Blog: Reflections on Russia

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (CNN) -- St. Petersburg is a city I hardly recognize. It is bright and shiny, warm and sunny.

Arriving in this city in late June on a business class ticket working for CNN with a driver waiting to collect us is a hell of a lot different than arriving with a student group in 1980, with September rolling in, and a bolshy Russian tour guide beckoning. I feel privileged, excited, and even a bit misty eyed about my return to Leningrad... oops, that's about the 100th time I've had to correct myself, and my colleagues are getting a bit sick of it.

St Petersburg is prettier and more cosmopolitan than I remember, and a completely changed city.

We pass by the Astoria Hotel on Nevski Prospect and it has bright red awnings, and shiny gold lettering on the windows. This was where we used to retreat for TLC when we could stomach the university cafeteria no longer.

St. Isaac's Cathedral gleams in the sunlight, huge and bold, and the Admiralty's spire peaks out between the trees of the park below.

What's familiar are the wide, European feeling, streets and the incredible history of the place: The beautiful eggshell blue of the Hermitage, the broad sweep of the Neva River, the grand statues of Peter the Great.

What's not familiar is all the stores, selling everything from Tiffany jewelry to Mexa clothing, the dozens of tour boat operators plying tourists up and down the canals barking out English, and the skateboarders (yes skateboards and inline skaters!) crisscrossing Palace Square.

On our first night here, anchor Jim Clancy is determined to go out to shoot the White Nights, even though it's mostly cloudy. These legendary endless summer evenings bring city locals, and tourists, out in the hundreds, even thousands.

We hire a taxi for a couple of hours and cross the river, towards my old dorm. Our fixer makes a few calls and tells me there is no longer an Obshezhite Sheste (Dormitory 6), but I'm still determined to find the building and compare it to the dingy gray block of 27 years ago.

As we cross the river, we see a huge fountain spewing light in the middle of the river. My God -- it's a laser light show. Petersburgians and tourists alike have come out to line the waterfront and watch the free music and light show, replete with Russian techno-pop. It is electric, mesmerizing, as much for the show itself, as for the surprise of finding it within feet of where I used to trudge each day to my classes. The sense of camaraderie among the watchers is palpable.

We move on, but not before taking pictures of what looks from the outside like an 1800s clipper ship but is actually a health club, a beauty salon, and a disco. Who woulda thought...?

Back across the river before the bridges go up and and my field producing curiosity leads me to some street performers twirling fire to a bongo drum on the banks of the Neva. There are at least a couple of hundred people enjoying the free show... well free until they pass the hat. Entrepreneurism appears to be alive and well in St. Petersburg.

Our last few days in Russia are a swirl of live and taped shows, media interviews, and a hunt for young hoodozhniki -- post communist era artists. My colleague Bronwyn and I want to bring back something unique to remember the trip, and we like finding young artists, either on the street or in small, out of the way galleries.

We are directed to Pushkinskaya 10, and when we arrive in the late afternoon they are having a party in this artist colony apartment building to celebrate the birthday of the building. There is a bookstore selling Soviet era memorabilia like postcards and books, a comedian doing standup in the courtyard, a couple of film crews shooting what appears to be the hip, trendy and avant garde crowd of Russia's second city.

We are invited into the artists' apartments to view -- and hopefully buy -- their art. They often paint and live in the same, small cramped two or sometimes three room apartments -- which are probably pretty much the way they lived in the communal living days of the communist era. Sometimes there is little natural light and I wonder how they can paint in this environment.

And nobody seems to be in too much of a rush to sell anything. One artist with a Web site is offering works at $2000 and higher, and I wonder just how many he has actually sold at that price. We see all kinds of works -- modern, traditional, and even some absurdist work.

Unimpressed and uninspired to pay four digits or higher, we press on. We are recommended to a gallery that is housed in a stunning hall within the Baron Stieglits Museum of Decorative Art.

The room has been painstakingly renovated, the white paint that covered the beautiful murals on the walls carefully removed. There are twenty foot arches made from stone with embedded fossils. It feels traditional, yet modern, and the paintings are many and varied.

Our final stop is at the souvenir stalls near the Church of Spilled Blood -- St. Petersburg's answer to St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square.

The sun is shining, the sky is a beautiful robin's egg blue, and the street is crowded with tourists, who are vying for picture-taking space with the brides and grooms who come here for their wedding photos.

The atmosphere is festive and light. One of the best men is vigorously shaking a bottle of unopened champagne, and telling onlookers to stand back while he pops the cork. A woman vendor is selling bubble blowers, and demonstrating them by sending a constant stream of twinkling soap bubbles up into the sky.

It's a magical moment. And I remember a pledge I made to myself 27 years ago when I left Moscow as a student, much better versed in the Russian language and culture, wearing three sailor shirts, and 20 pounds heavier. I told myself I will never come back here unless someone is paying me to do it. Life as a student for four months in the dormitory had been too hard.

And here I am, on an expense account, having achieved that goal. I'm thankful, and grateful, and I promise myself this day that I will come back, on my own time and dime, because this country and it's people have a huge will to live life large, to make difficult changes, and to keep moving forward one way or the other. E-mail to a friend