Images from Russia

I spent nine months in St. Petersburg, from just after the August '98 financial crisis to May of '99. The following are just a handful of the cooler and more unusual of my pictures.
The courtyard ( dvor ) of my building ( dom ). Utterly typical of "Piter", right down to the rubble and the filth. Makes me positively maudlin with nostalgia.
The Izmailovsky Bridge over the Fontanka canal, in the evening. Dostoevsky's short story "The Double" is partially set right near this bridge.
The rather more impressive front façade of my building (on the left) - which I only saw a couple times, when I deliberately went out to look at it, as the street it faces has been a pile of rubble for years. They were actually working on it when I left, though...
Izmailovsky Prospect, facing north towards the Fontanka and the center of the city. Izmailovsky is the main street running through the neighborhood I lived in, and named after the regiment that was quartered here in Imperial days. It is a continuation of Voznesenksy Prospect (which retains that name on the other side of the Fontanka), the westernmost of the three "spokes" sticking out from the Admiralty and making up the central layout of the city.
Canal Griboedova, at 11pm during the beginning of the white nights. I took this picture as I was on my way back from an opera at the home-theater of the Yussopovsky Palace.
Painter Ilya Repin's bizarre home in the town of Repino, on the Gulf of Finland.
The fortress walls at Pskov. Yes, that's me loading film and squinting oddly in the lower left. Gordon Cook of The Cook Report on the Internet took this photo, as well as graciously letting me tag along on his trip to this ancient and hard-to-get-to town five hours outside of Peterburg.
Characteristic bell tower on a Pskov cathedral.
Walls and cathedral of the Pskov fortress.
Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in Saint Petersburg (yes, the one where all the tsars were buried).
Pervyi sneg (first snow) on the gates outside the Cathedral of the Spilt Blood in Saint Petersburg.

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