I have spent the last couple of days with the archive tour group that came up from Moscow. I met up with them on Sunday at the Marble Palace where a local History professor did a quick tour covering the revolution. I didscovered where that British Embassy was housed at that time, which is useful to know. I do feel it helps to know where things are in relation to other things as it can give a better understanding of how events happened. We then decamped to a cafe to warm up with some tea and coffee (It was a bitterly cold day, but dry at least!) Tony and I stayed on to have something to eat there but everyone else headed of to do their own thing.
I arranged to meet up with the group at their hotel the following morning before heading back to the hotel on the metro. They are staying at the Hotel Moskva which is so much better than the crappy place we stayed in Moscow when I did the tour last year! RGIA was the destination so of we went on the metro. It has just opened in a brand new building which was a real change from the normal archives here. It has fantastic facilities, computerised catalogues, state-of-the-art scanning facilities etc. A really brilliant place to work we all thought. Then we tried to register! Only Brendan had a letter of recommendation with him so he was the only one they would allow to register but that fell through when he didn't have a photo! And he was only allowed to put one topic of interest down on the application form. I can see I will have to give it some thought before I commit to anything specific. I guess the trick is to make it as broad as possible! I wonder if they would accept 'Russian History' as the theme!!?
So even with all the modern facilities remnants of old style bureaucracy remain! Still, compared to the old Senate building where they used to be kept it is a palace. They showed us a film of the transfer of archives, which was, surprisingly, completed in only one day with 1700 trips in lorries.
As none of us were going to get to work there we headed of to find some bookshops over in the University area. It was a horrible, wet, cold day so walking was not very pleasant but Tony and I got to several bookshops and I was lucky enough to pick up 5 books on the emmigration.
At 6pm we met everyone again at the European University of St Petersburg where we had a talk about post grad courses there. They seem to have a great programme of courses for overseas students taught in English. Boris had then arranged a Georgian banquet for us at a local restaurant. There was so much food! I thought I would explode! Just when you thought everything had been brought to the table the waitresses would arrive with more food! And of course there was vodka and toasts! I knew I had to walk back to the hotel so I stuck to the wine. I didn't think it would be a good idea to stagger over Liteiny Bridge and fall into the Neva!!!
The hotel is so quiet now that the kids have gone. It is such a luxury to get a good night's sleep! And I was able to have a lie-in this morning as I am not meeting the group until this afternoon. We are getting a tour of the National Library which is just beside Gostiny Dvor, the enormous market. I have spotted a couple of hats there an I may be tempted to pop back in to get them!
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