SUNGRL

On Wednesday we spent the day in Copenhagen. We docked at 8am and weren’t sailing until midnight so it was nice to be able to take our time exploring the city. It was a lovely sunny day although the temperature only got to about 19 degrees. There were quite a few things to see so we took the Hop On Hop Off bus tour which had three routes to choose from.

Originally a Viking fishing village founded in the 10th century, Copenhagen became the capital of Denmark in the early 15th century. It is the most populated city of Denmark, and second largest in Scandinavia, with an urban population of 1,246,611 and a metropolitan population of 1,975,361 (as of 1 April 2014). It is situated on the eastern coast of Zealand, 42 km northwest of Malmö, Sweden and 164 km (102 mi) northeast of Odense. The city stretches across parts of the island of Amager and also contains the enclave of Frederiksberg, a municipality in its own right.

Since the summer of 2000, Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmö have been connected by the Øresund Bridge, which carries rail and road traffic. As a result, Copenhagen has become the centre of a larger metropolitan area spanning both nations.

In 2012, Copenhagen was third in the ranking of the richest cities in the world in terms of gross earnings, dropping from first place in 2009. Copenhagen has some of the highest gross wages in the world. High taxes mean that wages are reduced after mandatory deduction. A beneficial researcher scheme with low taxation of foreign specialists has made Denmark an attractive location for foreign labour. It is however also among the most expensive cities in Europe.

Copenhagen were the first city in the world to officially introduce green policy. They are aiming to be carbon neutral by 2019. Cars attract an import tax of 180% so they are very expensive. They have bicycle lanes everywhere – 35,000 bicycles come into the city every day.

Copenhagen has over 94,000 students enrolled in its largest universities and institutions, including the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark and Copenhagen Business School. The University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479, is the oldest university in Denmark, and has repeatedly been ranked as one of the best universities in Europe.

As a result of Denmark’s neutrality in the First World War, Copenhagen prospered from trade with both Britain and Germany while the city’s defences were kept fully manned by some 40,000 soldiers for the duration of the war. However, during World War II, Copenhagen was occupied by German troops along with the rest of the country from 9 April 1940 until 4 May 1945. On 8 May 1945 Copenhagen was officially liberated by British troops commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who supervised the surrender of 30,000 Germans situated around the capital.

Copenhagen is home to a number of international companies including A.P. Møller-Mærsk, Novo Nordisk, Carlsberg and Novozymes. A.P. Møller-Mærsk is the largest shipping company in the world. It’s logo is a seven point star which represent the seven seas that they sail. The city also has successful business clusters in several innovative sectors including information technology, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and clean technology.

The Tivoli Gardens had been highly recommended to us so that was our first stop. Tivoli Gardens is a famous amusement park and pleasure garden in Copenhagen. The park opened on 15 August 1843 and is the second oldest amusement park in the world, after Dyrehavsbakken in nearby Klampenborg. With 4.033 million visitors in 2012, Tivoli is the second most popular seasonal theme park in the world, the most visited theme park in Scandinavia and the fourth most visited in Europe, only behind Disneyland Paris, Europa-Park Rust and the Efteling.

While Tivoli looked cool we actually decided amusement parks weren’t really our thing so next stop was the Carlsberg factory. As you can imagine this was right up Steve’s alley. We decided to do the tour and it was really interesting. They main factory has been shut since 2008 due to the difficulty of getting the raw product to the site – it is very close to the centre of Copenhagen. They still operate a microbrewery from the site though with the main facilities now located in another part of Denmark. They have many offshore breweries making beer under the Carlsberg label with the yeast being supplied from the laboratory in Copenhagen – this ensures consistency in the brew. The only thing that can alter the taste of the beer is the quality of the water.

Carlsberg was founded by J. C. Jacobsen; the first brew was finished on 10 November 1847. Export of Carlsberg beer began in 1868; foreign brewing began in 1968 with the opening of a Carlsberg brewery in Blantyre, Malawi. Some of the company’s original logos include an elephant (after which some of its lagers are named) and the swastika. Use of the latter was discontinued in the 1930s because of its association with the Nazis. The company’s flagship brand is Carlsberg Beer but it also brews Tuborg, Kronenbourg, Somersby cider, Russia’s best selling beer Baltika, Belgian Grimbergen abbey beers as well more than 500 local beers.

Carlsberg is named after J.C. Jacobsen’s only child, a son called Carl. Berg mean’s hill so the translation is Carl’s Hill. Carl had a strict upbringing and was sent abroad to learn the art of brew making. J.C. and Carl didn’t see eye to eye and this was further exacerbated by Carl being well educated and having his own ideas. They ended up operating separate brew houses side by side – Old Carlsberg and New Carlsberg. Carl had been written out of his father’s will so on his father’s death all his father’s assets were put into a foundation to help all sorts of projects that benefited Copenhagen going forward.

In the early 20th century Carl got into some financial difficulty and asked the foundation for money – they originally refused but later agreed on the proviso that when Carl died all his assets were also put into a foundation. Carl agreed but there was provision for each of his children and their children etc… to be paid a lump sum annually for 50 years. He died in 1914 so in 1964 the last payments to any of his descendants were made. The foundations were eventually joined and continue to benefit Copenhagen with none of the descendants of the family benefiting directly.

In 1901, on brewer Carl Jacobsen’s initiative, the Architect Professor J. L. Dahlerup created a tower resting on four elephants carved in granite from the Danish island Bornholm. Brewer Jacobsen was inspired by this gate by the obelisk supporting elephant on the Piazza della Minerva in Rome. The four elephants each bear the initial of one of Carl Jacobsen’s four children: Theodora, Paula, Helge and Vagn. This became known as The Elephant Gate and is a landmark entrance to the brewery. To the west of the gate, Carl Jacobsen’s motto was inscribed: Laboremus pro Patria (Let us work for our country). Since then the Elephant has been a famous part of the Carlsberg Family, especially after the strong Elephant Beer was created in 1955 under the name “Export Lager Beer” and featuring the Elephant label. The Elephant is still brewed in Carlsberg Breweries in Copenhagen and exported around the world. A few markets brew their own Carlsberg Elephant beer locally according to the original recipe.

After the Carlsberg tour we caught the bus back to the city to check out the Nyhavn Canal which is also known as the longest bar in the world. It has all these bars set up alongside the canal. It had turned into a beautiful afternoon and there were people everywhere sitting on the edge of the canal. All the wooden sailing ships in the canal and the colourful 17th and 18th century townhouses alongside make it such a picturesque spot. The bars advertise takeaway beer – it is cheaper to buy a beer and go and sit on the edge of the canal and drink it.

Nyhavn was constructed by King Christian V from 1670 to 1673, dug by Swedish war prisoners from the Dano-Swedish War 1658–1660. It is a gateway from the sea to the old inner city at Kongens Nytorv (King’s Square), where ships handled cargo and fishermens’ catch. It was notorious for beer, sailors, and prostitution. Danish author Hans Christian Andersen lived at Nyhavn for some 18 years.

