Getting a visa for Russia is aggravating, time-consuming and expensive. It also induces emotional claustrophobia. Visas are good only for the precise dates of your planned visit. Supposing I broke an ankle and missed my flight home? Would I be fined?Sent to Siberia?
The Hermitage is what made me stick it out. Catherine the Great'streasure-filled palace was bound to be worth the hassle. And it was, with St Petersburg the bonus. The city turned out to be an equally tremendous, if more complicated, treat. By the end of my five-day trip I was enchanted by the anguish and grandeur of the place.
And believe me, it took some sorcery. My grandparents all came from this part of the world. I grew up eating borscht and stuffed cabbage. But do not suppose I was going "home", looking for roots. Not a single actor, scholar, good-for-nothing, or embroiderer who stayed when others left for the US survived very long. I wasn't holding any grudges but if the Hermitage hadn't been in Russia, I wouldn't have been there either.
When I was planning the trip, people recommended favourite apartments to rent and tiny freelance hotels up several flights of stairs - just the sort of thing that usually appeals to me. But not this time. When I walked out of the airport, I went directly to the car from the new luxury Kempinski Hotel Moika 22. The smoked fish breakfasts and fabulous view of the Hermitage at sunset from its ninth floor brasserie were very nice. (Dinner in its misconceived French restaurant was not.) And, since it was having a soft opening in early November (it was waiting for its alcohol licence), the rates were attractive too.
But for me the hotel's crucial attribute was that it gave me the feeling of security I needed to stride out and explore. I wanted - and got - a cushion, not a cocoon.
My advice after my trip would be an emphatic "go" - even if it means having to get the damned visa. But, before you set off, do what I did not: learn the Cyrillic alphabet.
Almost everything, everywhere is written only in Cyrillic. Few locals speak English or the Romance languages. And that is not the only barrier. St Petersburg may be the "Venice of the North" but for Venice you need more than palaces and canals. You also need Italians - people with a will to communicate. On entering a Venetian pastry shop, an English speaker is hauled into a cheery commedia dell'arte. In St Petersburg, when I pointed to a bun, the response was a stare.
In 1703, Peter the Great, in a radical move to modernise his country, chose to build a fortress, a harbour and, in 1712, his capital city in this marshland, where the river Neva flows into the Gulf of Finland. So many died carrying out his plan that the city is said to be "built on bones". And more bones. In the 20th century alone, sandwiched between the Russian Revolution and Stalin's era was the siege of Leningrad (the city's name from 1924-1991). The Nazis began their siege in 1941. It lasted 900 days. Estimates of Russian dead veer from 400,000 to 1m. Still they did not capitulate.
It is much too feeble to call the inheritors of this history stubborn. Tough, being too fuzzy, is also out. Whatever their other attributes, the people of St Petersburg seemed to me like boulders or trees - although not the kind that sway, even in a hurricane.
Catherine the Great's Hermitage feels like an island paradise in an ocean of often-hellish history. The Empress, shrewd and famously lusty, was also an exceptionally intelligent and well-educated woman, with an excellent eye. Her palace complex, now one of the world's great art museums, is stuffed with the evidence. After two full days, and a few hours of a third, I hadn't seen everything. There are some 3m objects. However, I'd seen much that was thrilling, moving and engaging.
There is a large room hung with Rembrandts - but "The Prodigal Son" would have been enough. There are Leonardos, Giorgiones (note the plural.) There are Tintorettos, Poussins, Titians, Watteaus and on and on.
The collections were much enlarged when the possessions of businessmen and aristocrats were seized during the revolution. All those radiant Matisses and an abundance of Picassos entered then. And everywhere there is furniture, sculpture and porcelain. Don't skip the Treasure Gallery. These rooms contain gold objects excavated from Greek settlements on the north coast of the Black Sea, jewels made with a technical artistry that we are incapable of today. There are also more recent fabulous diamond jewels and bejewelled objets d'art. And later still, works by Fabergé, of course.
The Hermitage proved the exception to my rule that guides are a guaranteed source of misinformation. Many here are art history graduates and all complete a genuinely rigorous training programme. Olga, who took us round, knew the collections, how they related to others elsewhere, and quickly grasped that, unless asked, we would usually rather look than hear.
It was winter. Few foreign tourists were in St Petersburg. The many Russians in the museum drew me back to a far-distant time when music, theatre, art and literature were part of almost everyone's life. In the room hung with Tintorettos, a group of soldiers listened attentively as their guide talked about the great Venetian's work. So many teenyboppers pushed forward to get shots of Leonardo's Madonnas, I had trouble getting close myself.
The entrance to the Hermitage is in vast Palace Square. At its back it faces the Neva. The river became my moody companion as I struggled to find my way through the labyrinth of palaces that make up the museum. When I needed a break I trawled the shops. I passed up dainty repro Fabergé eggs and went for a porcelain plate painted with a jaunty sailor and his girl. It is a replica of one painted in 1921 to commemorate the very unjaunty failed sailors' revolt in March that year.
The engaging and the disturbing seemed to be holding hands everywhere I went, not least when I went to the fairy-tale-charming Mariinsky Theatre. Perhaps perversely, I'd chosen to see Nabucco rather than La Bohème.
The mainly Russian audience was carefully turned out, not glitzy. When maestro Valery Gergiev appeared, he was greeted like a movie star.
The orchestra was terrific, the singing patchy. As for the production: when this story of the Jews struggling to free themselves from the Babylonians reached its vocal climax, the slave chorus formed a giant star of David. Then, a bearded fellow in long robes walked out from the wings, stood in front of the star, knelt on one knee and raised a hand. Jesus Christ!
I nearly leapt out of my gilded, red- velvet chair. Nabucco is an Old Testament tale; the presence of Christ was thought necessary to make the appearance of so many Jews acceptable.
And yet I was drawn to St Petersburg. Its centre is beautiful. There are many large, pastel-painted palaces, rivers, canals and well-tended parks.
Nevsky Prospekt took some getting used to. I thought it would be a gracious thoroughfare, with the ghost of a young Nabokov peering down from a window on high. What I found was a wider, longer Oxford Street. But the shops are fascinating. In one big pharmacy I saw a few boxes of French cosmetics set out behind glass doors as if they were precious jewels.
This was not the only sign of a very relative prosperity. "Don't take a taxi with a light on top," said Catherine, a friend of a friend I met for dinner on my first night. "It's $10 a mile."
Catherine was taking us to Salkhino, the best Georgian restaurant in town. She walked into Palace Square and put out her hand. Very soon a jalopy pulled up. After a short exchange in Russian, we piled in. For Rbs100 (£2) the driver took us right to the door. I've since read of unemployed engineers selling their possessions to pay for a car so they can join St Petersburg's freelance taxi fleet. We'd followed the Moika river from our hotel to the Mariinsky. It was a 40-minute walk. I walked into the road, putout my arm and, presto, I was launched.
On my last day, late for an appointment at the Hermitage, I walked into Nevsky Prospekt and held out my arm again. A man with the broad, deeply lined face of a Tartar stopped. When I got out and handed him Rbs100, he smiled with such delight I felt I was feeding his family for a week.
Paula Weideger is author of 'Venetian Dreaming: Finding a Foothold in an Enchanted City' (Pocket Books)
PALACES AND ALL
■The State Hermitage Museum, www.hermitagemuseum.org
■Salkhino, katino@mail.ru
■Kempinski Hotel Moika 22, tel +7 812-335 9111, www.kempinski.com
■Mariinsky Theatre, www.mariinsky.ru
■Guide book of choice: ‘The Rough Guide to St Petersburg’
