Victory Parade in Saint Petersburg

We did our best to prepare for the Victory Parade in the streets of Saint Petersburg. We knew there would be a lot of people on the streets; We knew we would have to go from one place to the other in a hurry; We thought we were ready when we left our hotel; but, sometimes, things don’t go as planned. And this is exactly what happened on that morning in May.

We had breakfast, got our cameras and our backpacks and went to the subway. Our goal was to go to Palace Square where we knew the military parade would happen. Also, we wanted to see the Russian navy going around the Neva River, and we even had paper maps telling us where to go. But, of course, the subway had more people than it could handle. Of course, we couldn’t stop at Admiralteyskaya: the closest subway station to where we wanted to go. Every tiny bit of our plan started fading away, and we knew we were about to lose the main thing we wanted to see in Russia.

When we left the subway at Sportivnaya, we knew we already lost everything we wanted to see. We saw people celebrating far away from us, and we knew we were late and we would never find a place to watch the parade. When we heard some people shouting far away from where we were, we knew it was over.

But we kept walking with a little bit of hope in our hearts. We crossed the Neva river and, at Vasilyevsky Island, we saw our first military march. There were soldiers in this greenish uniform marching and a lot of red Soviet flags. It was our first sight of the Victory Parade, and we were amazed by that. But there were so many people in front of us, and we knew we were late, so we just started walking around and taking pictures of all the people around us.

Russians seem to go crazy with at the Victory Parade. There were a lot of people dressed in military uniforms from the Soviet Union. We took pictures of everything, and that includes an SUV that was transformed into a Katyusha rocket launcher.