As ocean-going ships grew larger, Nyhavn was taken over by internal Danish small vessel freight traffic. After World War II land transport took over this role and small vessel traffic disappeared from the Port of Copenhagen, leaving Nyhavn largely deserted of ships.

Hans Christian Andersen (2nd April 1805 – 4th August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen’s popularity is not limited to children; his stories, called eventyr in Danish, or “fairy-tales” in English, express themes that transcend age and nationality.

Andersen’s fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West’s collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include “The Little Mermaid”, “The Snow Queen”, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Nightingale”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and many more. His stories have inspired plays, ballets, and both live-action and animated films.

After spending a couple of hours exploring the area around the Nyhavn canal we had missed the last bus back to the boat but it was only about 2km to walk so we took the waterfront route past the Amalienborg Castle which is the winter home of the Danish Royal Family. It consists of four identical classicizing palace façades with rococo interiors around an octagonal courtyard in the centre of the square is a monumental equestrian statue of Amalienborg’s founder, King Frederick V.

The Danish Royal Family enjoys remarkably high approval ratings in Denmark, possibly ranging from somewhere between 82% and 92%. Queen Margrethe II is married to a French man who is known as the Prince Consort. They have two sons – Prince Fredrik who married Mary Donaldson from Australia, now known as Crown Princess Mary, and Joachim.

The Queen’s style of reigning is outgoing and during her reign, the royal house’s relationship with the population has become more open than before. During her annual summer cruises on the royal yacht Dannebrog, she attaches great importance to reaching all parts of the realm, including the Faroe Islands and Greenland. In addition, she has managed to give her traditional televised New Year message a personal touch, which has strengthened the monarchy’s position in the nation.

There is quite a connection between all the various royal families in Europe. The royal descendants of Queen Victoria (Queen of the United Kingdom) and of Christian IX (King of Denmark) currently occupy the thrones of Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. At the outbreak of the First World War their grandchildren occupied the thrones of Denmark, Greece, Norway, Germany, Romania, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom. For this, Queen Victoria was nicknamed “the grandmother of Europe” while Christian IX was nicknamed “Father-in-law of Europe”. Of the remaining kingdoms of Europe today, only Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands descends neither from Queen Victoria nor Christian IX.

Not far from where our boat was docked is the Little Mermaid statue. It is a bronze statue by Edvard Eriksen, depicting a mermaid. The sculpture is displayed on a rock by the waterside at the Langelinie promenade. It is 1.25 metres tall and weighs 175 kilograms. Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, the small and unimposing statue is a Copenhagen icon and has been a major tourist attraction since 1913. In recent decades it has become a popular target for defacement by vandals and political activists.

The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, who had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale in Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre and asked the ballerina, Ellen Price, to model for the statue. The sculptor Edvard Eriksen created the bronze statue, which was unveiled on August 23, 1913. The statue’s head was modelled after Price, but as the ballerina did not agree to model in the nude, the sculptor’s wife, Eline Eriksen, was used for the body.

We docked in Saint Petersburg at 7am Saturday morning. We are here until 6pm Sunday night which gives us two days to explore the city – there is a lot to see. We had organised a private tour with Tours by Locals and our guide Margarita met us off the boat at 9am.

Saint Petersburg is situated on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea and is considered the most European of all Russian cities. It is Russia’s second largest and Europe’s fourth largest city after Moscow, London and Paris. In 1914 the name of the city was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, and in 1991, back to Saint Petersburg. It is built on a network of islands, featuring 65 rivers and canals that crisscross the city. Along with about 400 bridges, the city also closely resembles Venice or Amsterdam.

Saint Petersburg was founded by Czar Peter the Great on the 27 May 1703. Between 1713–1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the imperial capital of Russia. In 1918, the central government bodies moved from Saint Petersburg (then named Petrograd) to Moscow. It is Russia’s 2nd largest city after Moscow with 5 million inhabitants. The total population of Russia is 150 million.

In 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernise Russia had met with opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his son. In 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia, Saint Petersburg was again designated as the capital of the Russian Empire. It remained the seat of the Romanov Dynasty and the Imperial Court of the Russian Tzars, as well as the seat of the Russian government, for another 186 years until the communist revolution of 1917.

The names of saints Peter and Paul, bestowed upon original city’s citadel and its cathedral (from 1725—a burial vault of Russian emperors) coincidentally were the names of the first two assassinated Russian Emperors, Peter III (1762, supposedly killed in a conspiracy led by his wife, Catherine the Great) and Paul I (1801, Nicholas Zubov and other conspirators who brought to power Alexander I, the son of their victim). The third emperor’s assassination took place in Petersburg in 1881 when Alexander II fell victim to narodniki (see The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood).

The Russian Revolution of 1917 began in Saint Petersburg when the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace. During World War I, the Imperial government renamed the city Petrograd, meaning “Peter’s City”, to remove the German words Sankt and Burg.

In March 1917, during the February Revolution Nicholas II abdicated both for himself and on behalf of his son, ending the Russian monarchy and over three hundred years of Romanov dynastic rule. On November 7, 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, stormed the Winter Palace in an event known thereafter as the October Revolution, which led to the end of the post-Tsarist provisional government, the transfer of all political power to the Soviets, and the rise of the Communist Party.

In September and October 1917, German troops invaded the West Estonian archipelago and threatened Petrograd with bombardment and invasion. On March 12, 1918, the Soviets transferred the government to Moscow. During the ensuing Civil War, in 1919 general Yudenich advancing from Estonia repeated the attempt to capture the city, but Leon Trotsky mobilized the army and forced him to retreat.

On January 26, 1924, five days after Lenin’s death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. Later some streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly. The city has over 230 places associated with the life and activities of Lenin.

Stallin took over from Lenin in 1924 and ruled until his death in 1953. He was a very cruel man, if you were wealthy you were an enemy and put into prison. He was widely disliked and there are no statutes or memorials to him anywhere in Russia.

During World War II, German forces besieged Leningrad following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The siege lasted 872 days, from September 1941 to January 1944. The Siege of Leningrad proved one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history. It isolated the city from most supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga. More than one million civilians died, mainly from starvation. Many others were eventually evacuated or escaped, so the city became largely depopulated.

1991 saw the fall of the Communist Party and the election of a President. Leningrad was renamed back to St Petersburg. Meanwhile, economic conditions started to deteriorate as the country tried to adapt to major changes. For the first time since the 1940s, food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad.

Ironically, those close to the power at the time of the fall of the Communist Party benefited greatly when the state assets were privatised. They managed to buy these state assets for a pittance and now they are worth billions. These new Russians, as Margarita referred to them, are known as Russian Oligarchs in the western world.

Being under soviet rule actually made the Russian people feel safe – everything was regulated and they knew where they stood. In saying that the economy has never been better than now. Putin is considered a very secretive man but has made good changes. There is still a lot of corruption in the police and government but he is trying to clean it up Government ministers are now required to declare all their income and interests.

