Editor Pick
Konyusheny Dvor
- June 6, 2000
- Rated 3 of 5 by
barbara from Atlanta, Georgia
The Konyusheny Dvor is next door to the St. Petersburg restaurant. We met one of our Russian Guides and her French boyfriend there for a drink. Philip was in Russia studying as an artist at the Russian Academy Arts, a school known to have produced an almost infinite list of talented artists, and he spoke English well. Oleysia, our Russian guide, was also a student at the Academy, but she was studying Art History. It was great fun talking about the US and Russia with these two fun, intelligent people, and we had a great time just sitting around indulging in Georgian wine (a definite must try if you are a wine drinker!) and dark beer. As the night wore on, however, the music pumped up louder, and my husband noticed some interesting entertainment dancing on the top of the bars one floor below where we were sitting. The thing that amazed me about the adult dancers that had just garnered the attention of every man in the bar, however, had nothing to do with the fact that I had never been in any club where women were systematically taking their clothes off; the thing that I found interesting (other than the look on my husband’s face!) was that the strippers were both great dancers! Our Russian guide who had not known that the Konyusheny Dvor was a strip club (it had been chosen as a meeting spot because it was next door to where we had eaten dinner) told me that Russian women often study dance from the time they are young girls. When the “show” ended, we all went downstairs to a tiny dance floor by the bar and moved to the music ourselves (with our clothes on, thank you very much!). It was quite late when we left the bar---the moon was twinkling off the onion domes on the Church on the Spilled Blood. We talked and laughed on the sidewalk for awhile, amazed at how quiet the street seemed after such loud music, before it was decided that we should get a commercial taxi back to the hotel rather than flag down a private car. The first such cab we tried wanted us to pay $12 for the trip. Our Russian friend told us to walk away and got us another cab for less than $6. A private car to that area would have cost around $3, but it seemed safer to take a regular cab when the world was dark, and we were sleepy. The drinks at the bar were VERY reasonable, and the strippers made for an interesting memory, but the company of our Russian guide and her boyfriend were what made this evening so much fun.
From journal Peter’s City