My Grandma talked to me
of Peterburg a great city that she had only seen pictures of, but some of her
friends had visited. When I searched the map I couldn't find it. A
few years later someone sensed my confusion and showed it to me on the map and
explained that its name was Leningrad. This spring finally I visited the
city my Grandma told me about, however its residents called it by yet a new
name Saint Petersburg.
Going back a few
steps... as a young child I listened to my Grandma tell me about life when she
was a little girl. This topic fascinated me because I so loved my
babushka and I couldn't fathom her being a little girl so I placed her stories
into the beautiful settings of my beloved folktale/fairytale books. I
loved her stories in my mental theater of wonderful "Long, long ago in a
faraway land ..." 3D fairy tales, and begged her incessantly for more
details and stories. My grandma understood me, yet she didn't like to go
to the past, and always tried to distract me to the present and some little
interesting thing we could do right then. Only when I became an adult did
I begin to realize that it was painful for her to recite her childhood stories,
as they were about her family she dearly loved and that had been snatched away
from her almost as soon as she became an adult.
Of course in Saint
Petersburg I visited the Hermitage Museum. My favorite part was the
palace rooms and their decor'. To my great surprise I found my living
room color scheme the same as one of the palace living rooms and my personal
bedding color scheme almost identical to the queen's bedroom color scheme.
My daughter was quite surprised and delighted, whereas my husband just nodded
(probably rolled his eyes when I wasn't looking). Maybe I did inherit the
love for Imperial Russian interior decor of my great grandmothers' time period...
My time was short and
the list of amazing touristy things to do in Saint Petersburg was long. I
decided to postpone a visit to the institutions that were the birthplace of “Halotherapy”
and the current center of research on Dry Saline Aerosol/Dry Sodium Chloride
Aerosol therapies.
Here is a list of the
places I would like to visit on a subsequent trip to Saint Petersburg:
- Scientific Research Institute of Pulmonology,
- I. Pavlov St. Petersburg State Medical University,
- Institute of Childhood Infections FMBA of Russia,
- L. Sokolov FMBA Russian Clinical Hospital №122,
- S. Kirov Military Medical Academy,
- St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace
Instrumentation
Another place I want to
visit is the Wieliczka salt mine not far from Krakow, Poland the birthplace of
Speleotherapy and the predecessor to Halotherapy and DSA/DSCA. Wellness
is of utmost importance, and it is in itself fascinating to experience a simple
natural remedy that has potential to help so many people.
Signing off for the Saltroom of Spokane - in Support of Healthy therapies even if their names change
-Laura :)