People in urban Saint Petersburg live mostly in apartments. Between 1918 and the 1990s, the Soviets nationalised housing and forced residents to share communal apartments (kommunalkas). With 68% living in shared flats in the 1930s, Leningrad was the city in the USSR with the largest number of kommunalkas. Resettling residents of kommunalkas is now on the way out, albeit shared apartments are still not uncommon. As new boroughs were built on the outskirts in the 1950s to 1980s, over half a million low income families eventually received free apartments, and about an additional hundred thousand condos were purchased.

Saint Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial centre of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses.

The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges.

In 2007, Toyota opened a Camry plant after investing 5 billion roubles (USD200 million) in Shushary, one of the southern suburbs of Saint Petersburg. Opel, Hyundai and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government to build their automotive plants in Saint Petersburg too. Automotive and auto-parts industry is on the rise there during the last decade.

Saint Petersburg is the location of a significant brewery and distillery industry. It is known as the “beer capital” of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe’s second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev).

The city has a lot of local distilleries which produce a broad range of vodka brands. The oldest ones is LIVIZ (founded in 1897). Among the youngest is Russian Standard Vodka introduced in Moscow in 1998, which opened in 2006 a new $60 million distillery in Petersburg (an area of 30,000 square meters, production rate of 22,500 bottles per hour). In 2007 this brand was exported to over 70 countries.

Saint Petersburg is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as an area with 36 historical architectural complexes and around 4,000 outstanding individual monuments of architecture, history and culture. New tourist programs and sightseeing tours have been developed for those wishing to see Saint Petersburg’s cultural heritage.

The city has 221 museums, 2,000 libraries, more than 80 theaters, 100 concert organizations, 45 galleries and exhibition halls, 62 cinemas and around 80 other cultural establishments. Ballet performances occupy a special place in the cultural life of Saint Petersburg. The Petersburg School of Ballet is deservedly named as one of the best in the world. With a packed cultural program and a large number of world heritage sites, as well as a developing tourist infrastructure, Saint Petersburg has become among the world’s leading centers of culture and tourism.

The weather in Saint Petersburg, however, leaves a lot to be desired. It gets up to about 25 in summer which is June and July and can get as cold as minus 25 in the winter. Due to location at ca. 60° N latitude the day length in Petersburg varies across seasons, ranging from 5:53 hours to 18:50 hours. A period from mid-May to mid-July when twilight may last all night is called the white nights.

History of Russian Czars
Czar (also spelled as tsar) literally means an emperor or a male monarch. It was the imperial title of Russian rulers, who ruled Russia from 16th century until the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. The title Czar is derived from the Latin word Caesar, the title of Roman emperors. Czar also means a person having great power. The Russian Czars were the rulers of Russia, whose reign began with Ivan, the Terrible and ended with Nicholas II. They ruled for nearly 350 years.

In earlier times, the rulers of Russia were known as Grand Princes of Moscow, Grand Princes of Vladimir, Grand Princes of Kiev, etc. The House of Romanov is the most popular dynasty in Russia. But, the use of the title, ‘Czar’ dates back to nearly 50 years before the Romanov emperors ascended the throne. Ivan IV (popularly known as Ivan, the Terrible) was the first Russian ruler to assume the title of Czar in 1547. He belonged to the House of Rurik and reigned from 1547-1584. He was an authoritarian and a ruthless ruler. Ivan IV is infamous for killing his own son in a fit of rage. Ivan IV died in 1584, leaving his worthless second son Feodor, as heir to the throne.

The time of troubles began in Russia, after Ivan IVth’s death. The country was torn by civil war, unrest and famines. Finally, in 1613, the chaos ended. Representatives of 50 cities and some peasants unanimously elected Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov as the new Czar. From here began the Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia till 1917.

Czar Peter, popularly known as Peter the Great, was the founder of modern Russia. He transformed Russia into a great European empire. During the reign of Catherine the Great, the Russian empire expanded and improved in administration. Czar Alexander II abolished serfdom in 1861. But, he was assassinated. His son Czar Alexander III, in order to avenge his father’s murder, imposed strict and ruthless laws. The last Czar Nicholas II’s failure to take action, even in extreme conditions, eventually led to his downfall and eradication of the monarchy in Russia.

The stories of the Czar’s fascinated me and a lot of what we saw and what Margarita told us about focused around Peter the Great (1696 – 1725), his daughter Elizabeth (1741 – 1761) and Catherine the Great (1762 – 1796). Peter the Great had 11 children of which only two survived – Elizabeth and Mary. There were a couple of rulers after Peter and then Elizabeth took over. Elizabeth didn’t have any children so her nephew succeeded her. He married a German woman called Rita who became known as Catherine II (Peter’s wife was Catherine I). Catherine had her lover murder her husband after which she took over the country. She ruled for 34 years and became known as Catherine the Great.

The Last Russian Czar
Nicholas II was the last Czar of Russia. He was not an able ruler due to inconsistency in his decisions and actions. He was under great influence of his wife Czarina Alexandra, and his corrupt ministers. A monk named Rasputin influenced the Czarina and manipulated most of the Czar’s decisions. Russia faced military as well as economic losses during the First World War. There was rising discontent due to the Czar’s reluctance to undertake immediate action. The people were fed up of the autocratic and dictatorial rule. The event known as Bloody Sunday, shattered people’s belief in the Russian Czars. The consequence of which was the Russian Revolution (Bolshevik Revolution), which took place in 1917. Czar Nicholas II abdicated. He and his immediate family were imprisoned, and later killed by the Bolsheviks. Czarism and monarchy came to an end in Russia with the death of Nicholas II.

Serfdom was prevalent in Russia during the reign of the Russian Czars. Almost 80% of the Russian people were either peasants or serfs. The Czars did not wish to end the feudal system. As they were afraid of losing power, capitalism was verboten. Most of the Czars were autocratic rulers. Although, the Russian Czars were oppressive, the world was gifted with works of great Russian authors, painters and artists during their reign.

After Margarita had picked us up from the Port we drove out of town to explore Catherine Palace.

Catherine Palace
The residence originated in 1717, when Catherine I of Russia engaged the German architect Johann-Friedrich Braunstein to construct a summer palace for her pleasure. In 1733, Empress Elizabeth commissioned Mikhail Zemtsov and Andrei Kvasov to expand the Catherine Palace. Empress Elizabeth, however, found her mother’s residence outdated and incommodious and in May 1752 asked her court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli to demolish the old structure and replace it with a much grander edifice in a flamboyant Rococo style. Construction lasted for four years, and on 30 July 1756 the architect presented the brand-new 325-meter-long palace to the Empress, her dazed courtiers, and stupefied foreign ambassadors.

More than 100 kilograms of gold were used to gild the sophisticated stucco façade and numerous statues erected on the roof. It was even rumoured that the palace’s roof was constructed entirely of gold. In front of the palace a great formal garden was laid out.

Although the palace is popularly associated with Catherine the Great, she actually regarded its “whipped cream” architecture as old-fashioned. When she ascended to the throne, a number of statues in the park were being covered with gold, in accordance with the last wish of Empress Elizabeth, yet the new monarch had all the works suspended upon being informed about the expense. In her memoirs she censured her predecessor’s reckless extravagance.

