I went to St. Petersburg - St. Petersburg is awesome.
I've been very well received by all the people I've met in St. Petersburg.
I am going to St. Petersburg, Florida, tomorrow. Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best they can. I'm sick of the job-it's a thankless one and full of grief. I've been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor.
I remember my very first encounter with Japan. At that time, I was Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg. Out of nowhere, Japan's Consul General in St Petersburg came to my office and said Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted to invite me to Japan. I was very surprised because I had nothing to do with Japan except being a judoka. This was an opportunity to visit Tokyo and a couple of other cities. And, you know, a capital is a capital everywhere: there is the official script and certain protocol. It is always easier to talk in the provinces, the conversation is more natural.
Never before and never since have I seen - and I cannot even imagine, such an amazing rapidity of chess thinking that Capablanca possessed in 1913-14. In blitz games he gave all the St. Petersburg players odds of five minutes to one - and he won.
I was told Moscow was the tough place and St Petersburg was the hip, happening, cultural centre of Russia. I've never seen so many miserable people in my life. If that was hip and happening, god knows what the vibe is like in Moscow.
I love St Petersburg, Zenit and the fans.
Paris for lunch, dinner in St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg, under the czars, had been a grand city. It was a planned city, and it had - there were all these Parisian architects who had been brought in to build the apartment buildings in the center of town.
When I was at Shanghai SIPG, I had the Brazilian player Hulk, who had joined for over £50 million from Zenit St Petersburg. He had no problems with life in China - his only problem was that he got injured on his debut and was out for two months after that. But I never heard him complain about life in China at all - everything else was good.
The duality of St Petersburg and Leningrad remains. They are not even on speaking terms.
For me, St. Petersburg is the city that I can never escape because it has this special energy, even a dark energy. It keeps pulling me back.
St. Petersburg is a gem of world culture and Russia's most European city.
I am joining the government not from the academic position but from St. Petersburg city council.
I couldn't imagine being in Slipknot and not going to Peru or Argentina or Moscow or St. Petersburg.
Great music can come from anywhere around the globe. And there has always been a music business. It just wasn't recorded, nor was it centered in New York, London, Los Angeles or Nashville but rather St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Milan and Paris.