St. Petersburg – ports and all.

Saint Petersburg walkabout – done.

Saint Petersburg roof-about – done.

Next up, Port Bronka (here) – the new, modern (i.e., deep enough for modern monster-sized ships) port of the city (not to be confused with the nearby older Great Port of St. Petersburg), which happens to be a customer of ours (for all things cybersecurity, naturally) and with which we have a great relationship…

To be honest, at first I thought the name sounded Italian – as in Porto Bronco, or some such; while my travel companion, ML, thought the port must be named after a certain Mr. Bronk. Turns out we were both wrong. Some of the locations nearby are named Bronna from time immemorial, and, allegedly, due to some mix-up when naming a way-station here later in Soviet times, a mysterious K was added! Anyway, the K stayed (quite right!), and the way-station later, I think, eventually became the port, and the rest is typo-history!

And here it is – all shiny and new:

You know me – if there’s a tall bridge or tower or crane that can be scaled – I scale it…

Ooh – that’s a lot of steps! ->

Readying myself for a stamina test, I was informed that those are emergency steps. There’s an elevator too. Phew!

The view from up top is… specific. And I do like the symmetry and tidiness!

A colossal construction:

I thought we’d had our fill of St.P elevated walkabouts – turned out: no! You can walk hither and thither all the way up here. The sensations: strange, and not for the queasy ->

The crane operator’s workspace. Not bad. Surely (panoramic) views from one’s “desk at the office” don’t come better than this! ->

I wonder why the operator needs to be up here? I imagine it gets cold in the winter. Why not in a warm office nearby with all this connected up? Perhaps the visibility is unbeatable up here…

We continue our walkabout up, down, along and across. Next – upward again:

…But, no elevator here. When I found this out my heart sank. Climbing up there by foot? Mercifully, my travel companion, AK, also got the fear. Buoyed by unanimity, we agreed to pass on this one…

…Looking back though, I kind of regret not going for it!…

Oh well: next time – perhaps next summer…

And that’s all for today from Bronka, folks; but not all from St. Petersburg. Stay tuned!…

The rest of the photos from St.P are here.