Upon Catherine the Great’s death in 1796, the palace was abandoned in favour of Pavlovsk Palace. Subsequent monarchs preferred to reside in the nearby Alexander Palace and, with only two exceptions, refrained from making new additions to the Catherine Palace, regarding it as a splendid monument to Elizabeth’s wealth and Catherine II’s glory.

When the German forces retreated after the siege of Leningrad, they intentionally destroyed the residence, leaving only the hollow shell of the palace behind. Prior to World War II, the Russian archivists managed to document a fair amount of the interior, which proved of great importance in reconstructing the palace. Although the largest part of the reconstruction was completed in time for the Tercentenary of St. Petersburg in 2003, much work is still required to restore the palace to its former glory. In order to attract funds, the palace’s administration has leased the Grand Hall for such high-profile events as Elton John’s concert for an elite audience in 2001 and an exclusive party in 2005 featuring the likes of Bill Clinton, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Naomi Campbell, and Sting.

Peterhof
We then went to Peterhof. The Peterhof Palace is a series of palaces and gardens laid out on the orders of Peter the Great. These Palaces and gardens are sometimes referred as the “Russian Versailles”. The palace-ensemble along with the city centre is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Peter the Great used the palaces to receive foreign dignitaries. He didn’t stay in the palace’s when he was there in the summer months – instead he choose to stay in a simple house down on the water’s edge. He was obsessed with water, hence the many fountains on the property and it’s proximity to the Gulf of Finland.

The State Hermitage
On Sunday we visited The State Hermitage which is located on Palace Square. The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture. One of the largest and oldest museums in the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property.

Of six buildings of the main museum complex, five, named the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage and Hermitage Theatre, are open to the public.

Just before the Second World War the artworks were shipped off in three train carriages to protect them from the Germans. The artworks returned after the war so are all original pieces. Van Gough, Rembrandt, Picasso and Leonardo Da Vinci feature amongst the artists. There are only 14 original artworks by Leonardo Da Vinci remaining in the world and we saw two in the Hermitage.

I had heard of the different styles of art but never really understood the differences – Margarita did a good job explaining the differences between renaissance, impressionist and baroque. You could spend days in The Hermitage – there is so much to see.

The Peter & Paul Fortress
We then went to the Peter & Paul Fortress which was built in 1703 to protect the area from Swedish invasion, and the the first site chosen by Peter the Great to build his new city. Inside the impressive Citadel is the former Royal Mint and the Peter and Paul Cathedral, with it’s tall slender golden spire, which was the City’s first monumental building and the burial place of all the Russian Czars. It became a museum in 1924. We saw the tombs of Peter the Great, Elizabeth and Catherine the Great. There bodies are actually under the ground and still accessible although under lock and key.

The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood is one of the main sights of St. Petersburg, Russia. It is also variously called the Church on Spilt Blood and the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, its official name. This Church was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and was dedicated in his memory. It is completely decorated inside by mosaic paintings which were quite a sight and hard to capture on camera.

Saint Isaac’s
Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Russia is the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the city. It is the largest orthodox basilica and the fourth largest cathedral in the world. It is dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great, who had been born on the feast day of that saint.

St. Issac’s Cathedral is the original Church of Russia. It has been rebuilt four times. The fourth and final church as situated on the site today was built between 1818 and 1858. A French architect oversaw this project – it was his life time’s work. He died 6 months after it was completed. It is decorated with 14 kinds of minerals and semi precious stones, as well as mosaic paintings.

The main religion in Russia is Russian Orthodox which has it’s roots in the Greek Orthodox religion although it broke away from that in the 15th century. My understanding is that it has many similarities to the Catholic religion and is extremely conservative. The Russian Orthodox Church currently claims its exclusive jurisdiction over the Orthodox Christians living in the former member republics of the USSR. Prior to the Russian revolution in 1914 there were 55,173 Russian Orthodox churches and 29,593 chapels, 112,629 priests and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 convents with a total of 95,259 monks and nuns in Russia.

The year 1917 was a major turning point in Russian history, and also the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian empire was dissolved and the Tsarist government – which had granted the Church numerous privileges – was overthrown. The Soviet government stood on a platform of antireligion, viewing the church as a “counter-revolutionary” organization and an independent voice with a great influence in society. While the Soviet Union officially claimed religious tolerance, in practice the government discouraged organized religion and did much to remove religious influence from Soviet society.

In the time between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1935, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested. Of these, 95,000 were put to death. After Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. Between 1945 and 1959 the official organization of the church was greatly expanded, although individual members of the clergy were occasionally arrested and exiled. The number of open churches reached 25,000.

By 1987 the number of functioning churches in the Soviet Union had fallen to 6893 and the number of functioning monasteries to just 18. Beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the new political and social freedoms resulted in many church buildings being returned to the church, to be restored by local parishioners. A pivotal point in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church came in 1988 – an implicit ban on religious propaganda on state TV was finally lifted. For the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, people could see live transmissions of church services on television.

The Church and the government remained on unfriendly terms until 1988. In practice, the most important aspect of this conflict was that openly religious people could not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which meant that they could not hold any political office. However, among the general population, large numbers remained religious.

This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Mr. Putin’s tenure, a mutually reinforcing choreography that is usually described here as working “in symphony”.

It was a fantastic couple of days in St Petersburg and we learnt a lot about the history of Russia both recent and further back. There sure is a lot of history here and it was so good spending two days with Margarita – she has experienced a lot of the recent history first hand so her insight was so interesting. We had some interesting discussions about communism, Putin and the current situation involving the Ukraine.

Today’s port of call was Helsinki in Finland. The sky was blue and the sun was shining but it was rather chilly. We took the shuttle bus into the central city which is very nice. We had a look in the local department store – Stockmans. We then wandered down to Market Square which was bustling with vendors selling Finnish souvenirs and food. Reindeer meatballs were on the menu – mmmmm? Next stop was the Helsinki Cathedral which is the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran cathedral of the Diocese of Helsinki. The church was originally built from 1830-1852 as a tribute to the Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. It was also known as St Nicholas’ Church until the independence of Finland in 1917.

Helsinki is the capital and largest city of Finland – the city has a population of 616,000 with the wider metropolitan area being home to 1.4 million people. It is located in the southern part of the country, on a peninsula with a fringe of small islands overlooking the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. Surrounded on three sides by water, this natural seaport is known as the “city of the sea”. Helsinki is Finland’s capital for business, education, research, culture and government.

The town of Helsinki was founded by King Gustavus of Sweden (to which Finland belonged for many centuries) as a new trading post in southern Finland and as a competitor to Tallinn in Estonia, the Hanseatic city on the opposite shore of the Gulf of Finland.

Russia’s growing power in the 18th century and the founding of it’s new capital, St Petersburg, not far from the Finnish border in 1703 were to have a decisive influence on the growth and future of the Finnish capital. Shortly after Sweden lost its position as a superpower, Finland was annexed to Russia as an Autonomous Grand Duchy in 1809. Finland declared it’s independence from Russia in 1917.

The nation of Finland has never been an independent sovereign monarchy: no attempt to establish one was crowned with success. When it finally became established as a modern independent nation-state, it was – despite a very brief flirtation with monarchy – in the form of a republic.

