St Petersburg, Russian capital for 300 years (1710-1917), home of Peter the Great, the 2 metre tall (6'7") emperor, who went to Holland "incognito", to learn how to build boats, came back and built himself a small log cabin on the first island to be occupied, amongst the 42 swampy then mosquito-ridden islands that now make up the city, and an even smaller church, overbuilt by St Isaacs, the fourth-largest cathedral in the world, is now a flourishing Venetian-Pragueian combo, wide-boulevarded skirted by vidid green which bursts quickly on trunks for the short but long-dayed summer, and trod by mini-skirted slim-legged blondies, all white people, all european, just as he saw it, the multi-culturalist of the day, but all in pastel skins.
