If it wasn't for me, the terrace of the bar would be deserted. The leaves on the plane trees are just beginning to take on their autumn colors, a breeze off the River Neva is blowing in through the massive gateway to the Peter and Paul Fortress and directly in front of me rises the almost sheer golden spire of the castle's cathedral, where the last Czar and his family were only reinterred in July 1998.
I am joined by five young men wearing drainpipe trousers and checkered sports jackets that have long since ceased to be fashionable. They pick up their instruments and without even so much as a tune up, break into a passable rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In." It can only be me they are serenading. The ersatz music is well-intentioned, but I have not come to St. Petersburg -- the Czars' former capital and described recently by President Boris Yeltsin as the cultural capital of Russia (which most of the city's residents have known all along) -- to hear Dixieland jazz. I take another long swig of Botchkarov beer and try to filter out the rhythm.
But this is St. Petersburg today: a city divided between those who want to shake off the legacy of decades of authoritarian Soviet rule and ape Western ways, and those who are proud of their city's legacy, its cultural, artistic and historic importance, and could never contemplate living anywhere else. If it were a choice I had to make, I would side with the latter.