Men Among the Ruins Tour--St. Petersburg

Friday, November 18: Late in the morning Gerhard, Jörg and Balazs of Allerseelen arrived in Budapest as we would all be flying to Russia on the same flight that afternoon. I had not previously met Jörg nor Balazs so it was good that we were able to sit casually after breakfast and get acquainted. The company of this trio was part of what made the Russian leg of the tour so enjoyable as they were wonderful traveling companions.

Although we would be performing in St. Petersburg on Saturday, we actually flew in to Moscow. Arriving there in early evening and meeting our fine host, Kirill, we were taken to an area where we could check our luggage and instruments while we went to dinner and tour the area a bit before boarding a midnight train to St. Petersburg. (I’ll describe more about Moscow on the next page.) Nevertheless, we stopped into a restaurant and had some good food and beer before heading back to catch our train.

The train ride was pleasant with each compartment containing four berths. Since there were five of us one person had to be “odd man out” and on both the ride to and from St. Petersburg, Gerhard was the one. Hopefully he didn’t mind being in the company of strangers. There was a small delightful little snack box for each of us which contained several things to eat including cheese, sausage, desert and drinks. I had never been in a sleeping berth on a train before so had wondered what it would be like. It was a pretty good night’s sleep.

Saturday, November 19: We arrived in St. Petersburg at 10:00 the next morning to a thin, glistening blanket of snow covering the ground. It was their first snowfall of the season and considering it was past mid-November, it seemed late in the year for the first snow in Russia. But our hosts said that the average winters are generally warmer there now than they have been in years past. This seems to be the trend of weather patterns all over the world.

Our great hosts met us at the train station and we walked ten minutes to the venue at which we would be performing in the evening. Since we were only here for this one day the “green room” of the venue was out of where we were based.

We then walked a short distance to a fine little café where we had delicious pastries and coffee. From there we embarked on a several mile walking tour of the city. From what I had seen in the short time we were in Moscow, the comparison between the two cities was that Moscow seemed to be a bustling metropolis similar to larger cities in America and Europe while St. Petersburg, though also large and busy, seemed a bit more quaint and old-fashioned and I say this in a complimentary way. I was struck by the large advertising billboards that covered sides of buildings for blocks.

One of the places we visited on this tour of the city was formerly a church but now a museum. The photos included here depict the grandeur of the exterior, but unfortunately there was not enough natural light to capture the interior. Inside were huge Eastern Orthodox icons which in most churches are depicted in paintings. Instead, here they were done as mosaics with thousands of small pieces of glass. The icons filled the entire interior extending the full height of the building even filling the interior of the beautiful cupolas. The shading on the fleshtones and drapery created by different colors of glass was extraordinarily beautiful.

The performance of the opening band, Ritual Front, was magnificent. Following them was a spectacular performance by Allerseelen. This was the first time that either Robert or I had seen Allerseelen perform live and their performance was marvelous. With Gerhard’s grand stage presence and vocalizations, Balazs' incredible drumming and Jörg’s dynamic bass riffs plus his fantastic stage show with heavy metal overtones, they had the audience worked into a frenzy! [All concert photos on this page courtesy A_l_i_s_a]

We followed Allerseelen and although our music is quite a bit different from theirs, our two types of music seemed to complement each other as was the case when we performed in Portland following Waldteufel. A humorous side note: When we were only about three-quarters of the way through our set, we were beginning to run late for the train that would be our return trip to Moscow. We were having such a great time performing for this audience where we felt very well received, that we didn’t want to leave, so we were able to squeeze two more songs in before packing up with apologies for having to leave to catch the train. It was just unfortunate that we couldn’t complete our set there.