May 2009 - City Day
(Translated by Miroslava Petrova)

Every last Sunday of May St Petersburg celebrates City Day. Officially it is on 27th May but, of course, nobody would be celebrating in the middle of the week. Every morning on the Nevsky (if we could call 12 p.m. morning) start all kinds of processions. This year apart from the military wind orchestras there were bikers as well.

Let’s start with the orchestras…

Since I have regularly observed the processions every year I would like to mention the following: there are a fewer foreign orchestras every year and the Russian ones are much more, which is kind of sad. As far as the show is concerned, the foreign musicians wear interesting colourful uniforms, while the Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians look very much alike.

I found this haircut quite amusing.

A reflection of the Nevsky and the Moyka corner.

As usual the prospect was blocked by police to prevent people from being run over by cars or orchestras.
This year, however, they were not very polite.

A Bulgaria orchestra

An excellent lookout :)

So is it for the photographer

Ukraine

A nice way to spend the day – you can easily make big steps and jump. It looks like this.
The guys on the Nevsky were not as good – they just walked around and jumped a little.

And this is the second big event (after the orchestras) – the bikers.

As for the bikers – I called them rockers but my readers corrected me.
I don’t know, it may be due to the fact that I am getting old but when I was at school and at university everybody called the people who rode motorbikes rockers. And I know that a bike is actually a bicycle.

After the procession the prospekt was washed and the pedestrians could have a walk.
There were no cars all day, so it turned out to be the biggest pedestrian zone (well packed with people till late at night!).

The preparation for the concert on Palace Square.

Palace Bridge