Unlike all other states on the European continent that were involved in the Second World War, Finland was never occupied by foreign forces. Therefore, Finland is one of the very few European countries with an unbroken record of democratic rule from the end of the First World War to the present. In 1995, Finland became a member of the EU, once again marking the start of a new era for the capital.

On Thursday we spent the day in Stockholm which is the capital of Sweden. It is made up of about 24,000 archipelagos or islands so the sail into Stockholm was quite a sight. It took us over two hours to sail through all the islands before we docked at Stadsgarden. Stockholm, the city, is spread across 14 distinct islands on the coast in the south-east of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren. Stockholm is the most populous city in Scandinavia, with 905,184 people living in the city with about 2.2 million living in the metropolitan area.

The region has been inhabited for many centuries, but it was not until the middle of the 13th century that Stockholm was officially established. It developed as a commercial centre under the rule of Denmark. In the 16th century Danish rule was overthrown and Gustav I Vasa became king of Sweden with Stockholm at the centre.

We decided to do a hop on hop off boat tour of Stockholm. First stop was the Vasa Museum. The Vasa Museum is a maritime museum which is located on the island of Djurgården. The museum displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. The Vasa Museum opened in 1990 and, according to the official web site, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. Together with other museums such as Stockholm Maritime Museum, the museum belongs to the Swedish National Maritime Museums.

Vasa is a Swedish warship built 1626–1628. The ship foundered and sank after sailing about 1,300m into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside the Stockholm harbor. Salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961, she was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet (“The Wasa Shipyard”) until 1988 and then moved to the Vasa Museum. The ship is one of Sweden’s most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 29 million visitors since 1961. Vasa has, since her recovery become a widely recognized symbol of the Swedish “great power period”.

The ship was built at the order of the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war with Poland-Lithuania (1621–1629). It was constructed in Stockholm at the navy yard under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship. It was richly decorated as a symbol of the king’s ambitions for Sweden and himself, and upon completion was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world. Vasa was dangerously unstable however, due to too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability she was ordered to sea and foundered only a few minutes after encountering a first wind stronger than a breeze. The order to sail was the result of a combination of factors. The king, who was leading the army in Poland at the time of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see her take up her station as flagship of the reserve squadron at Älvsnabben in the Stockholm Archipelago. At the same time the king’s subordinates lacked the political courage to discuss the ship’s structural problems frankly or to have the maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized by the Swedish Privy Council to find personal responsibility for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished for the fiasco.

During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found in and around the Vasa’s hull by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the ten sails. The artifacts and the ship herself have provided scholars with invaluable insight into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques and everyday life in early 17th century Sweden.

After the Vasa Museum we walked to see the ABBA Museum, ABBA having originated in Sweden. We didn’t go into the museum but had fun taking pictures outside with the life size photos of

It was back on the boat to visit the Queen at the Royal Palace. The Stockholm Palace is the official residence and principal workplace of the Swedish monarch, while the Drottningholm Palace, a World Heritage Site on the outskirts of Stockholm, serves as the Royal Family’s private residence. The Stockholm Palace is the largest palace in the world with 680 rooms.

The Swedish monarchy is one of the oldest in the world and is firmly rooted in a parliamentary democracy. Swedish monarchs date back a thousand years and have belonged to eleven dynasties, with the current one, the House of Bernadotte, ruling the longest. Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was the first Bernadotte on the Swedish throne. He was born in France in 1763 and was named heir to the throne in 1810. His name as king was Karl XIV Johan. The Swedish royal family is related to all the reigning royal courts of Europe.

The House of Bernadotte, the current royal house of Sweden, has reigned since 1818. Between 1818 and 1905, it was also the royal house of Norway. Its founder, Charles XIV John of Sweden, was adopted by Charles XIII of Sweden, who belonged to the House of Holstein-Gottorp which was becoming extinct.

The current Swedish Royal Family consists of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. The king and queen have three children: Crown Princess Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée, Duchess of Västergötland, born on 14 July 1977; Prince Carl Philip Edmund, Duke of Värmland, born on 13 May 1979; and Princess Madeleine Thérèse Amelie Josephine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland, born on June 10, 1982. They are regarded as a very modern monarchy and are popular with the people.

They have a changing of the guard at 12pm each day so we were just in time to see that. The horse mounted brass band leads the procession through the streets around the Palace into the courtyard where they then go through the ceremonial changing of the guard. By the time we got up to the courtyard the crowd was about 8 deep so it was quite hard to see but we got the gist. I liked the colour of the guards uniforms – a dark royal blue.

We then had a wander through the old town, Gamla Stan. They are really into icecream – I would have thought it was too cold but it was very popular with all the tourists. We then went to see the City Hall where the annual Nobel Prize ceremony takes place. Sweden is also the home of Pippi Longstocking so there were all these dolls in the shops – very cute.

Pippi Longstocking is the protagonist in the Pippi Longstocking series of children’s books by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. Pippi was named by Lindgren’s then nine-year-old daughter, Karin, who requested a get-well story from her mother one day when she was home sick from school.

Nine-year-old Pippi is unconventional, assertive, and has superhuman strength, being able to lift her horse one-handed. She is playful and unpredictable. She frequently makes fun of unreasonable adult attitudes, especially when displayed by pompous and condescending adults. Pippi’s anger is reserved for the most extreme cases, such as when a man ill-treats her horse. Like Peter Pan, Pippi does not want to grow up. She is the daughter of a buccaneer captain and as such has adventurous stories to tell.

The first three Pippi chapter books were published in 1945–1948, with an additional series of six books published in 1969–1975. Two final stories were printed in 1979 and 2000. The books have been translated into 64 languages and adapted into multiple films and television series.

Today we had a day at sea – we are currently cruising between Sweden and Denmark heading for Germany. It was pretty rocky after we left Belgium and remained fairly rocky until mid morning today. It certainly makes for an interesting workout in the gym.

On sea days they always have plenty to do so I went to a presentation on Berlin (our next destination), Stockholm and St Petersburg. The presentation certainly got me very excited about the next few days.

I then went to the History of Fabergé presentation. Fabergé is one of the most famous jewellery companies in the world with their imperial easter eggs being world renowned. The President of the Company, Phillip Bernstein was on board and they had some items on display and for sale in one of the boutiques. They were also doing their world launch on board of two new egg creations. They were quite stunning and apparently one sold on board later today for USD30,000. I had heard of Fabergé but didn’t really know anything about it so the presentation was fascinating. The significance of Fabergé in respect of this Baltic cruise is that the brand has it’s roots in Russia. See below for more information in respect of the history of Fabergé and the Imperial Eggs.

After lunch I went to a seminar in the gym on exercises to lose weight – Igor the Brazilian trainer was quite entertaining. His accent was very thick so he was a bit hard to understand and if you had no idea about fitness or exercise you would have been completely confused.

Learning over for the day I settled into my sun lounger and covered myself with the blanket provided – this is the Baltic’s after all. Next minute we heard a helicopter and given we were nowhere near land and the boat has a helicopter pad we thought it must be coming to visit us. Mrs Nosy had to check it out so I went up to the front of the boat. It was a really big helicopter and it was hovering just off the boat while the crew frantically put down all the railing around the helicopter landing pad.

