Two Art Nouveau buildings

Do you remember how it happens in dreams? You're walking quietly, then you pass under some archway or through an inconspicuous door, and suddenly you're transported hundreds of kilometers away, to another city, another planet, or even another millennium? The world around you changes. Just now you were walking in the woods - and suddenly you find yourself among multi-storied buildings, and wander in search of your hotel. Or you come out of a cafe after a heavy breakfast and find yourself on a narrow strip of sandy beach on the ocean. That was the feeling I got when, in a park I knew well, I turned down an inconspicuous path and found myself near an Art Nouveau building. Where did it come from? I came for a walk in the park - I didn't plan to admire architectural masterpieces at all!

But about everything in order. On this day they promised very variable weather - sometimes sunny, sometimes raining. We all often complain about the forecasts of weather forecasters, but this time they predicted the weather with unusual accuracy. Nevertheless, I decided to take a chance and go for a walk in a suburban park. I hoped I could wait out the brief rain in some shelter.

I decided to take the suburban train, it's the fastest and most comfortable way to get to the city outskirts and the nearest suburbs. Plus, this choice had an added bonus: I could take the opportunity to check out the station building. The building of Dudergof station was built in 1899 in Art Nouveau style by architect Lazarev-Stanischev. At first this station was planned to be called "Gorskaya" - there are high hills nearby, on which there is a picturesque landscape park. But later the toponymic commission chose another name - after the name of the nearby lake.

When I got off the commuter train, the sky above me was a bright blue color, slightly diluted by the whiteness of the clouds. But as I walked around the station building, paying attention to the architectural details, the blue changed to gray - and I had to hide inside the station building from a quick summer downpour.

Unfortunately, the old interiors have not been preserved. The interior of the waiting room is characterized by simplicity and laconism. A station employee is on duty in the ticket office window, in the opposite corner there are machines for buying tickets with bank or transportation cards, on the walls there are boards with timetables of passing trains and other information stands. I bought a return ticket from the machine, after which I settled into one of the chairs and opened the weather map to assess the prospects for the walk.

The outlook was not particularly rosy. According to the map, the rain was supposed to stop soon, but half an hour later another cloud was due to approach my location, and then, after a brief period of clear sunny weather, another. The map looked striped like a zebra - the clouds came one after another with short pauses. So I decided not to go far into the park or up into the hills, but instead to walk around the outskirts of the park. I assumed that if the next cloud approached, I could find shelter from the rain under the vaults of the chapel or in the village store.

I was walking along a path winding along the edge of the park and admiring the views of the lake, the meadows and the roofs of the village cottages. After another turn, I found myself at what I first thought was the walls of a fairytale castle - which is exactly what this house on the edge of the ancient park looked like. I got closer and found out that this building housed a sports school. The weather was starting to turn bad again, and I was glad I was near these ancient stone walls - I could sit comfortably on the terrace under a secure roof and wait out the downpour.

While I was waiting for the rain to stop, I opened a local history resource on the internet, and found out that this building was built by the architect Lucedarsky in 1900-1902 for the hospital of the community of the Sisters of Charity of St. George. The hospital operated until 1916. In the 1920s the building was given to a school. In the middle of the XX century a regular secondary school worked here, but later the sports base of the children's sports school was located here.

The cloud drifted further to the east, and it seemed that the bad weather was over - the sun was shining, the sky was happy with bright blue colors. But the forecasts remained the same - the next cloud was inexorably approaching. But for now, the next cloud was somewhere near the horizon, and I could continue my walk along the outskirts of the village. Along the way I came across some old wooden houses - they are not as comfortable as modern cottages, but much more picturesque. I also passed a chapel and a new wooden church. The church is built on the site of an old building that has not survived to this day. Then I went back to the station and the next rain caught me on the train.

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Smartphone	Google Pixel 3a
Location	Saint Petersburg, Russia