Day of St. Petersburg Cats

June 8 is the official Day of St. Petersburg Cats, as it is on this momentous date eight years ago that the Cats Republic cafe was opened in the city (changing our lives forever, obviously). So they’re organizing a cat parade to mark the occasion. Uh-huh, literally dozens of felines marching down the street, some even in costumes. Can you get into hospital for cuteness overload? We’ll test that one out.

Eastern Sunflowers exhibition

Held in St. Michael’s Castle, a venue of the Russian Museum and the place that gives every St. Petersburger the creeps, Eastern Sunflowers is the exhibition of works by Chinese artist Xu Jiang. “His expressive canvases reflect [his] spiritual and intellectual pursuits in the era of consumerism and digitalization,” says the Russian Museum of the artist, who practices a contemporary approach to nature studies and landscape painting. Which is a nice way of saying “beautiful flowers, mate”, I guess, but maybe I’m just oversimplifying things.

Festival of national cuisines

Fancy a gastronomic journey around the world? (Duh.) Then this weekend’s festival of national cuisines is an event after your own heart (or, well, belly). The menu includes Lithuanian soups, Asian desserts, Belarusian baked goods, Uzbek plov, delicious Cuban and American specialties, as well as Czech trdelník, which gets my personal seal of approval. You can also learn to cook all of it there and then, at one of the workshops by famous chefs, so as not to end up in the whole Edmund vs. Turkish delight situation.

Contemporary art exhibition at Manege

Enjoying your life too much? Sleeping too sound at night? Time to meet the wee ol’ friend called “existential dread”, and Manege Central Exhibition Hall is ever obliging to deliver. As part of its new project, Museum Line, Manege will display works by various contemporary artists, starting with Dmitry Kawarga’s sculpture series “Toxicosis of anthropocentrism”, which aims to penetrate to the very core of the human species (make of that what you will).

The Music of the Summer Garden

As per tradition, the Summer Garden will celebrate the coming of summer with a series of live music concerts featuring popular works by composers from Russia and all over the world. The concerts are prefaced with a short lecture on the music performed. The first concert is on June 9, starting at 4pm.