As you can imagine a big crowd had gathered to see what was going on. It took a little while but they worked out that the helicopter was actually too big to land on the heli pad so they lowered a guy down dressed in an orange jumpsuit. A few minutes later a second guy was lowered down – he had a big medical back pack with him and was rushed down the stairs into the boat.

The helicopter remained hovering but after a while decided to do a fly round the boat. The pilots were waving out to everyone. I went back down to get my camera and heard some people say it was just an exercise but I still wanted to see what happened next. By this time the helicopter was hovering at the back of the boat so a big crowd had gathered there to see what was happening. It eventually returned to the front where I had a front row pew.

The two orange jumpsuits reappeared along with some crew members carrying a stretcher with a person on it. This person was waving to the crowd but I couldn’t make out whether it was a young or an old person. A couple also appeared with some suitcases – they were obviously connected to the person in the stretcher. The man said good bye to the person in the stretcher and went back into the boat. The stretcher was hoisted up into the helicopter. The woman was then hoisted up with one of the orange jumpsuits – she looked petrified and I must say I felt really sorry for her as she looked as though she was hanging on for dear life. She had these black pump type shoes on and I thought they looked like they could fall off at any minute – probably the least of her worries. They hoisted the suitcases up and then they were away. The pilots waved once again and the crowd waved back. I still haven’t found out what happened to this person but I am sure I will by the end of the cruise.

Drama on the high seas over I returned to my lounger to finish my book. The boat had actually stopped while all this was going on but the Captain assured us there would be no delay in relation to us reaching Germany the next day – not sure how that works given they have such precise schedules they stick to – we had probably been stopped out in the middle of the ocean for an hour and a half.

We dined in the Tuscan Grille tonight and it was divine. We had a table right at the back of the boat overlooking the wake left behind by the boat.

The Story of Fabergé (Wikipedia)
The story of Fabergé is inextricably linked to the lives, loves and tragedy of the last Romanov Tsar Nicholas II and his Empress Alexandra, and to the Russian Revolution that changed the course of world history. Of Huguenot origin, with a febrile imagination, protean talent and entrepreneurial instincts, Peter Carl Fabergé became jeweller and goldsmith to the great Russian Imperial Court, creating exquisite jewels and objects, including the legendary series of lavish and ingenious Imperial Easter Eggs.

His worldwide reputation attracted royalty, nobility, tycoons, industrialists and the artistic intelligentsia of Paris, Moscow, St Petersburg and London. In 1917, the Russian Revolution brought a violent end not only to the Romanov dynasty but also to the House of Fabergé. The Bolsheviks seized the Fabergé workshops and their treasures, all production was closed down and Peter Carl Fabergé and his family fled from Russia.

In a legal settlement in 1951, the Fabergé family lost the right to produce and market designs under the Fabergé name. Yet, through decades of the 20th century, the noble Fabergé name, separated from the family despite their attempts to honour and perpetuate their legacy, showed an extraordinary resilience. Throughout, the legend has retained its mystique, charisma and awe-inspiring romance, along with a certain enigma tied to the mystery of the whereabouts of many iconic Fabergé works of art.

History came full circle in October 2007 when Fabergé, under new ownership and direction, announced the reunification of the Fabergé name with the Fabergé family. This opened a new chapter in the intriguing story of Fabergé, and set the stage for a total revitalisation of the Fabergé name and philosophy, in tune with its original values, aesthetics and spirit. Fabergé was re-launched on the 9th September, 2009, with three Les Fabuleuses de Fabergé High Jewellery Collections – Les Fleurs, Les Fables and Les Fauves de Fabergé.

Today, with Katharina Flohr as Creative and Managing Director, and her in-house creative team, Fabergé is forging a fresh yet strong identity. Paying homage to Peter Carl Fabergé’s genius as a visionary artist-jeweller, and benefiting from the expertise and guidance of Tatiana and Sarah Fabergé, his great-grand-daughters, contemporary Fabergé collections are imbued with poetry, artistry and refined ideals of beauty made possible by unrivalled craftsmanship, innovation and ingenuity, all underlined with a strong emotional engagement. Distinguished by Fabergé’s dedication to excellence and pursuit of perfection, the jewels are both linked to Fabergé’s world, yet of the moment and relevant today, demonstrating the modernity that Peter Carl Fabergé was always able to bring to his own eclectic cultural and stylistic references.

Peter Carl Fabergé, legendary artist-jeweller, goldsmith to the Russian Imperial Court, was the creative and entrepreneurial genius behind the world-renowned company that bore his name. He captured his extraordinary moment in time through exquisite jewels and precious objects that still resonate today with the passions and poignancy of a lost world. Deeply imbued with the spirit of their age, these masterpieces remain timeless in their recherché beauty, breathtaking craftsmanship and absolute dedication to perfection. Like the swan song of a dying civilisation, Fabergé’s jewels, personal accessories and objects of fantasy, richly layered with cultural references, conjure up a vision of Belle Époque, its leisured luxury and ravishing refinement, the fabulous new wealth of tycoons and industrialists. They trace the captivating story of the tragic end of the Romanov dynasty, of the lives and loves of the ill-fated Nicholas II and Alexandra, cocooned in the lavish opulence of their court, cut off from the harsh realities of a fast-changing world and rocked by encroaching forces of darkness. French in their artistic sensibilities but with a profound and poetic Russian soul, Fabergé’s works of art, like the stories they tell, continue to exert a powerful fascination as hypnotic today as it ever was.

Born in 1846, and apprenticed as a boy to his goldsmith father, Peter Carl Fabergé was educated in St Petersburg and Dresden where he fell under the mesmerizing influence of the Renaissance and Baroque treasures in the famous Green Vaults. As a young man he travelled extensively, immersing himself in the cultural delights of the Grand Tour, including the Medici Renaissance treasures in Florence. He studied in Paris and received expert tuition from goldsmiths in France, Germany and England.

The Imperial Easter Eggs
The series of lavish Easter eggs created by Fabergé for the Russian Imperial family, between 1885 and 1916, against an extraordinary historical backdrop, is regarded as the artist-goldsmith’s greatest and most enduring achievement. The Imperial Easter eggs are certainly the most celebrated and awe-inspiring of all Fabergé works of art, inextricably bound to the Fabergé name and legend. They are also considered as some of the last great commissions of objets d’art.

The story began when Tsar Alexander III decided to give a jewelled Easter egg to his wife the Empress Marie Fedorovna, in 1885, possibly to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their betrothal. It is believed that the Tsar, who had first become acquainted with Fabergé’s virtuoso work at the Moscow Pan-Russian Exhibition in 1882, was inspired by an 18th century egg owned by the Empress’s aunt, Princess Wilhelmine Marie of Denmark. The object was said to have captivated the imagination of the young Maria during her childhood in Denmark. Tsar Alexander was apparently involved in the design and execution of the egg, making suggestions to Fabergé as the project went along. Easter was the most important occasion of the year in the Russian Orthodox Church, equivalent to Christmas in the West. A centuries-old tradition of bringing hand-coloured eggs to Church to be blessed and then presented to friends and family, had evolved through the years and, amongst the highest echelons of St Petersburg society, the custom developed of presenting valuably bejewelled Easter gifts. So it was that Tsar Alexander III had the idea of commissioning Fabergé to create a precious Easter egg as a surprise for the Empress, and thus the first Imperial Easter egg was born.

