking rituals.
The pupils of the “Detsky Gorodok” extra-curricular Russian School are planning to make another trip to Russia soon. Where will they go this time?
