Today Russia celebrates the victory over nazi Germany; "Victory Day". On the big square, The Palace Square, by the Winter Palace (Hermitage) there will be speaches and music etc.

The weather is great, the sun is shining. Janet and I meet up by her hotel near Nevsky Prospect, the avenue that ends at the Winter Palace. We wait for Cem and his brother but they can't make it in time.

It's a quarter to ten and thousands of people are moving towards the square. Janet and I go to the canal bridge north of the palace where military vehicles are lined up, ready to move on in to the square. The square itself is packed with people, or so we guess, and we did not even try to go there. Now we don't have a great view of the square and the stage and what goes on there, but instead we're very close to the military vehicle parade. There's two lines of them, on each side of the canal, and they join forces right where we're standing.

I was hoping for more actually. It was not much, nothing special, and no tanks at all, mainly trucks with soldiers and missiles. The lack of tanks in the St Petersburg parade is easy to understand when you read about the budget for the parade in Moscow: they have allocated over 1 billion roubles for repairs of the damage the military vehicles cause to the streets, pipes, drainage and sewers. And by the way, this parade tradition was suspended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, but was revived this year. And in Siberia they don't have any garbage collection ...

After this we just walk around randomly, have lunch, and kill time until five o'clock when there's a war veteran parade on Nevsky Prospect. A lot of old men, and women, with a lot of shiny medals. And they are all very happy!

We have dinner at Marius' Pub, a really good restaurant if you ask me. I have the classic eastern European/russian/ukrainian beet soup, borsch (borsjtj). Super delish! :) Time flies and sadly we're far away from the river and the fireworks at 10 pm. We missed the whole thing. But I wonder if it was that great anyway .... because why the heck do they shoot fireworks when it's not dark outside yet?