09 Nov 06
Red stars, hammers and sickles, grey Stalinist architecture and mile after mile of featureless steppe. These are the things that obsess Western visitors to Eastern Europe and Russia in particular. There's even a word for it: Ostalgia.
But this is also the least interesting way of describing this vast land, with its dozens of separate republics and ethnic groups. After a week spent driving east, it's Russia's imperial past that seems to lie closer to the surface of the modern state than the 70-year Communist interlude.
That's hardly surprising given the way things start off in St Petersburg. Drivers who'd completed the first leg meet us at the staggering Marble Palace to hand over the keys to their E-Classes. A huge alabaster hall with golden chandeliers and magnificent carved ceilings is straight out of Tolstoy. For probably the only time in my life I seriously consider joining the hussars, growing an extravagant moustache and having a doomed relationship with a Countess that will require me to blow my brains out for honour's sake. Somehow a lounge suit and a notepad doesn't quite cut it.
Early the next morning, a suitably chilling wind greets us in Isaakievskaya Square where we get our first glimpse of the cars assembled in a neat quadrangle in Peter the Great's contrary confection of a city. Convinced that Russia needed a 'window to the West', he pointed at a swamp on the Gulf of Finland and said: 'I want a city here.' By importing Dutch engineers to construct the canals, Italian architects to design the buildings and using Russia's limitless supply of slave labour, he got his wish - Venice in the snow.
