My colleague, George, and I flew up to St. Petersburg to JetBrains R&D headquarters. We spent a week in the office and attended a bunch of meetings. It's always great to spend some face time with our developers.
St. Petersburg seems like the bastard child of Vienna, Stockholm and Mexico City. Like Vienna, the city has wide avenues and impressive neoclassical architecture. Not unlike Stockholm, the city is situated across a number of islands, which is why there are so many bridges--600 I'm told--and each of them uniquely beautiful. Unfortunately, the city's broken infrastructure reminds me of Mexico City. Terrible pollution, roads in disrepair, and suicidal sidewalks covered in ice.
Not unlike other parts of the world, there seems to be a HUGE difference between the rich and poor. I lost count of the number of expensive German and Italian cars I saw while there. I also lost count of the number of seemingly homeless people, wandering the city at all hours looking for their next meal or drink.
That said, I had a wonderful time in St. Petersburg and found the people, architecture, cuisine, and art inspiring and interesting. It has a terrific night life. George and I would normally start by having dinner from 10 to 12 pm, then drinks and or clubs until 5 am. We went to new restaurants, clubs and watering holes each night and were always surprised by what we found and who we met.
I spent most of my last full day there in the Hermitage Museum, one of the largest museums in the world, with 3 million works of art, and one of "the oldest art galleries and museums of human history and culture in the world. The vast Hermitage collections are displayed in six buildings, the main one being the Winter Palace which used to be the official residence of the Russian Tsars."
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