Known as the Hen Egg, it is crafted from gold, its opaque white enamelled ‘shell’ opening to reveal its first surprise, a matt yellow gold yolk. This in turn opens to reveal a multi-coloured, superbly chased gold hen that also opens. Originally, this contained a minute diamond replica of the Imperial Crown from which a small ruby pendant egg was suspended. Unfortunately these last two surprises have been lost.

The Empress’s delight at this intriguing gift with its hidden jewelled surprises was the starting point for the yearly Imperial tradition that continued for 32 years until 1917 and produced the most opulent and captivating Easter gifts the world has ever seen. The eggs were private and personal gifts, and the whole spectacular series charted the romantic and tragic story leading up to the end of the mighty Romanovs.

Each egg, an artistic tour de force, took a year or more to make, involving a team of highly skilled craftsmen, who worked in the greatest secrecy. Fabergé was given complete freedom in the design and execution, with the only prerequisite being that there had to be surprise within each creation. Dreaming up each complex concept, Fabergé often drew on family ties, events in Imperial Court life, or the milestones and achievements of the Romanov dynasty, as in the Fifteenth Anniversary Egg of 1911, commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of Nicholas II’s accession to the throne, or the Romanov Tercentenary Egg of 1913 that celebrated 300 years of the House of Romanov, showing portrait miniatures of the Russian dynastic rulers. Although the theme of the Easter eggs changed annually, the element of surprise remained a constant link between them. The surprises ranged from a perfect miniature replica of the Coronation carriage – that took 15 months to make working 16-hour days – through a mechanical swan and an ivory elephant, to a heart-shaped frame on an easel with 11 miniature portraits of members of the Imperial family.

Alexander III presented an egg each year to his wife the Empress Marie Fedorovna and the tradition was continued, from 1895, by his son Nicholas II who presented an egg annually to both his wife the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna and to his mother the Dowager Empress Marie Fedorovna. However, there were no presentations during 1904 and 1905 because of political unrest and the Russo-Japanese War.

The most expensive was the 1913 Winter Egg, which was invoiced at 24,600 roubles (then £2,460). Prior to the Great War, a room at Claridges was 10 shillings (50 pence) a night compared to approximately £380 today. Using this yardstick, the egg would have cost £1.87 million in today’s money.

The Winter Egg, designed by Alma Pihl, famed for her series of diamond snowflakes, is made of carved rock crystal as thin as glass. This is embellished with engraving, and ornamented with platinum and diamonds, to resemble frost. The egg rests on a rock-crystal base designed as a block of melting ice. Its surprise is a magnificent and platinum basket of exuberant wood anemones. The flowers are made from white quartz, nephrite, gold and demantoid garnets and they emerge from moss made of green gold. Its overall height is 14.2cm. It is set with 3,246 diamonds. The egg sold at Christie’s in New York in 2002 for US$9.6 million.

Of the 50 eggs Fabergé made for the Imperial family from 1885 through to 1916, 42 have survived.

On Tuesday we docked at the port of Warnemunde in Germany. Warnemunde is a sea resort in Germany’s Rostock district. The city is situated on the Baltic Sea, in the northern most part of Germany on the estuary of the Warnow River. Together with Rostock, it is considered as one of the country’s major shipping centres. Warnemunde’s broad, sandy beaches are the largest on the German Baltic Sea coast and stretch out over a length of two miles. Because of the low current and good sailing conditions, Warnemunde is one of the best sailing grounds in Germany. The beach is especially good for kite surfing, windsurfing, underwater diving and swimming making it one of the most popular seaside resorts on the Baltic Sea.

Berlin is approximately 200km from Warnemunde. We had signed up to do a Berlin discovery trip. We were met at the Port by Felix, our escort for the day. He was in charge of getting our bus from the Port to Berlin and back in time for the ship’s sailing at midnight.

Felix was excellent – he was about 25 and is about to finish his medical degree – once he passes his final exams in October he will be a Radiography Oncologist. He does the tour guiding over the summer months during the university break. He was born in 1988 in the East – his father was a policeman guarding the wall. They did not have televisions in the East so many people were unaware that the wall had come down on the 9th November 1989. Felix’s mother went to work as usual the next day and couldn’t work out why half her colleagues were not there. She thought they were joking when they said the wall had come down.

The GDR or German Democratic Republic were very good at recording everything and you can go to the State Security Services and request documents that related to you. Felix’s parents did this and discovered their best friends were spying on them and feeding information to the GDR about them. Not all the documents from former GDR have been recovered. We will never comprehend how it was to live in these times.

The wall was built in 1961 and was constructed overnight. If people from the East were on the West that night and vice versa they were trapped. Felix’s Grandfather had a sister who happened to be visiting the West the night the wall went up. They were not reunited until 1994. There are many stories like this. The wall was built for the protection from capitalism, to protect those in the east from the bad influences of those in the west. The older generation still refer to the East and the West. The younger generation refer to the North and South.

The wall came down on the 9th November 1989 and the reunification started on the 3rd October 1990. The people in the West earn more than the people in the East but they pay a reunification tax. The cost of living in the East is lower. The reunification ends in 2019 and the wages in both the East and West will then be equalised.

Berlin is the largest city in Germany with a population of 3.5 million. It is also the poorest part of the country – unemployment is at 7.3% whereas the country average is 5.4%. It used to be at 10% in Berlin but Angela Merkle’s party has worked hard on reducing that. We asked Felix why Angela Merkle is so popular with the people. In the last election she got 63% of the vote – this is the highest recorded by any Chancellor since World War II.

She is very popular with woman and has put a policy in place that requires all businesses to employ at least 25% woman in their workforce. She is also very popular with the students – university education is free. They have to pay an enrolment fee which equates to about EU130 per semester. They will also pay your rent if you or your parents can’t afford it. However, you have to pay 50% of the rent back unless you achieve A grades. A pretty good incentive to work hard at university. Germany, as with NZ also has a brain drain issue with the highly qualified going offshore once they have qualified.

Angela Merkle is in favour of nuclear power but you won’t hear her say that. In order to get re elected she shut all the nuclear power plants down. 60% of their electricity comes from wind and solar, however, when they don’t have any wind and sun they have to buy power from Poland which is generated by nuclear power plants – a bit ironic really! We saw a number of wind turbines along the way as well as trucks transporting the parts. Apparently it is more profitable to have a wind turbine in your paddock than crops.

Angela Merkle lives on Museum Island (there are over 170 museums in Berlin) in an apartment block with ordinary citizens and has BBQ’s on a Sunday afternoon with them. She likes to go to the cinema and the shops and be amongst the people. She always has her bodyguards in tow but asks them to stay back. You could approach her if you wanted and you wouldn’t be stopped but the people have a high regard for her and generally leave her in peace.

Germany has a total population of about 82 million and has the largest population of the member states in the EU. It is the world’s third largest economy by GDP and the largest exporter of goods according to 2007 statistics. It has a federal parliamentary republic of 16 states and is home to the third highest number of international immigrants.

Germans like order so in the state that we were in they had counted every tree and given each one a number plate. Felix was at a bit of a loss to explain this but said that every tree is watered and checked twice a year. We saw these number plates for ourselves. Another irony really given the state is the poorest state and there are many incomplete construction projects all over the place. The efficient reputation of the Germans has been tarnished.

There is also no major airport in Berlin, instead it is serviced by three smaller ones. They started building a large airport in 1999 that was going to be completed in June 2014 – it is still not finished much to the embarrassment of the German Government. The first things they built were the runways and because so much time has elapsed and planes have evolved (A380’s for instance) the runways do not meet international standards – another dent in the German reputation.

There are two main airlines in Germany – Lufthansa and Air Berlin. Lufthansa has lost a lot of credibility with the people due to poor service and unfriendly staff so Air Berlin is the favoured airline.

We got into Berlin after about 3.5 hours on the bus. First stop was lunch – the food was good and Steve enjoyed a German beer. We then met up with our tour guide Thomas who was going to show us the sights of the city from the bus. There was so much to see and take in.

We stopped at the Brandenburg Gate which was originally intended to be a symbol of peace, but eventually the winged victory goddess, Nike, and four horse chariot were added to the top of the gate symbolising the strength of the Prussians.

We drove past the Reichstag Building which is where the German Parliament sits. It has a glass cupola and you can walk along and look into it while parliament is in session – the theory on this is that the parliament have nothing to hide. It is the most visited government building in the world with over 3 million visitors annually. It has been re built three times.

We stopped at Checkpoint Charlie which sat in the middle of the Russian, French, American and British quarters. It was the checkpoint you went through from East to West. The Russian and American tanks sat facing each other about 50 metres apart. It is quite a tourist attraction now and they have these “soldiers” standing there with American flags – you can have your photo taken with them for EU2 per person. It was a bit tacky really but it had to be done.

We also stopped at the Eastside Gallery which is the remaining part of the wall in the city. It has been painted with all these murals. One of the murals is of the Brotherhood Kiss. The socialist fraternal kiss or Brotherhood Kiss was a special form of greeting between the statesmen of the so-called Eastern Bloc. It consists of an embrace and a mutual kiss (or kisses) to cheeks or in rarer cases to the mouth.

With this act, a special connection between Socialist states was intended to be demonstrated. Both the embrace and the kiss were supposed to be the expression of happiness, fraternity and equality, and were otherwise a transformation of a known ritual and symbol of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The fraternal kiss became famous via Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, who were photographed exercising the ritual. The photograph became widespread and it was subsequently transformed into a graffiti painting on the Berlin Wall named My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.

Built in 1961, the Berlin Wall became known as a symbol of communist oppression. In the 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, U.S. President John F. Kennedy stated the support of the United States for democratic West Germany shortly after the Soviet-supported Communist state of East Germany erected the Berlin Wall as a barrier to prevent movement from East to West.

There was a misconception that “Ich bin ein Berliner” translated to “I am a jelly doughnut” but apparently in the context it was correct. He was declaring his solidarity with it’s citizens when he said “I am a Berliner”. The Germans still laugh about this today.

However, in 1987 it was a different story. “Tear down this wall!” was the challenge issued by United States President Ronald Reagan to Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev to destroy the Berlin Wall, in a speech at the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987, commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin. Reagan challenged Gorbachev, who was then the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to tear it down as an emblem of Gorbachev’s desire to increase freedom in the Eastern Bloc through glasnost (“transparency”) and perestroika (“restructuring”).

Arriving in Berlin on June 12, 1987, President and Mrs. Reagan were taken to the Reichstag, where they viewed the wall from a balcony. Reagan then made his speech at the Brandenburg Gate at 2:00 pm, in front of two panes of bulletproof glass protecting him from potential snipers in East Berlin. About 45,000 people were in attendance; among the spectators were West German president Richard von Weizsäcker, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and West Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen. That afternoon, Reagan said:

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

The River Spree runs through the city and is 300 miles in length and has the most boat traffic in Europe.

There are two city centres effectively because after the wall went up the West Germans needed to build a city centre. After our bus tour we had some free time to look around the east part of the city. It is a really nice city and one I would like to return to and spend more time exploring – there is so much to see.

One memorial we didn’t get to see was the Holocaust Monument – it is like a maze made up of these squares which get bigger the further in you go. It is to show how the Jews felt in the sense that the infiltration started off small and gradually got bigger to the point it was a full blown occupation with no way out.

We got back to the boat about 10.15pm – a big day but a good day.

Our cruise ship docked in Zeebrugge in Belgium at about 7am this morning. Zeebrugge is a container and industrial port about 26km from Bruges. We caught a shuttle bus to Blankenberge and then caught the train to Bruges.

Bruges is the capital of West Flanders in the flemish region of Belgium. Bruges gives new meaning to Old World beauty, a “Venice of the North” known for it’s palette of colourful homes and shops framed by cobblestone streets, tiled roofs and those lovely storybook canals.

Being a Sunday the town seemed deserted when we got in there about 9.30am. I decided I wanted to climb the 360 stairs to the top of the Belfry as did quite a few others so I queued for about half an hour. Due to the narrow stairwell the tower’s capacity is 70 people so once capacity is reached they let you in as another person comes out. You get to see the mechanics of the chimes and bells as you climb up. You then get a 360 degree view over Bruges.

The Belfry has graced the horizon of Bruges for over seven centuries. In it’s present form, the 83 metre high Belfry is made up of three building layers. The bottom two square sections in brick were built during the thirteenth century. The top, octagonal lantern tower in Brabant limestone was built between 1482 and 1486. Until 1741 the tower had a graceful 19 metre wooden spire.

Belfries are typically found in Flanders, Northern France and in parts of Wallonia, in the south of Belgium. In 1999 UNESCO included these city towers on its world heritage list, as stone witnesses of the prosperous and autonomous late medieval cities in this region. The general definition of a Belfry is a structure enclosing bells.

Meanwhile, Steve had been exploring the town down below so when I met up with him he had checked out all the chocolate shops for me. The town had come to life – there were people everywhere. The shops that open on a Sunday do so at 10am. Every second shop was a chocolate shop : ) I couldn’t resist buying these chocolate sheep – so cute.

We then checked out the canals where you can explore the city by boat. There are also many high end designer stores of which most were closed. We only had half a day here so we headed back to the train station about 12pm – Steve was in charge of the map and after finding the street we had been told to turn right into he decided to wing it. We ended up heading in the opposite direction to the train station until we stopped a friendly local who pointed us in the right direction.

Safely back on board now and heading to Germany. The sea is a rocking and a rolling out there. I went to the gym this afternoon and ran on the treadmill as we were pulling out of port. I had a natural incline and decline as the boat rolled gently from side to side.